Once I come up with a novel, play, story, or poem I want to teach my ideas start flowing with how I could go about teaching that particular text and what other texts I could associate with the one I am about to teach. I love reading tragedies and want to develop a tragedy unit. Luckily for me I student teach this Spring and my cooperating teacher wants me to teach Romeo and Juliet. Over the summer I had already decided that when I teach Romeo and Juliet I wanted to connect their story to Tristan and Isolde, Lancelot and Gwenevere, and the Greek tragedy Pyramus and Thisbe which explains the mythology behind why there are white mulberries and red mulberries. Therefore over the summer I was looking for a text to teach the story of Tristan and Isolde and didn't find a completed text of the story. For the story was written by two French poets and each had a portion of the story completed but neither author finished their version of the story. Thus I decided to show the film Tristan and Isolde as it is the closest version to being complete that I could find. As an assignment I would have the students do research as I had done to find out the origin of the story Tristan and Isolde and what components were associated with the story; such as the use of a love potion which can be compared to the potions used in Romeo and Juliet.
The unit will take more than a month to complete if I am going to have the students compare all of the above works in order to have them fully understand the components associated with tragedies so that they can be able to as a story unravels decide if the story they are reading is a tragedy or not and why.
The only problem I am running into is that the school I teach at is an urban district and the students don't have textbooks or literature. All literature studied is done within the classroom setting and homework is only studying vocabulary words from their vocabulary books. Therefore I need to design a lesson plan that allows all of the texts to be studied within the classroom; which is also why it will take more than a month for this unit lesson plan to be taught.
I'm a problem solver and critical thinker already, so developing good critical thinking questions is not a problem for me and I already have an idea of what I want the students to learn and get out of my unit lesson plan. I know the themes and connections I wish them to make and the predictions they would be able to make either half way through or at the end of the unit when they pick up another tragedy text.
If I am allowed to, which I'm not so sure I am, I would have the students do some extra research about the components most associated with tragedies, have them think about why those components are important to a tragic story and then maybe even have them write their own tragedy using the same components that they found associated with tragedies.
The process for developing a lesson plan is not difficult for me because I already know what I want to teach and how I would go about teaching. I choose a different method for every text that I choose to teach which keeps the students interested and me versatile. Teachers tend to teach in the manner that they learn best; since I was in Kindergarten I had developed my own methods of learning and therefore know the different methods I wish to utilize for my teaching literature in my classrooms.
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2 comments:
Hello Jessica,
I decided to respond to you because you seem to have a solid idea of what you want to teach for your unit plan. Like you, I am also a big fan of tragedies. Usually when I had to read a literary text for high school or for college, I appreciated it a little bit more if it was a tragedy.
Anyway, for this unit, will you be focusing exclusively on tragedies about love? Or will you be including other kinds of tragedies as well (e.g. Hamlet, Macbeth, The Oresteia, etc.)? Since you might have your students write their own tragic stories, you should also consider reminding them that there are other types of tragedies as well. That way your students won't feel as though they're being boxed into writing a romantic tragedy. (Some guys may not appreciate this, even if we think these tragedies are the most fun!)
One other thing you might want to consider is the fact that your students may not have a lot of access to computers or the Internet -- especially if your district cannot even afford to give your students their necessary texts! If this is indeed the case, the amount of research your students are able to do on tragedies may be severely limited. Do have some ideas on how to get around this obstacle?
Laura,
I understand what you mean about broadening the scope of what a tragic story entails. However, my initial goal and plan was to have the students study stories that all over lap and are intertwined with the main themes (fate, potions, waring families, impossible odds to be together, etc.).
My cooperating teacher makes no connections what so ever to what she teaches if she teaches. She mostly shows the students movies and when she does go over terminology of what comprises a story, such as characterization, she makes no connections to a story that they already read this year.
My goal is to make these connections so that when they come across another tragedy as you suggested they will be able to identify that it is a tragedy and pinpoint the aspects that make the story a tragedy.
As for doing extra research, I would designate some class time to taking the students to the library where there are books and computers for the students to read more about what a tragedy is and how to distinguish if a story is a tragedy. However, my cooperating teacher is only giving one research assignment out of the whole year and told me I was not allowed to add another research assignment. Therefore, I am stuck between a rock and a hard place with how I want to go about teaching this tragedy unit and incorporating more literacy components into an already sparse Literature experience the students are receiving.
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