It took us a couple of weeks, but my SOPH LA students made it through Act I of Julius Caesar. They are wrapped up in the story now, and have developed a dislike toward Cassius for attempting to turn Brutus against his friend. This, however, is nothing compared to the hatred they now feel for Brutus for actually deciding to betray his friend.
Yesterday, we read Act II, Scene 1; and I focused their attention on Brutus's soliloquy at the start of the scene. The students were confused during our read-aloud. "How did Brutus change his mind so quickly? We thought he was Caesar's loyal friend!"
"Well," I said, "to understand that, we are going to have to look at Brutus's soliloquy line by line." I got the idea of taking a closer look at this speech from this lesson plan at the Folger site that focuses on the figurative language in it. I didn't have time for the activities in the lesson plan, so I adapted the idea for my own uses. Of course, I already had a handout prepared for this activity. :) On it were two columns: on the left, Brutus's lines broken down by sentence; on the right, empty boxes in which the students could write paraphrases.
Once we went through the speech, the students understood that Brutus admitted that he had no personal problems with Caesar, but that he must prevent Caesar's potential misuse of power for the good of the people. The students did a great job (with guidance here and there) of explicating the speech and using their own words to explain Brutus's meaning. At the end, one student in each class asked something like, "So, he's going to murder his old friend because of the possibility that he would become a bad leader?" ...a valid question indeed.
Today, I gave the students another chunk paragraph assignment:
In Act II, Scene 1, how does Brutus use figurative language (metaphor) to justify his betrayal of Caesar?
Some of the students are already complaining that I'm making them write too much (2 paragraphs in one week! What kind of teacher am I?). I want them to get used to using their own brains to analyze topics like these, though. They are so used to people giving them the answers or asking them to memorize something. They have very little practice in forming their own ideas/opinions/reasons, and then supporting those notions with evidence. With these chunk paragraphs, they have to do all of that in a condensed form. From what I've heard about chunk writing, if students are able to write a successful chunk, it will be easier for them to expand those ideas into essays later. I'm counting on that! I wish I could find more articles about the theory behind chunk writing...
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Friday, January 15, 2010
Teaching Caesar for the First Time
We're supposed to teach selections from Dante's Inferno as a lead-in to the Renaissance, but I think my students actually need to know who Brutus and Cassius are before we talk about how treachery will land you in the 9th level of hell. So, I am attempting to teach Julius Caesar for the first time this year. I usually teach A Midsummer Night's Dream for our Shakespeare unit, but Caesar is more applicable to cross-curricular studies. So, I'm going against what the county says we should teach, and I'm doing what I think is best.
Never having taught this play, I found myself scrambling for lesson ideas. Thankfully, I found a lesson plan database that has been compiled and maintained by the wonderful people at Folger Shakespeare Library. I've adapted some of the lessons from this site already, and they have been great!
For instance, to introduce some of the themes in the book, I used this pre-reading activity. My students broke off into groups and came up with a list of 10 qualities of a good friend and 5 infractions that could end a friendship. Then, we came together as a whole class, and compiled all of the groups' ideas on what our top 10 qualities and top 5 infractions should be. With these lists, we created a "Friendship Constitution" and I made a poster for each class. Each of the classes had similar qualities and infractions, but there were some differences in the particular words they chose, so I typed up a different one for the respective classes. When I showed their posters to them, I said, "We'll use these constitutions to discuss what went wrong in Caesar's friendships that eventually led to his downfall." Everyone wanted to sign their constitutions, so we did that, too. :)
Also, I noticed that Lesson 5 of the Folger lessons focuses on persuasion. I like the lesson they have, but I didn't have time for it. My students do need more information about persuasion, though because they will focus on persuasion next year for the High School Graduation Writing Test. So, I made a handout on which I listed Pathos, Logos, and Ethos; I gave an explanation of each technique; and I gave elements used in each technique. On the back of the handout, I copied Cassius's two speeches to Brutus from Act I, Scene 2 (when he tries to change Brutus's perception of Caesar). Then, I told the students that their task would be to write a chunk paragraph in response to this prompt: Which persuasive technique does Cassius mainly use in his speeches to Brutus in Act I, Scene 2? No, I'll be able to evaluate each students' understanding of the characters and their motivation, organization skills, and level of ability when it comes to analysis. I think chunk writing is going to be of great benefit to their writing and analytical skills!
This week, we only got to Act I, Scene 2. I'm planning on getting through all of Act II next week; but with the long weekend, I don't know if it will happen. Oh well...at least I don't have Benchmark Tests to worry about this semester (the county realized they were ill-prepaired and not a fair measure of student achievement), so I can take my sweet time with Caesar!
Never having taught this play, I found myself scrambling for lesson ideas. Thankfully, I found a lesson plan database that has been compiled and maintained by the wonderful people at Folger Shakespeare Library. I've adapted some of the lessons from this site already, and they have been great!
For instance, to introduce some of the themes in the book, I used this pre-reading activity. My students broke off into groups and came up with a list of 10 qualities of a good friend and 5 infractions that could end a friendship. Then, we came together as a whole class, and compiled all of the groups' ideas on what our top 10 qualities and top 5 infractions should be. With these lists, we created a "Friendship Constitution" and I made a poster for each class. Each of the classes had similar qualities and infractions, but there were some differences in the particular words they chose, so I typed up a different one for the respective classes. When I showed their posters to them, I said, "We'll use these constitutions to discuss what went wrong in Caesar's friendships that eventually led to his downfall." Everyone wanted to sign their constitutions, so we did that, too. :)
Also, I noticed that Lesson 5 of the Folger lessons focuses on persuasion. I like the lesson they have, but I didn't have time for it. My students do need more information about persuasion, though because they will focus on persuasion next year for the High School Graduation Writing Test. So, I made a handout on which I listed Pathos, Logos, and Ethos; I gave an explanation of each technique; and I gave elements used in each technique. On the back of the handout, I copied Cassius's two speeches to Brutus from Act I, Scene 2 (when he tries to change Brutus's perception of Caesar). Then, I told the students that their task would be to write a chunk paragraph in response to this prompt: Which persuasive technique does Cassius mainly use in his speeches to Brutus in Act I, Scene 2? No, I'll be able to evaluate each students' understanding of the characters and their motivation, organization skills, and level of ability when it comes to analysis. I think chunk writing is going to be of great benefit to their writing and analytical skills!
This week, we only got to Act I, Scene 2. I'm planning on getting through all of Act II next week; but with the long weekend, I don't know if it will happen. Oh well...at least I don't have Benchmark Tests to worry about this semester (the county realized they were ill-prepaired and not a fair measure of student achievement), so I can take my sweet time with Caesar!
Monday, January 4, 2010
New Semester, New Start
Becoming too busy and overwhelmed with paper work, I let my blog updates slide. However, after taking a "Teach with Your Strengths" seminar through our professional development department at school, I found that reflection is, in fact, on of my strengths. I care deeply about results and outcomes, and this blog is meant to be a way to help me reflect on those things. So, as was suggested to me in the seminar, I will make weekly (instead of the previous daily) postings to this blog. Certainly, there are daily occurrences in the classroom that are worth noting. Weekly postings will be much more manageable for me, though.
To start things off, I thought I'd give a glimpse into how I've been planning lessons for the upcoming first weeks of Spring Semester. My lesson plans typically look as they do in the picture below (backward, thanks to my Mac's PhotoBooth). It looks somewhat like a mathematical equation, but it all makes sense to me. I'll break it down in simpler phrases to post for my students' weekly updates on Homeworknow.com, which I use to keep students up to date on what we do each day in class (I can post updates, links, and documents for them!).
So, here goes nothing! I sure hope this semester goes by as quickly as last semester did, and I hope I can stick to my goal of being organized enough to plan ahead at least 2 weeks!
To start things off, I thought I'd give a glimpse into how I've been planning lessons for the upcoming first weeks of Spring Semester. My lesson plans typically look as they do in the picture below (backward, thanks to my Mac's PhotoBooth). It looks somewhat like a mathematical equation, but it all makes sense to me. I'll break it down in simpler phrases to post for my students' weekly updates on Homeworknow.com, which I use to keep students up to date on what we do each day in class (I can post updates, links, and documents for them!).
So, here goes nothing! I sure hope this semester goes by as quickly as last semester did, and I hope I can stick to my goal of being organized enough to plan ahead at least 2 weeks!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)