Classroom Activities
Literary Circles
One area I plan to integrate into my unit on "Shakespeare on the Cell Phone: Texting Romance", is through a Literary Circle, using the novel The Wednesday Wars, by Gary Schmidt. This novel will enable me to use it as a springboard into the study of Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Each nine weeks the students read a novel, which is integrated and connected to everyday life. It demonstrates the elements of a story, it gives the students an opportunity to analyze, identify and demonstrate word usage through context clues, and last but not least to exhibit comprehension. This book demonstrates the timeless wisdom of Shakespeare's words, with adolescence as well as the connection to the uproar of the Vietnam War. Throughout the novel, Schmidt references various Shakespeare plays. The various connections will help bridge the entrance into Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Each class of thirty students will be divided into five groups with six students. The reading level is heterogeneously derived from the student's reading comprehension scores from the California State Assessment Tests as well from an informal assessment. Each student receives a booklet that includes a summary sheet, vocabulary guide, and evaluation, as well as a job. These jobs are separated out by groups, which would include, a discussion director, a passage picker, connector, vocabulary enricher, literary luminator, artful adventurer, travel chaser, word wizard, and others. Over a period of time, the students will have participated in every job.
On Mondays, the students are assigned to read two chapters at a time, identify vocabulary words that are unfamiliar to them, and on a post-it generate any questions they may have on their assigned reading. Along with the reading, they are to summarize the chapters, and do the job that they have selected.
When Wednesday arrives, the students meet with their assigned literary circles, which are named for a character in one of Shakespeare's plays. Within the circle, they share their questions, and vocabulary words that may have caused uncertainty. Then they generate the questions and vocabulary that they are unable to address on a guided reading form, and give this sheet to the teacher. From that point the discussion director for the day leads his or her group through the various jobs. From that point, the class moves from small group setting to a whole group setting, where the teacher begins to use the guided reading form to lead a whole group discussion. As this process evolves, the students will be constantly looking at vocabulary, using context clues to help them. At the end of the two-hour block, the student has an evaluation sheet that identifies their strengths and weaknesses in a small and a large group setting. The evaluation form also has a place for the teacher to evaluate the student's work, and participation for that given day.
As the students move into reading Romeo and Juliet as well as A Midsummer Night's Dream, they will follow the format for a Literary Circle. The repetition as well as the comfort zone over time has resulted in engaged students.
Stations on Shakespeare through content areas
The second concentration of this unit will be a station driven unit on Shakespeare. These stations will include Language Arts, Social Studies, Technology, Art, Drama, and Science. For many of the sixth grade students in my class, this will be their first opportunity to be introduced to Shakespeare. Since I teach three content areas, this is my opportunity to integrate the depth of content I received through my seminar on Shakespeare and Human Character, by Paul Fry. Some of the stations are designed to be individual, paired, or whole group interaction.
One area that the students will be focusing in on is, who was William Shakespeare? Station-A will give the students the opportunity to use resource books, laptops, and children's books to generate facts about the person, and his life in relationship to his plays. At this station the students will design a timeline of William Shakespeare's life. The timeline will include dates, visuals and synopsis of key dates and events. This station will also give the students the opportunity to look at the concept of character.
Then the group would rotate to Station B, Social Studies. This station will have an emphasis on geography and government. The plays were written during a period of time called the Renaissance, yet some plays reflect another period of time that the sixth grade students study, which is Ancient Rome, and Greece. Using maps pertinent to the various plays, the students are going to identify the places of interest with the literature. The second part of this station will be to identify the differences among monarchy, feudalism, democracy, dictatorship, and tyranny. The students are going to use this terminology, and illustrate the words in drawings. Last, the students are going to design their own coat of arms. The students will be given examples of various coats of arms. The student will be given a pocket that is used in the back of library books to decorate. They will be given an opportunity to discuss with their families any key factors that they would like to include in their own personal coat of arms.
Station C will be associated with technology. At this station, using the computers' already bookmarked sites about Shakespeare, the students will be doing a scavenger hunt. On this guided sheet they will also make connections to the author of Wednesday Wars, Gary Schmidt. Along with the computers, the students will use their ipods to learn how to download Shakespeare. This opportunity would allow students to use this device as another learning tool in Shakespeare. Last but not least, the students will have more practice time to work on IMS as well as text-messaging activities to enhance the academic relationship of Shakespeare to technology.
Station D, Character and Lines, will be associated with a variety of lines from various plays of Shakespeare. There are pre-typed lines of Shakespeare. The group will use a piece of butcher paper, and have one of the students lie on the paper to be outlined. The purpose of this station is to analyze the lines of a main character of one the plays using the following; thought, action, heart, etc. The lines that the group receives will be placed on one of the main characters of the play, as outlined on the butcher paper. The character analysis of the lines will be revisited as we read and discuss the plays. The students will have the opportunity to revisit and readjust their placement of the lines. The characters and lines will be placed on the walls in the multipurpose building for our "Shakespeare in a Pocket" day.
Station E, Theater, will focus on theater in relationship to Shakespeare and the Peking Opera. The students will focus on various parts of what makes each of these programs unique, along with the ability to compare and contrast. The students will be able to identify the various characters of the Peking Opera that are alike or different from the characters in the Shakespeare plays.
At Station F, the students will focus on various forms of communication. The activities will include body language, role-playing through voice, and text messaging. The students will select an actor or actress from the play that we are focusing on. They will use familiar snippets from everyday conversation to incorporate all of the above practices.
Station G, Science, will include topics that are dealt within the plays of Shakespeare—such as epidemics, overdose, and environment. Using various resources the students will select one of these topics that are related to the plays that we are reading in class or to the time frame in which Shakespeare lived. The students will use the information they have been gathering in their interactive notebook to write a poem incorporating Shakespeare and science.
Art with Shakespeare
The third area of concentration will be entirely focused on the visual arts. The first piece of art is aligned to a glove and the origin of a word. William Shakespeare's father was a master glover and tanner. In many of the plays the actors wore gloves. The students will bring an old glove from home. The glove will be stuffed with newspaper, and attached to a shape that will enable the glove to stand upright freely. The teacher, along with the help of the students' generated vocabulary words that connect to either Romeo and Juliet or A Midsummer Night's Dream. Then have each student select a word out of an envelope. The student is to research the origin of the word, its antonym, a synonym, and the definition, demonstrate its part of speech in the play, and include a visual of the word. Using recyclable items from the classroom, display the information about the word on the glove. This activity will demonstrate word usage, etymology, and creativity, along with the student's ability to work independently. The assessment that will be aligned to this project is a quick write and a rubric.
The second piece of art will include working with the art consultant to design a mask. In many ancient and Far Eastern plays, a mask is used to disguise or change a character. The student will design the mask out of clay, which will be fired in the kiln. There are two ways in which to approach this project. The first mask could be designed so that one side of the mask would represent the student and the other side a character from either Romeo and Juliet or A Midsummer Night's Dream with which they identify. Before they actually make the mask, the students would use a guided character analysis sheet to identify the similarities.
The second mask could also be designed so that one side of the mask represents a character from either Romeo and Juliet or A Midsummer Night's Dream along with one of the Chinese characters of the Beijing or Peking Opera. At Alice Fong Yu Chinese Immersion School, our students learn in Mandarin Ancient Chinese History. Peking Opera performers mainly have two types of facial decorations: masks and facial painting. The frequent on-stage changing of masks or facial makeup (without the audience noticing) is a special technique known as changing faces. This will enable the students and I to tie in the cultural aspects of the plays.
Once again, the students will use the guided character analysis to help guide their selection. In the Beijing or Peking Opera the roles fall into four categories: Sheng, Dan, Jing and Chou. The roles have the natural features of age and sex, as well as social status, and are artificially exaggerated by makeup, costume and gestures.
The first male role is Sheng, considered civil and military. Lao Sheng is the old man with a beard: dignified, polished, official, a scholar. Xiao Sheen is a young man, shrill of voice, a warrior of social stature, elaborately dressed. Last but not least, Wu Sheen who is an acrobatic male, extremely agile and physically skilled.
The first female role is Dan: Qing Yi, who is modest and virtuous. The second female role is Hua Dan, who is flirtatious and playful. Gui Men Dan is a young married girl. Dao Ma Dan is a strong woman who classifies as a leader. The character, Wu Dan is the female acrobat. Last but not least, Lao Dan is the old woman. The painted face male is Jing. Many audience members are startled by the appearance of the Jing. His facial colors symbolize the type of character. The color red signifies strong will, whereas white signifies treacherousness, and yellow signifies ambition and cool headedness.
The comedy actor or clown is Chou. He is considered dim-witted, amusing, a rascal, and occasionally slightly wicked. Many believe he has the ability to drive away wicked spirits. After the masks have been fired in the kiln, the students will use glaze, and fire the mask again in the kiln. Once the masks are cooled, the students will have the opportunity to add scraps of cloth, wire, and other materials to their mask. Once completed, the students will write a sonnet using their guided character analysis to be attached to the mask.
Shakespeare in the Pocket-Text-Messaging
The overall project-based activity is called, "Shakespeare in a Pocket". This project would be the end result of the unit on Shakespeare. Every spring in New York City, the school district along with artists and political officials participate in "Poem in the Pocket". Last year, at Alice Fong Yu, the middle school students shared their favorite Chinese Poem, as well as a favorite poem in English. Keeping that in mind, each child would select a character and a line from Shakespeare. Taking the line of their choice, the students would rewrite it to be communicated as a text message. The student would be given a pocket that is used in the back of a library book. On this pocket, the student would place their own personal coat of arms (that they made at Station-B) in relation to the period of the play that they have chosen. Then the student would place their lines inside the pocket. The student would swap their pockets with another classmate. The other student would try to decode the text message, identify the character that said the line, identify the setting, and the play.
We would set aside a day at our school called "Shakespeare in a Pocket". This day could include the parents of the students and school officials, along with the friends of Cal Shakes. The character analysis forms that the students made in Station D would be placed on the wall of the multipurpose room. The students would be able to share and view all of the character forms with each other. The students would have the opportunity to invite their parents to participate in this activity. Because many parents speak Chinese as a first language, the parents would have the opportunity to share a quote from one of the Shakespeare's play in either Cantonese or in Mandarin. The students would have the opportunity to work with their parents and help guide them to rewrite their lines in a text-messaging format. The entire sixth grade class would be able to discuss the lines and the setting of the play to share with another student or adult. The event would take place in our multipurpose room.
Throughout Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night's Dream, the connection, communication, character, and romance have been intertwined within the content. There is direct evidence to support each main theme, and give rise to the opportunity to reach the goals of this unit. The main theme is to strengthen student's comfort level reading of Shakespeare as well as to enhance their skills and confidence in writing essays, sentence structure, learning the elements of a story, word usage, and reading comprehension through text messaging.
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