EDCI 747 Mini Lesson

Today I presented my mini-lesson on William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. For the most part I thought it went well. When I woke up this morning I was extremely nervous, but by the time I got to class I was more frustrated than anything else. Usually I can leave my house and make it to the bus stop in five minutes, get on the number 14 bus and make it to school within 15. It makes sense then that I can leave my house at 9:30 to make my 10:00 class. Unfortunately today, on my presentation day, the number 14 bus decided be late, crowded and super frustrating. Two buses, both extremely full, drove passed me making me late for my class. I was not impressed. I ran to class carrying a very heavy back-up and poster board trying to be less than 5 minutes late. When I finally arrived to class, it had already started so I quietly slipped in and while Barbara was talking I set up my lesson.

The rest of the lesson went off with out a hitch. I did forget to do a couple of important things, but overall I think the class had fun. I started by introducing Romeo and Juliet through a poster board:

The goal behind an introduction board is simply to give the students the chance to visualize the characters, and perhaps introduce the setting etc. It's a starting point. From here you can ask the students about what they already know about Romeo and Juliet, what the board suggests is going to happen and so on. You can also give brief descriptions about the basic plot as well as a history of Shakespeare.

My lesson (which was supposed to be only 15 minutes) attempted to focus on the language of Shakespeare and getting the students engaged with the text. I started with an insult activity where the students were given a "Shakespeare Insult Kit" - this can be found online, just click here! They would move around the room, bump into each other, and throw out an insult. The purpose of this activity was to demonstrate that Shakespeare can be fun and not so serious. Based on the feedback that my colleagues gave me, the insult activity was a great success. One colleague said, "The insult sheet is brilliant. I think it really diffuses the cumbersome language and the activity allows students to have to fun with Shakespeare before they have even read the play." So take note! Insulting someone can be a good thing :)

From there I moved on to the prologue and read it several times. Again, the goal was simply to get the language flowing from the students mouths. I got mixed reviews about this activity; some colleagues liked it and thought that each reading had a purpose and was useful, while others thought it was drawn out and possibly not the best way of going over the prologue to R&J.

After this activity I complete forgot to actually go through the prologue and define any words that the students might be confused about and what the prologue was about. I moved too quickly into the next activity which was a hand out that had lines from the play and had the students translate the lines into modern language. As soon as I said "go" I thought to myself, "How in the heck are grade 9's going to do this without practice before hand?" Oh well. Some of my colleagues actually called me out on this in their feedback and I appreciate it greatly. I also forgot to draw attention to another great resource that I included on the hand out. I found a "Shakespearean Dictionary" online (click here) that could be helpful to students of all ages.

Almost every one of my colleagues commented on my energy and enthusiasm - I'm going to take this a plus since I was nervous, but didn't show it :)

It was a great learning experience and now I know what to work on for next time. Thanks for the great feedback! And feel free to comment here too.

Until next time,

LC