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

Kept in my course binders, I cover my lesson plans with hand-written notes by the end of each lesson and need to adjust plans accordingly the next time I have the opportunity to teach a similar unit.

This year, in order to keep straight all of the necessary curriculum, I needed a more detailed sidebar. I hadn’t, for example, tracked all of the reading strategies that I wanted to cover, nor had I tracked the topics that the school board was championing.

I’ll make available here a PDF download, and a Word document as well, for anyone interested.

If you would like to see an example of a developed lesson, see the lesson plans from my Grade 12 Media unit, or from my King Lear unit. Though, just between you and me, they’re always evolving. Should I get the opportunity to return to King Lear in 2010, I have little doubt that my lesson plans will look radically different.

• Level: ENG1D (Grade 9 Academic)
• Timeframe: 21 classes, including a test period

Unit Outline

• Lesson 1: Introduction to Fantasy (3 periods)
• Lesson 2: Introduction to Shakespeare & A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2 periods)
• Lesson 3: Acts 1-3 (6 periods)
• Lesson 4: Memorization, Vocabulary, and Recital (3 periods)
• Lesson 5: Acts 4-5 (1 period)
• Lesson 6: Theatre Education Project (5 periods)
• Lesson 7: Written Review (1 period)

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

Multi-Media Presentation (40 marks)

Students develop and deliver a presentation to educate younger students about A Midsummer Night’s Dream, including a visual aid, a brief discussion, and a dramatic scene using the original text OR an audio recording of a scene scripted into a different genre. Students are evaluated using the theatre education activity rubric.

ThinkBook Written Review (15 marks)

Students answer one of three options, commenting on their reading experience of Ysabel.

Bone Dialogue and Dramatic Script (10 marks)

Given images from Jeff Smith’s Bone, students imagine possible dialogue for the characters, then transform the dialogue into a proper dramatic script.

Passage Memorization (10 marks)

After repeated practice together as a class, students memorize and recite a passage from 2.1 (Fairy’s lines 30-40; or Puck’s lines 42-58; or Oberon’s lines 253-263).

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Image by Niffty..

• 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

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

Unit Outline

• Lesson 1: Introduction to Literature Circles and The Fountainhead (1 period)
• Lesson 2: Literature Circles pp.1-694 (15 periods)
• Lesson 3:Portfolio Conferences (1 period)
• 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 (20 marks)

Students post reading notes on their blogs, publishing at least four reflective posts and six comments on classmates’ blogs. Students evaluate their learning using the blogging self-evaluation rubric.

Literature Circle Portfolio (50 marks)

Working in assigned groups, students are responsible for the completion of a daily literature circle role. The record of individual contributions is compiled into an electronic group portfolio. Learning is assessed using self and peer evaluation, as well as the literature circle portfolio rubric.

Reading Narrative Essay (50 marks)

Using their reading notes, students develop a 500-800 word narrative of their reading experience. Learning is assessed using the reading narrative rubric.

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Image by torontodailyphoto

The students are now thoroughly excited about seeing this play performed at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival at the end of May. The length of the unit (12 days) allowed for an understanding of the play without tiring the students of Oscar Wilde’s words.

What Worked Well

• They play divided nicely into five group presentations: two groups for Act 1, another 2 groups for the second act, and just one group for the final act.
• Asked to bring in at least one item as a prop or as part of a costume to represent their own character, most students entered into the spirit of aesthetic theatre and adorned themselves in costume from head-to-toe.
• With the drama room available, we enjoyed ourselves for a week on stage.

What Needs Work

• I must ensure that the rubric allows for a knowledge of lines without necessarily requiring memorization (because of time constraints), and separately grading the delivery of the lines.

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Image by broma

The Hobbit

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.

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.

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Image by dobak