The class has been going over R&J for some time now so they are pretty familiar with the characters and the general plot. My job will be to give them a more relevant understanding to Shakespeare's language that can sometimes be foreign to students. Students are constantly asking teachers, "When am I ever going to use ____ after high school?". Well, this lesson is the answer to that. I want to show students that reading Shakespeare's writings is not completely useless. Not all of high school is just to graduate or to get a good score on the ACT. What I am planning to do is have them start with bellwork. The worksheet that was created for this activity talks about the phrases that we use today that come from Shakespeare's writings (for example, "break the ice" and "it's Greek to me"). I think students will find it interesting that the phrases that Shakespeare created are still used today. This opening activity will not be graded so students can relax and have fun with the well-known phrases. Next, I hope to have students divide into groups. For this activity, I am going to give students a passage from Romeo and Juliet (the scene in Act 1 Scene 5 where R & J meet for the first time) and have them create a modern interpretation. In their groups, I want the students to create what they think the scene would look like today. Would R & J be texting? Would this encounter occur over FaceBook? Maybe they met at the mall. I think this scene will be extra relevant to their lives because they are constantly meeting new people and developing new crushes, just like Romeo and Juliet did. I hope the students are willing to have fun with this scene. Hopefully, I can get the message across so they understand how Romeo and Juliet felt after their meeting. This activity will help them farther develop a sense of realism through Shakespeare's words. After their group activity, I will talk to them about the main ideas of the story. Maybe the students will be able to list some of the themes that they saw through their interpretation. By the end of the lesson, I would like the students to have an opinion on why or why not Romeo and Juliet is relevant to their lives. For the last 10-15 minutes, I would like the students to do a QuickWrite listing a couple of reasons why or why not Shakespeare is relevant to their world. QuickWrites are great for this type of activity because students can state their opinions. It's a good way for teachers to assess how much students learned without taking away their own opinions. They don't have to agree with me, but they do have to support their own opinions.
One particular activity that I found online that would be great with this lesson is the following:
"Occupation Romeo" is an activity that gets students looking at Shakespeare's text from a familiar way. In this activity students read the text as if they were certain occupations (pirate, spy, rapper, runway model, etc.). I think approaching the text in a way that is relevant to the students will help them better understand and have some fun with a (sometimes) boring text. I would use this particular activity maybe as an introduction to the story or even as a review. Because the students are seeing the text in this new way, they are really focusing on what the text is saying. I would love to use this activity, but only after the students understand what they are saying or as a segway into a discussion.
I am nervous about my first time teaching a full class but with the right preparation, I feel like it will be a good experience that hopefully will further prepare me for my own classroom one day.
video: Folger Shakespeare Library, "Occupation Romeo"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2RWAMyCsGU
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