Archive of Practice

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Inquiry into Language This inquiry gave my students a sense of context and history for the language that they encounter in Macbeth. play Quicktime Player high • low get plugin Windows Media high • low get plugin	Oct. 19th: It was important to start with the language inquiry, because this inquiry led to the teaching of Shakespeare. This unit gave them a sense of context and history for the language that they would encounter in the play. While they were familiar with it, having read at least one Shakespeare play a year since fifth grade, they had never analyzed the structure of the language nor formally studied the history of the English language. I tried to show them what they already know about English and language by having them describe the features of the Lord’s Prayer in Old English, then in Middle English and then to compare the differences. Finally, when we see how different the two languages are, I ask them to consider what may have happened to cause such drastic changes in the language. When they understand that the changes were caused by the Norman Invasion and French rule of England, they see that English is a creole language that combines features of Old English and French or even German and Latin. They also understand why there are so many contradictions and exceptions to rules in this language. There are also implications for social class as well with the upper classes speaking French and the lower classes speaking English. These distinctions exist in the language today with pairs of words such as house and mansion or room and salon.
Dagger of the Mind Speech Students were given a task to enact the "Dagger of the Mind" speech. They interpreted it in different ways. play Quicktime Player high • low get plugin Windows Media high • low get plugin	Nov. 16th: I gave them the Dagger of the Mind speech. They were all given the same task which was to enact the Dagger of the Mind speech. They interpret the speech. They did it in such amazingly different ways. Some of them pantomimed it and had someone else reading the speech. Others had Macbeth’s hallucination played by real people. They write about what the speech was about and there’s a powerful conversation. By having them get together and perform the speech before we interpreted it as a class is an important strategy on my part. I believe that they’ll get to understand these things in the choices they make in performing the scene. Who stands where, who’s standing on top of whom. Also the fact that they’re doing six different versions of the scene. I never said this is what this is about. Their interpretations and analysis was deep and rich after the six interpretations.
Teaching Grammar Making implicit rules of language explicit. play Quicktime Player high • low get plugin Windows Media high • low get plugin	Nov. 18th: The foreign language teachers always get angry at the English teachers because we don’t teach enough grammar. I think you teach grammar of a native language differently than you teach grammar of a second language. While you have to make rules explicit in a language that is new, the rules are implicit for a native speaker. In this class analyzing the uses of thee thy, and thine, I’m asking the students to rely on what they already know about English grammar and articulate it the way they would in French or Spanish class.
Double Double: The Blues Students interpret the "Double Double" scene as a blues song. play Quicktime Player high • low get plugin Windows Media high • low get plugin	Nov 30th: This lesson is probably the most fully realized piece of theater that I do with the class during the teaching. This particular approach originated in my classroom at Simon Gratz High School about 10 years ago when I put students in groups and asked them to interpret this scene any way that they would like. One group did it as a blues song and I was struck by how well suited the words and the rhythm of the words are to the blues. I’ve used this approach in many other classes over the years. I’m not surprised that in their interviews, the students said that this was the most memorable activity that we did.
Reconnecting to Meaning We tried out an activity from "Shakespeare alive!" in an attempt to clarify the plot. play Quicktime Player high • low get plugin Windows Media high • low get plugin	December 7th: I felt like the class was becoming too performance-based. This is where I had my own doubts about inquiry. I was becoming too enamored with the performance aspect including my own performance as a teacher. I knew that I was being observed and taped and had perhaps forgotten that I do my best teaching when I’m exploring really difficult complex questions with students and responding to their concerns and issues. So in this class, we have a reflective conversation about what meaning and significance they’re taking from the play. The contrast between the excitement and energy of the blues performance and the quiet intensity of the reflective conversation. Both are really important. It’s not either/or. It’s each/and. I tried a lesson from Shakespeare alive! that suggested using umbrellas to represent the branch that each soldier cut down as camouflage to show Bernum Wood walking to Dunsinane. I found that the umbrellas meant to represent the trees distracted the students rather than helping them imagine the forest. But we had fun and the ensuing discussion helped to clarify the plot.
Analytic Essay Writing Students crafted literary essays on Macbeth. play Quicktime Player high • low get plugin Windows Media high • low get plugin	Dec. 9th: The lesson on analytic essay writing. One of the things I realized was that students needed very specific guidelines in writing analytic essays. They weren’t familiar with the genre, the purpose, the language, the conventions. In much the way that Delpit talks about teaching her students the specifics of the language of power, I realized that I needed to teach my students the specifics of this kind of academic discourse. They didn’t know it. Some of them could intuit it from reading other essays, but most of them couldn’t.  I analyzed the elements of a literary essay and in a very direct didactic way shared it with the class. They weren’t going to figure it out on their own in the time frame that we had. Theoretically I could have them do the same kind of interpretation and analysis of literacy essays and figure it out but in the time frame it wasn’t going to happen.
Assignments and Materials
Language Inquiry Project Assignment
Pre-Shakespeare Survey
Response Portfolio for Macbeth
Macbeth expository essay
Windows and Mirrors: Looking for/at America and Ourselves
Page containing all student work samples