I believe very much in this concept of take-home, and I'm not sure how to elaborate on this, but the Prose package is very much pissing me off, so I shall try to elaborate here.
Lesson plans generally fall under two broad categories; the mainstay of all lessons is the "take-home" lesson. Lessons that are "take-home" lessons generally produce a result that is congruent to an assessment of learning, which means that the artifacts produced in the lesson will generally be useful to students for their revision of certain topics. For example, lessons which produce worksheets that explicitly state themes and ideas, quotations or technical explanations are lessons that produce a "take-home". The "take-home" artifact is thus more important, usually, than the lesson itself, which students tend to regard as a waste of time. Importantly, they would think that the teacher would have better spent the time giving students the material directly rather than going through the tedious process of getting students to take ownership over their creation of that material.
The less profligate teacher would often opt to have more "learning" lessons instead. Where "take-home" lessons produce artifacts, "learning" lessons present the specific act as the "take-home" itself. The student is expected to produce the artifacts of learning on his own, or decide which kinds of artifacts would best suit his learning needs. Which is blatantly silly, because human nature (if I'm reading Jonathan Swift right) dictates that people will always want to take the easier, less complicated way out. Reasons of economy, the more enlightened will say. Bullshit. People are lazy, period. You can't change that. If students are generally lazy to come up with their own artifacts of learning, then teachers needs must compel them to come up with it on their own, such as during lesson time. Hence to the more "enlightened" (I shudder to think that recognizing human laziness constitutes enlightenment) teacher, "take-home" lessons are surely more practically useful than "learning" lessons.
Which is what pisses me off, because literature lesson planning is currently centered around these two main obsessions. Every lesson, it would seem, must have a "take-home" and a "learning" point, which is impossible if every lesson is only an hour long at most. Personally, I would happily have my students read the text on their own during my lesson if that's what it takes to get them to read the text; human laziness is omnivorous, and it takes pleasure in devouring both sides of the food chain. But if I had a choice, I would simply choose boring "take-home" lessons, maybe spiced up by the occasional video/ extra-curricular activity. It would certainly make my life easier.
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