Brutus and his Betrayal

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...