How I Use Famous Shakespeare Quotes to Teach Literary Elements

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Just a few more hours to scoop up savings at Brevity and other stores on Teachers Pay Teachers at the Back to School sale! I've already found lots of great resources to help inject some Core-aligned energy into my lesson planning.

Me and Will Shakespeare

One of the units I teach every year in 9th, 10th, and 12th grade English is Shakespeare. They say "Necessity is the mother of invention," and necessity certainly inspired some of the Shakespeare unit resources I've created. I wanted a memorable way to teach literary elements and introduce students to the plays they would be reading before they ever got to the prologue.

Romeo and Juliet: Wall Docs

I also wanted a way to build character through quotes from the play and the discussions the quotes would ignite.

The wall docs I created for Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and Julius Caesar help make connections for students, which is always a good thing. They build understanding of terms students will work with throughout the Shakespeare unit, and they help students remember what they learn.

How I Use Literary Elements in Famous Quotes Wall Docs in My Classroom

At the beginning of the semester, I hand out the full list of quotes and their corresponding literary elements, such as metaphor, symbol, or rhyming couplets. I explain that students will not be expected to memorize the quotes, but that they will need to be able to match the literary element to the quote that demonstrates it.

I then post the first quote doc on the wall and ask the class to read the quote aloud with me, either from the wall doc or from the handout. We then discuss the quote, the literary element, and how the language of the quote exemplifies the literary element. That's it for Day One. 

Macbeth quotes on my classroom wall

Each day, we repeat the reading and discussion for one week. On Monday of the next week, I introduce a new quote. Periodically, we review previous quotes and the terms that match them.

I assess students on terms and quotes as I see fit. This resource allows the teacher to use informal assessment daily without imposing an extra quiz on stressed-out students.

The beauty of working with specific famous quotes in a targeted way is that before students even read a line of the play, they become familiar with some of the famous lines and plot elements. Then, when we read the play and come across these quotes, light bulbs go on all around the room. Students see the quotes in context, understand the richness of the language, and remember the mechanics behind the poetry of Shakespeare. As an added plus, my students often tell me, "I was watching Sponge Bob and they quoted Shakespeare!" I love it when kids recognize literary allusions in the world around them. It's all about making connections!

Purchasing Shakespeare wall docs and other teacher resources from Brevity helps keep me blogging and helps keep ads on ChristianTeacherPublicSchool to a minimum. To take advantage of the Back to School Sale, just enter code BTS2017 at checkout! Thanks for your support!

See you at the Idaho Super Conference: Learning Across All Dimensions

School is going full steam ahead, with new faces, new adventures, and new blessings at every turn. I'm so thankful to have an enthusiastic freshman class this year. It's also been a blessing to see my youngest child enter Kindergarten and make new friends. My high school field trip to see Shakespeare's First Folio has been approved, and my advanced literature students and I are loving reading Fahrenheit 451!

One more blessing to add to my overflowing cup this fall is finding out that my two session proposals for the Idaho Super Conference have been accepted. That means I'll have a roomy ninety-minute presentation on Faith and the Public School Teacher, and I'll be giving my Choose-Your-Own-Adventure-inspired narrative writing presentation to a wider audience.

Join some 1500 teachers at Timberline High School and White Pine Elementary in Boise on Oct. 6 and 7 (state teacher in-service days). Registration closes Sept. 14, so be sure to sign up now. Professional development credit is available from Boise State University.

Writing and Publishing Narratives Using Digital Technology
Description:  In this session, teachers will learn to apply choose­-your-­own­-story structure to narrative fiction or nonfiction writing. Using Google Drive, teachers will learn to link story pages to form narratives with alternate endings.

Faith and the Public School Teacher
Description:  Can your faith coexist with your professional life? New legislation and news headlines may shake things up, but by identifying your stance on faith in the classroom, you will face the turbulence of our changing world with more confidence. In this session, teachers will learn what the law allows and expects of teachers who hold to a religious faith; take a look at teachers whose actions have come under scrutiny; and share appropriate ways to live out faith in the public school environment.

Planning to attend? Let me know in the comments! And join me on Facebook to chat with me and other teachers who'll be there.

A Student-Friendly Checklist for 9th and 10th Grade ELA Writing

It's challenging to find user-friendly checklists for the Common Core standards. This year I've been playing around with some formats to help my students keep track of how they're doing. Here's my new student-friendly checklist for 9th and 10th grade ELA writing standards as a Google doc. I plan to use the same format to create check lists for the other standard sets I teach.

Obviously, teaching something once is not enough to merit a check mark. How has the student demonstrated understanding of the concept? For a brush-up on assessing understanding, read Edutopia's excellent article, 'What Exactly Is "Understanding?" And How Do We Assess It?'

Have a great resource to help teachers and students track understanding? Please share!

Leadership in Band of Brothers Unit

Now available from Brevity on TPT

It's been about a year in the making, but my Leadership in Band of Brothers unit is finally complete. Writing a Common Core-aligned unit was the main requirement of the Idaho Coaching Network class I took throughout the last school year, and my unit for the class was inspired by binge-watching the documentary film series Band of Brothers with my husband. While I wasn't sure some of the material in the film itself would be appropriate to show in class, I knew that the story of the 101st Airborne and Easy Company would be highly engaging to my sophomores.

The motif of Leadership often comes up in everyday conversations with high school students, not just when it's prompted by literature studies. Kids want to be leaders, and they need vivid examples of real-life leaders to emulate. Maj. Richard "Dick" Winters of Easy Company fills those shoes perfectly. Leadership in Band of Brothers gives students the opportunity to learn from the D-Day heroism of Winters and his men and to reflect upon leadership traits in their own lives.

I test drove the rough draft of the unit this past spring with success, though some areas needed to be revised afterward. Now the revision is done, and it's finally time to make the unit available on Teachers Pay Teachers! I feel like a proud Mama.

Here's a snippet from the TPT description:

Designed for 10th grade Social Studies or ELA classes, the plan is ten pages with links to some 30 additional pages of materials. Students will read Chapters 1-5 of Stephen E. Ambrose's bestselling nonfiction book Band of Brothers, the basis for the documentary film series. Students will also engage in learning activities such as Document Based Inquiry, close reading, script writing, reflective self-survey, and recording a radio broadcast.

Classroom tested, Common Core aligned, and ready to teach. All you need to provide is the book Band of Brothers or access to the first five chapters. High quality unit lasts three weeks or more and pairs well with other WWII readings such as The Book Thief.

I hope the unit finds a home in lots of Social Studies and ELA classrooms. Now to finish prepping for conference day! Have a great weekend.

Revising a Unit

It's been a blessing to be part of a network of Idaho teachers who are learning to be CORE literacy coaches for the past year. This August I begin year two of the training, when I'll be coaching a "newbie" to the program. In the meantime, there are loose ends from last year to tie up.

I'm currently revising the Social Studies/ELA unit I created for CORE coach class last year on the book Band of Brothers by Stephen E. Ambrose. My unit received critiques (one of them especially helpful), and now it's up to me to make needed improvements and submit it. My coach says I retain the rights to the unit, so that means I'll be able to post it in my Teachers Pay Teachers store when it's all done. Hooray!

One area in need of revision is the DBIs (Okay, I had never heard of that term before taking the class. It stands for Document-Based Inquiry). Here's how the Idaho Coaching Network describes DBIs:

"DBIs use a multi-phase approach, revealing new information in small mystery-like puzzle pieces, through the integration of variety of text types (visuals, videos, informational texts, primary source documents, etc.), which builds curiosity and engages students.  DBI follows the principles of scaffolding, moving students from simple to more complex texts.  As students move through these phases, they gain new knowledge (puzzle pieces) and assemble a grander picture; all of the phases work together to tell the whole story.  Ideally, each phase will answer questions from previous phases as well as lead students to a deeper understanding of the topic.  Finally, students will synthesize the knowledge they have learned through each of the phases and demonstrate their understanding through written or oral language."

Although I used a DBI when I first taught my new D-Day unit this spring, I realized that more thought was needed to make the learning activity even more effective. I need to think carefully about how to use the artifacts and the process as a whole to gradually lead students toward synthesizing knowledge gained and demonstrating their understanding in meaningful ways. I want to add artifacts (the photos, maps, articles, and other pieces that make up a DBI folder) and be sure that every piece that's included strengthens the inquiry process.

Besides the DBIs, I'm also strengthening the vocabulary and independent reading portions of the unit, as well as making the whole document and its attachments more visually appealing and user-friendly (can't go wrong there!). Portions of the unit that focused on close reading, the theme of leadership, and the culminating assessment (writing and recording a D-Day radio broadcast) were already fairly strong and needed little work.

Even though I feel I procrastinated revising my unit, there is something to be said for taking time off from working on a project and then returning to it after several weeks (or in my case, months). I was able to look at the document with fresh eyes and be more critical of my work in a constructive way. It also helped that I went in to school to work on it instead of trying to work from home. As it turned out, I was unable to work in my classroom because it was being worked on, but I found a home in the school library, which was dim and quiet and cozy, just right for getting some real, focused work done on my unit. There's still work to do, but it's coming along. I'm so thankful!

Coming up on Tuesday, I'll be presenting on narrative writing and on Faith and the Public School Teacher at the P20 Educator Conference at the College of Southern Idaho in Twin Falls. There's prep work remaining for my presentations, so I'll be a busy beaver for a few days! But I couldn't be more excited.

What helps you revise a unit? Please share!



World War II Discovery Kit

The Christian Teacher's Close-Reading Superpower

One of the hot topics in education is close reading, or "reading to uncover layers of meaning that lead to deep comprehension" ("Closing in on Close Reading" by Nancy Boyles). In order to meet state standards, particularly in Common Core states, teachers are introducing close reading skills as early as Kindergarten.

Some approaches to close reading are:

      Examining meaning thoroughly and analytically
      Directing attention to the text, central ideas, and supporting details
      Reflecting on meanings of individual words and sentences, and
      Developing ideas over the course of the text (The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, quoted by Nancy Boyles).

When I attend my professional development class twice a month, the instructor teases me because when she assigns a passage to read, she can trust me to close read it. The first time she pointed it out, I was a little surprised. I've always thought of myself as "a slow reader," though a good reader. I have to go slowly so I can extract the fullest meaning from the text, be it Pride and Prejudice or the book of John. Sometimes, I'm enjoying the author's techniques so much that I couldn't speed up if I wanted to. In a PD setting, this close-reading habit can get me into trouble because I may still be reading long after my colleagues have moved on. It can also cause me to fall behind on assignments. Still, I appreciated my instructor's assessment. Seeing my own close reading for what it was helped me to think about how to teach close reading strategies to my students.

What are some close reading strategies that work? Nancy Boyles outlines the following in her article:

      Work with short texts
      Aim for independence
      Teach students to ask the questions
      Focus on observing and analyzing

Boyles goes on to suggest the types of questions teachers need to teach students to ask. She also states that teachers need to be prepared to ask text-dependent questions while students are getting the hang of questioning the text for themselves.

What stands out to me as a Christian learning to teach close reading is the way the suggested text-dependent questions resemble the questions I ask when I read the Bible, particularly the more challenging passages.

For example, Boyles suggests teaching students to ask the following four basic questions:

      1. What is the author telling me here?
      2. Are there any hard or important words?
      3. What does the author want me to understand?
      4. How does the author play with language to add meaning?

If I'm reading a text like Matthew 8:11-12, my mind is swarming with questions just like these. What important truth is Jesus teaching here? What does he mean by "many will come from east and west and recline at the table with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob"? This looks like a prophecy. Why is it tucked in here between hearing the Centurion's story and healing his servant? What does the prophecy mean? Who are the "sons of the kingdom" who will be cast out into the outer darkness? What bearing does this short passage have on the miracle Jesus performs? On my life?

In the case of the passage above, I was so motivated by my unanswered questions that I consulted a commentary and read up on one theologian's interpretation. More often, I'll seek answers by comparing the challenging passage to another in the Bible (one of my college professors reminded his students constantly that "the best commentary on the Word of God is the Word of God").

This is studying the Word. This is meditating on it. This is treasuring its wisdom as David urges believers to do in Psalm 119. In the public school setting, it's just close reading, and the text and the purpose will be different. Instead of seeking to know the author of the Bible more intimately, we are seeking to become better readers of any complex text. Sometimes we are also seeking to make proficient on a standardized test. Still, Christian teachers who themselves close-read short Bible passages every day of their lives are experienced analysts of the finest literature ever written.

Close reading--and Bible study--do take practice. So does teaching close reading. But don't put yourself in a box (like my "slow reader" one). Understand that you bring skills to the table. Ask God to unleash your close-reading superpowers.