Throughout the unit, students were asked to publish two blog posts per week on the class blog portal. Students came up with questions that they had about the play, attempted to answer their own questions, and commented on their classmates’ blog posts. These blog posts, comments, and replies, are now the starting point for their collaborative essays.

For the King Lear collaborative essay, I asked the students to first think of the topic that they were most interested in writing about, and to think about their own opinion and ideas regarding that topic. Then, students went to the class blog portal and noted all of the relevant comments from their peers.

Once the students have stated their topic and their own opinion, and they’ve listed their peers’ key ideas and their own key ideas, then students are ready to arrange their essay around their reasons, their defence of those reasons, and rebuttals to their critics.

Some of the topics they’ve come up with include:

• Who is the hero of “King Lear”?
• Why did Cordelia refuse to give her father the answer he was looking for?
• After being banished by Lear, why does Kent return?
• When does Lear lose his sanity?
• Did Lear give up his kingdom too early?

I’m excited to read these collaborative essays; they’ve really originated with the students and spring from the dialogue that they’ve been having on the class blog portal. The collaborative essay assignment requires the students to think for themselves and to be themselves; it requires students to put their oar in the water and join the 400-year old conversation that has revolved around the Bard.

I like Mr. B-G’s recent comments on teaching students to write:

How do we teach students to write? We teach them to think. We teach them to develop content. We help them understand ideas like elaboration and explication. We provide them with opportunities to stretch their minds and flex their intellectual muscles. We give them opportunities to pump out words and ideas without fear of judgement. We teach them how to think critically and make sense of their musings and meanderings. We show them how to tailor and edit and rethink and resee and rearrange. We empower them to be creators.

This King Lear collaborative essay assignment is so much more interesting for the class than the 5-paragraph essay format; it is free of the shackles of the 5-paragraph essay format that has been suffocating any potential talent. A collaborative essay assignment is… real.

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Image by longhorndave

While my students are creating multi-media presentations for their assigned King Lear scene, it helps to show them example pages from Batman: The Dark Knight Returns.

Alan Moore and Frank Miller have repeatedly proven to be ahead of their time; it seems incredible to me that their work was published in the mid-80s — the last great decade. The power and the fear, the hope and the despair, the tragedy and the comedy — it belongs in a Shakespeare unit, and it never disappoints the students.

• Level: ENG4C/4U (Grade 12 College / University)
• Timeframe: 18 classes, including a test period

Unit Outline

• Lesson 1: Introduction to Shakespeare and King Lear (3 periods)
• Lesson 2: Acts 1-5 (9 periods)
• Lesson 3: Multi-media scene presentations (4 periods)
• Lesson 4: Review and Collaborative Essay (3 periods)
• Unit Test

The unit outline [PDF] includes a summary of curriculum expectations plus a sample calendar.

Lesson Plans

Unit lesson plans [PDF] provide detailed steps to covering each of the unit topics, relating them to the corresponding expectations and teaching strategies.

Assignments

Reflective Blogging (10 marks)

Students publish at least two reflective posts and two comments on classmates’ blogs, per week. Students evaluate their learning using the blogging self-evaluation rubric.

Multi-media Scene Presentation (50 marks)

In groups, students edit, characterize, rehearse, and record an assigned scene from King Lear.

Collaborative Essay (50 marks)

Students transform their blog posts, comments, and responses into collaborative essays. Submitted papers must attempt to answer questions raised throughout the unit’s study of the play. Learning is assessed using the collaborative essay rubric.

Unit Test (30 marks)

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Image by longhorndave

These are times when I’ve felt an intense desire to finish the book because every minute that a bookmark remains between the covers, my thoughts and emotions become a little blacker. Relief and redemption can only be won after the back cover is gained.

This of course is not a fault of the books, but rather it reveals the wonderful talent of the authors who can so completely affect my mood.

Alan Moore shares this talent and surprises the reader by writing this mood into the comic book format, publishing it in the increasingly popular graphic novel format. For Moore, the term “graphic novel” is double-edged. Watchmen is so graphic, it has been accused of being almost pornographic.

Though fifteen years have passed since Watchmen first hit the stands, its sharp edge has not blunted a bit. This story of semi-retired masked vigilantes, caught up in the arms race and practically winding the Doomsday Clock to the top of the hour is sarcastic and all-too frightening.

While it possesses literary merit that is absent from may of Dickens’ pages, the blood and sex make Watchmen an unlikely classroom resource.

However, just tell the students that you’ve banned it from the classroom, and you’re guaranteed to have thirty of them getting their hands on a copy and engaging with literature on the sly.

Very clever.