Activities
Chunking the chorus
This activity will likely take two hundred-minute class periods. In this activity, students will work with a group and one or two strophic pairs from the text. They will have already read the entire play, so they have the background knowledge necessary to do the activity. Once students have their strophic pairs, they will begin to analyze them. They will need to do this with the full text so that they have all the necessary context in order to analyze the verses of the chorus. Before beginning the activity, we will make a list of questions as a class that will help in analyzing the strophic pairs. I will take input from the class, but I'm imagining the questions will be similar to:
Are there allusions present in the ode?
Are there metaphors in the ode?
What are they and what are they referring to?
What is the point of view of the chorus?
What other literary devices are present and what is their purpose?
Student will come up with other helpful questions as a class.
Once students have worked together to analyze the strophic pairs and answer the questions set out, they will work together to create a visual depiction of the strophic pair or pairs. (Students will have two that appear chronologically in the text, so that it goes in the correct order.) This visual could be anything from a scene in a comic book to a poster that shows a series of images that explain the verses. Doing this will help each group of students reach a better understanding of their parts of the chorus, and they will also need to work together to decide what type of visualization will work best to explain the verses. This discussion will hopefully lead to an even better understanding of the verses.
After all of the visuals have been created, we will create a gallery of all of the visuals in the order that they appear in the play. At this point, we'll do a "gallery walk" in which students walk around and look at each strophic pair and the visual that was created with it in order. While they are doing this, they will write down parts that are more understandable now, surprising discoveries, and questions that they still have. Finally, we will have a whol- class discussion about the activity and students will have a chance to bring up the questions they still have and ask each other questions about other groups' visuals.
Side-by-side viewing
This activity can be done in one class period, but I will most likely complete it a few times throughout the unit using different images. This activity involves showing students two images side-by-side. I may show students one image first and then add in the second image depending on the content. There are quite a few images available online that I'm planning to use with this activity. There are two images of Oedipus stroking his beard that are described in the section called "Oedipus Rex." There are two vase paintings that illustrate these images. (See resources.) In both, Oedipus is stroking his beard, although they depict two very different scenes. Oedipus regards the Sphinx in one, and in the other he is depicted with a herdsman, Jocasta and their two daughters, Antigone and Ismene.
I will ask students to look first at the image with Oedipus and the Sphinx and take five minutes to write as much as they can about the image. They can write what they see, what they think it means, anything. After the five minutes we will discuss in class what they wrote down. Next I will show them the other image of Oedipus with his family, presumably when he and Jocasta find out the news from the first messenger. I won't give any information to the students, and again they will have five minutes to write down their interpretations, observations, and anything else they see. Again we will discuss the image with the class.
At this point I will show students the images side-by-side, and I will again have them write for five minutes. I will ask them to write about how the images interact with each other, or to compare and contrast them, or to write about what they mean together. We will then discuss again as a class, and at the end of the discussion I will have students write the opening sentence to an essay they would write about the two images. (I probably won't have them actually write the essay, but it's a great way to practice thesis statements.) There are other images that I will do the same activity with, including images of different types of productions of Oedipus Rex as well as images of Oedipus that are very different from the two that I have described above.
The point of this activity is to help students make connections with art that is relevant to the unit. It also helps students practice looking at and analyzing art. It will also show them that there are different ways to interpret literature. It also helps them practice writing, an activity that is very helpful for students preparing for the AP exam.
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