This site allows you to publish work, get feedback, attend writing workshops online (for a fee), and more. I haven't looked around it too much, but it seems to be a pretty awesome resource! It just opened two weeks, so they are still sort of gaining ground. I hope some of you might find this useful for you writing endeavors!
I also wanted to post a little about how my unit is coming and get some feedback from you all on what I've been doing thus far. I'm doing my unit on cause and effect using Hamlet as my primary text and so far it's been going pretty well. I have two (maybe three) activities/projects done for sure, but I'm not entirely sure how I want to approach them and I wanted to get you guys' thoughts.
Project one: "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie..." is going to be a text I use as my hook; I'm sure many of you have read it and understand the general concept. A person gives a mouse a cookie, and it leads to a series of other things that the mouse will want. After we've read the short work in class, I want to have the students create their own "If you..." stories, imitating what is being done in the mentor text "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie." If any of you guys have good ideas for a hook for Hamlet or know of something that worked well for you, please let me know!
Project two: Character blogs. This project came about as a result of the current assignment in my technology ed. class with Dr. Dietrich. For this project I want to have students take up the role of a character in the play and blog about their feelings after every act. I'm wanna give them the choice of as many characters as possible, though I don't know that they could use characters such as "The Gravedigger," etc. without making up stuff, given that they're only in small portions of the story. The characters I am sure they could use include Hamlet, Laertes, Claudius, and Gertrude. The reason I am hesitant to give them Ophelia and Polonius is due to the fact that they die prior to the end of the play. Alternatively, I could give them the ability to blog as these characters, though they would need to blog as the characters 'from the afterlife,' once they've been killed off in the play. This project provides some character analysis, which feeds well into my final project.
Project three: Mock Trial. For this project, students will take on the roles of characters in the play and we will conduct a mock trial, wherein they will try to prove that Hamlet is either crazy and a murderer or sane and justified in his act of vengeance. I haven't thought this one through as much as the others, but some initial roadblocks with this that I've encountered are: when will this trial be set? If it's late in the play, all the major characters are dead, but if it's too early than not everything has yet been laid out on the table. How can I be sure every student is involved? At most I can only guarantee probably 10-15 students spots, and assuming I have a class of 30 kids, that's half the class that's acting as the jury. Finally, I would like to incorporate a writing component in the form of a court "debrief" where students will state what the verdict was, whether or not they thought it was correct (I'm not gonna ask for 100% agreement to pass a verdict), and why they thought that. Any feedback on this would be really, really appreciated.
This became a really long post, which I apologize for. Thanks in advance for anyone who reads this. I hope you guys all had a good weekend!
Eric,
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of using "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" to show cause/effect. For a truly "out there" hook, you might try going into uncharted territory for English teachers: science experiments. You could do the classic baking soda/vinegar volcano or Mentos/Diet Coke to show a very immediate effect---the Diet Coke explodes when you put the Mentos into it. You could do this in tandem with the book to get your students thinking on various types of causes and effects. Which ones are immediate? How big are the consequences?
Also, for your Hamlet trial project, you might consider including elements of the modern trial: the media. Not everybody has to be directly involved in the trial proceedings---you could include the courtroom illustrator, a silent news reporter in the courtroom, a tv reporter right outside waiting for scoop and some sort of late-night media pundit. That'd be a cool way to engage multiple learning styles, too! (You could even have students who are shy about acting serve as the media research team?)