Shakespeare and Human Character

Strategies

These native Spanish speaking ELLs face many challenges as they enter middle school: reading pressures escalate due to more demanding texts and they must learn the English language in addition to content area information. Incorporating literacy skills into each lesson is essential to my students' success. This is especially true for adolescent ELLs who are reading well below grade level. The use of these strategies in the students' reading of Shakespeare's plays is essential if they are to understand what is happening in the plays and be able to effectively analyze the characters.

Analysis Process

This analysis process was discussed during our seminar time and refined to meet the needs of my students as well as stay true to the text. It is divided into two sections: Dramatic Evidence and Textual Evidence. The dramatic evidence (the left side of the graphic organizer) includes ethics, motivation, actions, and the effects of the character's behavior on others. It can also be referred to for the students as what we learn from a character's behavior. The textual evidence (the right side of the graphic organizer) comprises the historical time period of the play, words and items/props representative of the character in addition to their interpretation of the author's thoughts and reading between the lines - which refers to the implicit thoughts of the characters. What we learn from reading the play is a reciprocal relationship in which we construct meaning from using our background knowledge to connect to what is written.

The following areas will be focused on for the character analysis:

1. Ethics
• An individual's moral principles; ^{3 4} making just or unjust choices; what does this say about the character?
2. Actions
• "Something done or performed; act; deed. An act that one consciously wills and that may be characterized by physical or mental activity." ^{3 5} One can learn a lot about a character from how he behaves, what he does.
3. Motivation
• Pros/cons of characters' internal thoughts in relation to external actions. It is necessary to distinguish real motives from false or apparent motives.
4. The effects of the character's behavior on other characters
• A person's ethics and motivation lead them to their actions - what they do. These actions have an effect on other characters.
5. Historical period
• The historical period of a text gives clues as to why a character might act in such a way. "Put the character's actions and thoughts into context." ^{3 6} Sometimes information is embedded in the text that helps the reader to determine the historical time period giving us references as to how and/or why someone would act in the way that they do. At times, some direction or frontloading information for students about the historical time period of the play may need to be given for them to make the distinction between the time period of the play and the time period in which Shakespeare wrote his plays.
6. Repeated words that describe the character
• "These words often give insight into a character's psychology and motivations." ³⁷
7. Items/props associated with the character
• These may indicate what the character is like at the time - what is their "state of mind." ³⁸
8. What does the author think about the character?
• Many times the author's writing includes clues that give insight into what they think about their own characters. What judgments do they have about them?
9. Read between the lines
• What a character does not say is just as important as what he does. Many times when reading stories or plays, the reader must be able to look for clues, look for things that are not written.

Accompanying this process is a graphic organizer that I have developed (Appendix B) in the hopes that students will better understand the flow of how one step leads to another in regard to analyzing a character. Ethics and motivation both contribute to the actions of a person which in turn have effects on other people. These steps (1, 2, 3, and 4) are listed on one side of the graphic organizer as they all pertain to the character himself. On the other side of the graphic organizer the specifics that are related to the text are listed including: historical period, words and items related to the character, the author's thoughts, and information that can be read between the lines. These steps (5, 6, 7, 8, and 9) consist of information that can be found in the text. Not included in these nine aspects for a character analysis is the physical description of the character, which is located on the other side of the graphic organizer. There is also space for the students to create an illustration of their interpretation of the character's physical appearance. Students must have evidence from the text to support their illustrations - why did they draw what they did? Students will be taught "how to read" and use the graphic organizer to understand and analyze the character.

After going through the scaffolded process, the whole class will discuss the play's main character, Hamlet. The graphic organizer should be modeled for students using the character Hamlet. Step-by-step, working together, the class will determine the dramatic and textual evidence to better understand Hamlet. Beginning with Ethics on the Dramatic Evidence side of the graphic organizer, students may state things such as: Hamlet was tormented regarding the decision to murder his uncle. Motivation is clear in that Hamlet is to avenge his father's murder. Actions are many and may be varied in student answers. These could include: he acts mad, he has a play performed for proof that his uncle did commit the murder, he mistakenly kills Polonius, and he does not kill Claudius in the church, among others. His behavior affects others. One effect is that Ophelia kills herself from the shock of her father's death and Hamlet's "madness". On the Textual Evidence side of the graphic organizer, students will learn that the play takes place in Denmark in the 12 ^th century to complete the Historical Period of the Play. Words describing him multiple times include mad. Items associated with Hamlet could include: sword, curtain, ghost, skull, goblet, and poison. Author's Thoughts and Read Between the Lines will prove to be more difficult. Having small group and whole-class discussions will assist with this matter. After gathering all of this information, students will complete the second side of the graphic organizer. Students will illustrate Hamlet as well as describe what he looks like. After all of this is completed, students will be able to construct a two-paragraph analysis: paragraph one consists of the dramatic evidence and paragraph two of the textual evidence.

Teacher Read-Aloud and Think-Aloud

How students read is as important as what they read. Reading aloud is an important tool, even for older learners. It can be used to allow students to focus on comprehension rather than worrying about pronouncing everything correctly. At the same time, it does also provide a model of expressive reading and correct pronunciation. It makes the text more accessible, builds their oral English capability, and helps them construct meaning from the text. ^{3 9} For the Hamlet lesson, a teacher read-aloud is used because of the students' limited English proficiency levels. In doing this, I will model the English language for the students. The read-aloud provides students access to the true Shakespearean language of Hamlet without making them frustrated with the text itself. Students will have multiple opportunities to hear me read this language before they try it for themselves.

Teacher think-alouds are vital for students to hear someone, in this case the teacher, verbalize the process of reading by using the proficient reading strategies. Fitzgerald and Graves ^{4 0} posit that this helps students to glean more meaning and interest from the text.

Graphic Organizers

A graphic organizer is "a visual and graphic display that depicts the relationships among facts, terms, and ideas within a learning task." ^{4 1} In my classroom, two of the first words students learn in English are "graphic" and "organizers"! Using graphic organizers helps to make content more supportive for students, scaffolding the information to be learned and giving them access to content that otherwise might be too difficult for them. This also helps to organize complex information into a much easier-to-read format ^{4 2} which is helpful to ELLs. In our case, we will use it to help bring structure to our planning for our writing project - the character analysis.

Literature Circles

Student discussion is vital in the Shakespeare unit. Students need multiple opportunities to read, re-read, and discuss texts with each other. Literature circles provide ELLs with opportunities to use the English language in meaningful ways while being supported by their peers. They may be unable to do this in whole class situations because they are self-conscious and do not want to look foolish in front of a large group of their peers. Due to the smaller group size, students are able to have more turns to participate in a conversation, and experience less anxiety about speaking in front of others. In Literature Circles, students co-construct meaning by using good literacy practices such as questioning, clarifying and connecting new information to what they already know. Imagine their discussions of love, betrayal, death, and war, amongst other things. Shakespeare's plays are excellent resources for providing an opportunity to promote language development.

Proficient Reading Strategies

This unit will be taught during the early weeks of the beginning of the school year as a follow up to our end-of-the-year unit introducing Shakespeare. Although most of the students have already been in our class, many, if not all, will need assistance to become proficient in the use of or familiar again with the reading strategies. They are able to learn these strategies by having a teacher explain, demonstrate, and apply them while reading. I will do just that during the teaching of the first play, Hamlet. It is vital to allow for opportunities to practice the strategies with the students, providing feedback and time for discussion. ELLs' use of proficient reader strategies (predicting, making connections, questioning, inferring, visualizing, determining the main idea, and summarizing) to assist them before, during, and after reading is critical to their comprehension of complex texts. Imagine what fun we will have using the proficient strategies while reading Hamlet. They may predict that Hamlet will kill Claudius, make a connection that they too have had troubles understanding why a parent has done something, and question why Hamlet is waiting so long to take action. All of these strategies can provide ELLs with the tools they need to construct meaning from the complex texts, such as Shakespeare's, that they are required to read.

Blogs

This is a teacher-maintained website in which students are regularly required to write about what they are reading, including comments and questions about the reading material. Students "interact" with each other in a written format to develop their English written skills. In doing so, they are communicating with their peers orally (in their Literature Circles) and in written format, providing multiple opportunities for using the English language. This provides an entertaining atmosphere for students to write in English.