January 5, 2010
We welcome in to the new decade by returning to a prior century and the work
of William Shakespeare. The study of shakespeare was suggested last year by
this year's 8th grade students wondering why we never study Shakespeare.
Good question, I thought, as he is one of my favorite authors. So, we began
our study before the holiday with the students doing presentations of
Shakespeares and his time period. On Monday, they received their text of
Midsummer Night's Dream (this should be underlined, but I can't get this
program to do that). Attached is the syllabus for this unit.
Syllabus for Midsummer Night’s Dream
We will be studying A Midsummer’s Nights Dream from three aspects:
the plot,
the three themes of what is love, friendship, and reality vs. fantasy,
and Shakespeare’s wonderful use of language in both prose and poetry.
We will be watching several scenes from two movies, Shakespeare in Love
because of the portrayal of life and theater during Shakespeare’s time and
the latest version of Midsummer Night’s Dream.
My goal is not so much to study Shakespeare by figuring out what the play
means (I’m not convinced that 8th grade is the appropriate age to totally
understand Shakespeare’s meanings), but to bring the play and Shakespeare’s
melodious language into the students’ lives. We will learn to make
decisions about how the scenes from the play are presented and just enjoy
his words.
Mondays:
1: Introduce the scene being studied for the week. Some scenes will be
broken up as they are rather long, such as scene 1.
2: Discuss the vocabulary for each week’s scene
3. Review discussion questions for week’s scene
4. A classroom activity from Chicago Shakespeare Theater
5. Assign week’s reading
Tuesdays, Wednesdays:
1. Students will get into assigned groups
2. Group discussion of week’s reading
3. Answer and discuss study questions with their group
4. Complete their study sheets with their group
Thursdays:
1: Groups to report on the results of their weekly study including sharing
their study sheet results
2: Various students act out week’s scene – all students to participate over
course of study. They may read from text. All reading is to
be done in the original words of Shakespeare.
3: Paragraph writing assignment may take the place of the group report.
Fridays:
1: Hand in group participation rating slips
2: Regular vocabulary test – not Shakespeare’s vocabulary
