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Lesson Debrief: Staging Hamlet's Ghost

October 24, 2008 By Leave a Comment

When my Grade 12 College level students study Hamlet, we do not spend weeks analyzing the details. We do not debate about Hamlet or Claudius proving the greater villain; we do not philosophize on whether or not Rosencrantz and Guildenstern got what they deserved; nor do we try to pin Ophelia’s death on Gertrude. All of these arguments are saved as essay topics for the University level students.

No, with College level students, our three-week focus is on understanding and enjoying the story of Hamlet and its production. Students are challenged to think about changes that they would make were they producing the play.

One of the most enjoyable aspects of the unit for students is when they speculate on how they would stage the Ghost in Act 1.

What Worked Well

  • The handout that I provide is easy for students to follow. Their task is to find five quotes in Act 1 that describe the Ghost, and this handout proves to be a good guide for that.
  • Students have fun comparing their ideas for staging the Ghost with the decisions made by the director of a production that we view in class.
  • Students use ten words of their own to describe the Ghost. This helps them clarify their images of the Ghost and sharpens their ideas for their own imagined production.
  • Students always have fun sketching a zombie of their own and describing his movement and voice.

What Needs Work

  • Trying to fit this unit in between Thanksgiving and the Fall Break has rushed this entire unit and students just didn’t have enough time to speculate on the Ghost. Two-and-a-half weeks is rushing it; I feel like this unit is probably about a week shorter than it should have been. (It didn’t help that a large group of the students were on a three-day canoe trip with the Outdoor Education class, either.)
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Lesson Debrief: The Hobbit News Article

October 20, 2008 By Leave a Comment

As I have mentioned, reading The HobbitThe Hobbit with my Grade 9/10 Essential level students has been a surprising treat for me this semester. Throughout our journey there and back again with Bilbo, we have paused for activities designed to increase students’ comprehension of the text and their use of reading strategies.

One of my intentions with students at this level is to prepare them for the OSSLT (a literacy test administered in Grade 10). News articles – comprehending and writing them – seem to form the backbone of the test, so I drill the form with my students.

Midway through our reading of The Hobbit, then, I had students write a news article based on Bilbo’s escape from Gollum and the goblins. This was an action-packed scene with lots of meat for students to work with. They had to write about the scene in the standard news article format and include quotes from characters involved.

What Worked Well

  • Preparation for a key component of the OSSLT was accomplished. Check.
  • Students analyzed the scene from a fresh perspective and found new humour (and action) in it. This is a great example of students filling in gaps in their reading.
  • In creating quotes, students had to think about places where the text was silent. They practiced in a limited way thinking about various perspectives on the text.
  • Because we had practiced writing news articles in our previous unit, students felt confident approaching this assignment. It was a text they understood and a form they were familiar with. They turned into professionals.

What Needs Work

  • We were working with book sets borrowed from our Board’s Media Library. This is a fantastic resource, but the default timeframe of three weeks was a bit tight for this group and this book. I should have asked for a four-week loan of the books.
  • When they write the OSSLT, students will be given a headline and a picture and asked to create a news article. In this lesson, I gave students a well-described scene and asked them to create an article. I should try this using just an image (such as Bilbo caught in the doorway) and a headline (such as “Narrow Escape in the Misty Mountains”) next time.
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Hamlet Introduction: Friends to this ground. And liegemen to the Dane.

October 14, 2008 By Leave a Comment

There was a particularly festive atmosphere at school today. Election Day. Full moon. A human skull greeting my students at the classroom door.

I love the first day of my Hamlet unit.

After O Canada this morning, I climbed on top of a cabinet at the back of the room and, towering over my students with Yorick on my hip, recited “What a piece of work is a man …” (Act 2, Scene 2, l. 310-25).

Today we introduced Shakespeare, dug up some Hamlet trivia, and brainstormed around major themes. Students created Venn diagrams of Revenge and Justice; Murder and Execution; and Insanity and Obsession. Interesting stuff. The students seem to get really excited about this material.

It’s an annual lesson for me: my passion transfers to students. And the sobering corollary: my disinterest likewise rubs off. That’s why it’s important for me to keep things interesting for myself and to work with texts that I genuinely like.

_____

Photo by Kessiye

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Lesson Debrief: Never Cry Wolf

October 3, 2008 By Leave a Comment

It is great to be assigned a Multiple Exceptionality course, such as the current Grade 11/12 English class that I teach. The challenges in this classroom are different from those that I face the rest of the day. The classes are small enough, though, that I can better tailor lessons to meet students’ independent learning plans and cater to their interests.

I thought that it would be fun to focus our semester’s reading and writing on one Canadian region at a time, beginning with Northern Canada. Having a number of boys in the room who would rather be snowmobiling or moose-hunting, I selected Farley Mowat’s Never Cry Wolf as our first text.

We focused on making connections as readers, and students collected and created images of Northern Canada, shared experiences, and researched northern animals.

What Worked Well

  • Introducing the novel with Aesop’s fable, “The Shepherd Boy and the Wolf.” This was familiar enough to ease students’ anxiety, yet fresh enough to draw laughter and spark discussion.
  • Farely Mowat is a great storyteller whose tales read well aloud. For a class where reading together is essential, his books are enjoyable.
  • Splitting the already small class into two smaller circles gave the students enough confidence to read some passages aloud with their peers.
  • Students especially enjoyed relating experiences and stories that the text brought to mind for them. They were making a lot of connections.

What Needs Work

  • Though Never Cry Wolf is not a long book, it certainly was long enough for this group. There was little time for comprehension check-ups and questions.
  • Mowat’s vocabulary is advanced. I should have either tried to find a different (shorter) book of his or else focused our unit on learning new words instead of making connections. It just felt like overload sometimes.
  • The researching of northern animals needed more focused instructions and fewer expectations.

_____

Image by dobak

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Lesson Debrief: Political scandals introduce "An Ideal Husband"

October 1, 2008 By Leave a Comment

I decided to mix things up a bit in my Grade 12 English (College level) course this semester, and am using An Ideal Husband as our modern drama instead of my usual Crucible.

We started by talking about what constitutes a scandal. We watched a video clip about Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz’s recently infamous comment regarding the Listeriosis outbreak. The clip showed the political mileage that the opposition is getting out of his “death by a thousand cold cuts” pun.

It turns out that seventeen year-olds are not easily offended or outraged. Even the glimpse that they took at the deathby1000coldcuts online game hardly raised an eyebrow.

Students were given the task of researching a modern North American scandal. In groups of 2-3, they spent an hour finding information about one of the following:

Their job was to introduce the scandal to their classmates in their own words in less than a page.

On Day 2, students created a brief timeline of the main events of their scandal and then each wrote a paragraph answering the question: “Was it really an awful or shameful thing, or was it merely sensationalized?”

Finally, students posted all of their work on the class wiki.

What worked well

  • Students were eager to research these terms and names that they’ve heard, wanting to defend Mulroney or denounce the Liberals with the Gomery Inquiry. (The school seems to be in a staunchly Conservative riding.)
  • Hearing exclamations like, “So that’s what Watergate was!”
  • The variety of websites that students encountered, many of them news and history sites.
  • The exercise of paraphrasing challenged the students to understand the material and communicate it clearly.

What needs work

  • The wiki and the school server continue to butt heads, and many of our attempts to edit pages on the wiki were rejected. This may be a Wetpaint issue, as I haven’t had any problems like this with Wikispaces.
  • The students who researched Iran-Contra are still scratching their heads.
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Bone: A great resource for encouraging reading

September 26, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Two years ago our school librarian added to our collection Volume 1 of the nine-part Bone series by Jeff Smith. I was hooked, promptly getting the remainder of the series from the public library for my own reading pleasure. The more I read, the more I knew that this graphic novel was great material for those “reluctant readers” we’re trying to support.

I suggested, even begged, our librarian to add the whole series to school library. When I realized that he wasn’t about to give in to my pleas, I moved onto another person who has purchasing power in our school: the Modified Education Coordinator. Wonderful woman, she purchased two copies of Volumes 1-5.

(Incidentally, our librarian has since had another person with far better credentials than my own outline the value of Bone, and a full set is now on its way to our library.)

This year I have a Grade 9 / 10 Essential level class. When teaching split level classes, I sometimes give students different texts to use as the basis for similar learning activities. That’s how I started out this unit: Grade 9s were using Bone, and Grade 10s Tuck Everlasting.

Almost immediately the Gr. 10s were asking to read Bone as well. I used that to my advantage, explaining that if they finished their daily reading and exercise with their own text, then they could read Bone quietly for the remainder of the period. Initially they worked hard for that privilege.

However, halfway through reading Tuck Everlasting with the Gr. 10s, I had a revolt on my hands. They wanted to read Bone. Period. So I shelved Tuck and the whole class read and worked with Bone.

Students happily created plot summaries, maps that tracked character movements, news articles, and (my favourite) turned dialogue into scripts with stage directions.

And everyone was happy. Including me.
_____
Image courtesy of Scholastic Bone Freebies

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Lesson Debrief: Media Campaign Assignment

September 24, 2008 By Leave a Comment

I tend to start my Grade 12 English (College level) courses out with a unit that exposes students to media and understanding messages. I’ve been experimenting lately with a unit culminating activity in which students design their own media campaign.

Students are asked to work individually or in groups of 2 or 3. Their task is to select a school club, team or event to promote. Their media campaign must use six different promotional tools delivered using a variety of media. All elements must include a hero-figure or spokesperson, since we also use this unit to look at heroes in the media. And of course, their campaign should demonstrate their understanding of the Five Key Questions that we use in approaching media.

Students present their campaign to the class in 5-10 minutes. Then they write a letter to me that explains their rationale for choosing their promotional elements, the strengths of their campaign, what they’d do differently next time, and what they’ve learned.

What Worked Well

  • Students used technology, and they used it better, than ever before. They even brainstormed via the class wiki!
  • Students were genuinely excited about their campaigns. They chose their “clients” based on their interests and involvement at school.
  • The cover letters were a good way for students to pause and reflect on their own learning.

What Needs Work

  • I must remember to include peer evaluation this early in the semester, as some students tend to ride the coattails of their peers.
  • My rubric needs to better include the cover letter and evaluation of metacognition.
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Lesson Debrief: Ender’s Game

June 3, 2008 By 4 Comments

At a Literacy Committee meeting last September we were discussing the OSSLT (what else would an Ontario literacy committee discuss?!). During our conversation our Vice Principal suggested that our Applied level Gr. 9 English students should work with a novel that appeals to boys, our stereotypical reluctant reader crowd. “Some fantasy or science-fiction novel,” she said. “That’s what these students read.”

I couldn’t agree more. After some discussion about options, our department ordered a class set of Ender’s Game. Thank goodness. It’s been a great classroom experience.

Over the last month we’ve drawn pictures of the Battle School (encouraging students to visualize what they’re reading), writing imaginary emails from character’s perspectives (helping students recognize perspective and appreciate author’s choices), writing news articles (enabling students to extract major plot events and re-order them), and writing an essay (yep — a five paragraph one, much as I shudder at the thought).

We’ve been busy, but the class was completely hooked. They were completely quiet while we read the novel together. For those of you who regularly teach Gr. 9 Applied students, you’ll know just how special this experience has been.

What Worked Well

  • Ender’s Game is an excellent book to read aloud. My wife and I read it to each other about eight years ago, and were up until the early hours of the morning doing so. It’s that kind of book.
  • Science fiction is appealing to Grade 9 boys, and this particular novel has strong female characters with whom girls can relate. It helps that the main characters are all children and adolescents.
  • Sharing personal visions of the setting – the Battle School and the Battle Room in particular – through discussions and drawings was fun for students, and it helped them to see both the differences and commonalities in their individual visions. This was a good launch point for discussing how reading involves “filling in gaps” and creating pictures based on the author’s word choice.

      • What Needs Work

      • This is yet another unit that I wish I would have done earlier on in the semester. A month-long unit that centres on a novel feels too big for this time of year. But the question is, what type of unit would work when the weather is beautiful enough to distract all of us from learning?
      • The Cyberbullying WebQuest was a bit advanced for this group.
      • The five paragraph essay. I ended a unit that students enjoyed with an activity that students hated. I feel like I tainted the whole experience for them. On the other hand, perhaps the fact that the novel was so enjoyable saved the essay experience from being complete torture for them.
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          Lesson Debrief: Field trip to a stage performance

          May 22, 2008 By Leave a Comment

          One of the many good things about teaching high school English is the opportunity to organize an appropriate field trip for the students. This week, students attended the Stratford Shakespeare Festival to see a matinee performance of Romeo & Juliet and an evening performance of Hamlet.

          What worked well

          • Our high school is only a 3 hour bus-ride from Stratford, so it was possible to make the trip with very minimal time away from the classroom.
          • With two performances and overnight accommodations, the trip is still remarkably affordable for the students. All of this makes it a very popular trip for the students to attend.
          • The fact that the trip is completely optional, and any student in our school is welcome to participate, ensures that it is the students interested in seeing the performances that actually attend. Rather than a mandatory trip for a specific class, simply because a performance connects with our class text, our group of students took the responsibility for their own education by choosing to attend; rather than a group that has little care for the staged act, our students were completely engrossed.
          • Stratford’s calendar continues to include many titles of texts our students study: all students at our school encounter Romeo & Juliet in Grade 10 English and Hamlet in Grade 12. Last year, appropriate performances for our students included Of Mice and Men, To Kill a Mockingbird, and King Lear. Perhaps Stratford will someday attempt a stage version of Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game? Or Mordecai Richler’s The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz?
          • Both plays do not stage their official openings until next week, but let me say here that the greatest highlight of the day was Ben Carlson as Hamlet. This production was unanimously preferred, both by our students and our chaperones, to the Romeo & Juliet matinee, and Carlson was a big factor in that preference. What a Hamlet is this!

          What needs work

          • Our students were exhausted by the end of the first day. After the bus-ride, the afternoon performance, then the evening performance, the students were zonked… Then again, they were ready for bed and it was perhaps a quieter hotel for that reason!
          • The small city of Stratford is both beautiful and fun… except when it is cold and rainy. Our students were to spend the morning of the second day exploring the city. Well, we had cold, rainy weather; and very few shops open their doors in Stratford until 10:00 am.
          • The Stratford Shakespeare Festival offers two free chaperone tickets for every 20 student tickets purchased. However, the Festival expects schools to send one chaperone for every ten students. We have always bought the two extra chaperone tickets to comply with the Festival’s expectations, but it appears that some school groups are ignoring this expectation. I was very proud of our own students’ behaviour, but a boisterous group seated in the neighbouring section was obviously unattended. Perhaps the Festival should enforce their chaperone-expectation?
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          Reading Reflections: The Curious Incident …

          May 12, 2008 By Leave a Comment

          Assigned the task of instructing a split class of Grade 11 and 12 Workplace English (ENG 3E/4E), I wanted to take a different approach this semester to really focus on improving our reading skills. From quiet, independent reading, through a variety of reading together activities, we have spent a lot of time with our noses in books. The students are tired of it. Of course, with the temperature climbing beyond 18 degrees Celsius, and with the tulips, daffodils, and hyacinth in bloom, and with the orioles, purple martins, and yellow warblers returned to our local skies, the students are simply tired of being stuck in a dark classroom. Nevertheless, our latest reading activities revolved around Mark Haddon’s novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. With this novel I demonstrated snags and the students worked with words, connections, investigating, storytelling, and questioning. For these activities, taken from my usual literature-circle roles, this novel worked very well. It is an intriguing story that offers numerous connections for the students to make with their own lives. It also offers the opportunity for interesting mystery-parallels. I will read it with a Workplace English class again in the future, but much earlier in the semester.

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