Approaches to Teaching Shakespeare

Classroom activities

In teaching this unit, I will implement various strategies and modifications that will take place inside the same class with the clear objective to address all the various needs of either the strongest or the weakest students with flexible grouping. I also intend to scaffold the various strategies I will teach them continuously. This is an essential component of the unit because I want my students to reach the point of real independence in approaching and analyzing any text. I will use a combination of pre-reading activities to accommodate all the differences inside a class and between classes. In fact, I will use the Quick Write activity at the very beginning of the unit and/or any new document we approach, and the Tea Party and/or Probable Passage before the reading of each document. The Tea Party strategy encourages an active participation with the text and is particularly effective in the case of struggling readers. It allows the students to predict what they think will happen in the text while inferring, comparing and contrasting, seeing casual relationships, and using their prior knowledge. The Probable Passage forces students to predict, think, infer, reach conclusions, and see casual relationships. It also offers the opportunity to comprehend the vocabulary, and can be used with those students who can read but have no real motivation.23

All the various scenes we analyze will be taught taking into account the modification I will implement for the various subgroups of students I have in most of my classes. We will always start rereading the scene and clarifying all the obscure parts they may still have. Soon after that, they will have to annotate the text. I will gradually require them to determine the tone, purpose, and the special features. I specifically expect them to focus on diction and its effectiveness in the communication of the message. The class discussion with note taking will follow. When the annotations are concluded and shared in class, we will read this scene aloud together again. This time I want them to respond to the various questions I write on the board. I generally write two or three questions and I give them eight to ten minutes to respond. Then, I write other questions and give them another ten minutes to respond before we pass to our Sharing Time with note taking both in their journal and on the board. The weakest students will be also required to form groups of three or four and spend ten minutes selecting three or more quotes, writing the commentary for each of them, and any possible connections to today's world. When they have concluded this activity, each group member will have to exchange the journal with the other partners, read the selected quotes and subsequent commentaries, and respond ñ with commentary and connection. Sharing time will follow with class discussion and note taking. After this class activity, I will ask them to write their first interpretation of the scene, taking into account the personal quotes and interpretations as well as those of other students. The College students will have to produce a 350-word essay whereas the Honors and AP students will have to write a 500-word essay. Of course, I might implement a further modification for the struggling students. This group of students will anyway start with the selection of one quote, but this task will be immediately followed by Sharing Time because I want to further help them select those quotes that are meaningful for the understanding of the excerpt.

Task One: Previewing

Quick Write activity:

1. Write the prompt on the board (the various prompts for each document are in the Strategies section)
2. always participate to all my students' activities because it improves their engagement and makes the activity "real."
3. Sharing Time: all my students will be sitting in a circle. One of us (either the teacher or a student) will start reading aloud and taking brief notes. Any other student can respond to the writer and/or share the writing.
4. When Sharing Time is over, I will ask them to go through their notes and determine the reasons and causes just shared in class. I will write the list of causes and effects on a Post-It board.
5. At this point, I will ask them to spend some other minutes and explain in writing whether their initial position has changed after our discussion/sharing time, and why.

Tea Party activity (pre-reading activity):

(I would not suggest modeling it because "not knowing how to do it" triggers more thinking.)

1. I will prepare fifteen or twenty index cards with one phrase from the document they will be reading. I can repeat those phrases two or three times, so you can have one card per student.
2. I will give one card to each student and ask them to move from student to student. While moving, they have to share their card, listen to others as they read their cards, discuss how these cards might refer to, and suggest what these cards might mean.
3. I will ask them to form groups of three or four students and write what they think about those statements in the cards and why.
4. Sharing Time: I will ask the students to read what they wrote and I take notes on the board.
5. After reading the text, we will have another Sharing Time to compare and contrast their predictions and the text.

Task Two: Close Reading and Analytical Writing

For advanced grade-level readers, Honors students, and AP students, I do the following:

1. Read the passage/document again;
2. Underline interesting, important, and/or unusual/unexpected words, phrases, and language structures, and label them in the margin;
3. Determine connections and draw arrows from one part of the passage to another to mark those connections;
4. Highlight the descriptions, the reflections, the facts, or the purpose.
5. What is the main idea or subject of the text? How do you know? How is it presented? Does the author introduce it immediately? Does the author express this main idea, or do you have to infer it? How do you infer it? What clues support your theory?
6. When did this situation occur? Why? How do you know or determine the time and place this situation occurred? Is it clearly stated? Do you infer it? How do you infer it? What clues confirm your theory?
7. Who is the audience? How do you know? Is it clearly stated? How? How do you infer it? What clues confirm your theory?
8. Who is the voice that tells the story? Is it the author? How do you know? What assumptions can you make about this voice? Can you assume what age, education, social status, and other hidden reasons exist for writing this document?
9. What is/are the purpose(s) of the document? What's the reason(s) behind the text? How do you know? What reaction(s) in the audience does the writer want to achieve? Why? How do you know? What techniques does the author use to achieve this purpose? How do you think the audience will feel? What is the effect the author wants to achieve?
10. What is the tone of this document? How do you know? What word(s) or phrase(s) determine this tone? Why? What details, sentence structures, or images convey this tone? Why?
11. Sharing Time: the students share their analysis, discuss and take notes in their journals.
12. Do you notice any difference(s)/similarity(ies) between this document and the previous one(s) you analyzed?
13. Can you notice/infer any difference(s)/similarity(ies) between the author of this document and the previous one(s)?
14. Do you notice any stylistic difference(s)/similarity(ies) between this document and the previous one(s) you analyzed?

1. Read the passage/document again;
2. Underline interesting, important, and/or unusual/unexpected words, phrases, and language structures;
3. Determine connections and draw arrows from one part of the passage to another to mark those connections;
4. Write a "Wonder Why" question for each interesting, important, unusual, or unexpected word/phrase. Write your theory(ies) and support it with clear references to the text.
5. Sharing Time: the students share, discuss their interpretations, and take notes of their peer's thoughts in their journals.

Task Three: Final Paper

The Final Paper will be a synthesis essay with an annotated bibliography. This documented essay will follow various stages. In fact, we will start determining the thesis statement in response to the essential questions, "How do race and gender contribute to my individuality?" and "How do certain beliefs become transparent and obvious in the words I use?" In order to determine a strong thesis statement, the students have to:

1. Reread their journals/responses/notes and highlight the details and information you want to use to support your theory;
2. Write a possible idea/theory, share, and discuss it with the peers;
3. Write a discovery draft with a thesis statement and reasons;
4. Write a first draft containing the thesis statement, the reasons, the supports/references from the documents, and the analysis/discussion of why those references support the assertions. This draft will be followed by a group session of peer revision;
5. Write a second draft including the suggestions from the peer's revision. This will be followed by a group session of peers' editing;
6. Write a third draft followed by a conference with the teacher.
7. Write the annotated bibliography of the documents cited in the essay. They will have a model for the MLA requirements. Each source will be followed by a few lines describing the content of the source.

Modification:

1. Reread their journals/responses/notes and highlight the details, information you want to use to support your theory;
2. Write the thesis in response to the essential question and use one Power Point slide;
3. Determine and write the reasons for your theory/thesis and use one Power Point slide;
4. Find the evidences in the documents and write them in other slides.
5. Write a brief conclusion on a slide.
6. Sharing Time: each student will read the slides and discuss his/her theory and the evidence(s) with the class.

The students who will write the documented essay will prepare the presentation (sharing time) with slides that will illustrate their theory, reasons, references to sources, connections between support and reason, and conclusion.