Conan in the Classroom Day 2

Two of my 7th grade English students reading their short story together.

We've now had two days of lessons in which students are reading their choice short story for literature circles, in which a couple of kids are reading "The Tower of the Elephant."

I don't have a ton to report, unfortunately, since a lot of our day was eaten up by a district-mandated progress-monitoring exam that used about half of our class. Students were able to get pretty deep into the story (most groups are at least to Conan fighting the giant spider), but they have a little bit of homework since they need to be done with the narrative by the time they see me next.

​I cannot tell you how awesome audiobooks have been for these students. There are a great many REH audiobooks available for free on YouTube for most Conan stories, and there's probably more for this one than any other. It's helped students approach the vocabulary more easily since they're getting words pronounced for them (usually they'd get that from me if I'm reading aloud).

One students- we'll call him Peter- has had a really tough year. He wants nothing to do with school, he despises most of his teachers, and he tells others that he likes me even though he has a pretty funny way of showing it! He was gone the day we started this unit, so I asked him if he wanted to read a story in which there are fights in a bar, with a lion, with a giant spider, and then against a wizard. He was pretty stoked! Thanks, Bob Howard!

I've had some good conversations with students about the conflicts in the story. Many of them laughed or were confused when Conan sheds his tunic after the tavern:

"[Conan] had discarded his torn tunic, and walked through the night naked except for a loin-cloth and his high- strapped sandals. He moved with the supple ease of a great tiger, his steely muscles rippling under his brown skin."

They were like, "Uhhhhh, he's naked?" Seventh graders find everything not immediately familiar to them to be horrifying or hilarious. But this led us to good conversations! After some leading questions about if they noticed anything different about Conan compared to the other tavern patrons, they were able to notice that he's different, an outlander, a barbarian. We made note of how he doesn't seem to understand what's happening in the tavern, and when he sheds his tunic, he is shedding the trappings of civilization. He's a piece of nature, elemental.

A lot of students got tuned into the class Howard civilization vs. barbarism (or for our terms in this unit, character vs. society!) conflicts. I have a few kids in each class who have already started their body biography projects, but I don't think it's any of my "Tower of the Elephant" students. I can't wait to see what sorts of body biographies they put together!