Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Students or Fact Machines??
I chose to read Chapter 4 of Teaching Shakespeare Today, "The Use of Quotations in Teaching Shakespeare" by Leila Christenbury. I am such a "quote lover," you could say, and always seem to place inspirational and beautifully written quotations that I find around my room. So this chapter spoke to me from the beginning, and I came to embrace Christenbury's approach almost immediately. She pulls specific quotes from scenes of plays to teach the Shakespeare unit to her class, rather than having them read the plays in entirety. Smaller chunks of text focus students and provide more structure. Christenbury states that her approach uses the "part" to teach the "whole," meaning that quotes can exhibit for students a main theme of a Shakespeare play just as well as the whole play could. This method would be way less intimidating to students, I think, because many are discouraged before they even begin a play by its length and language. Even I was intimidated last semester taking Shakespeare as a Junior English major in college. We need to be sensitive to our students' feelings about Shakespeare and other complex texts, and facilitate enjoyment of reading more so than just pulling out facts. Christenbury reminds us that the "big picture" of a novel or play is of utmost importance; students should not be treated as fact machines. I remember so many times in high school where I would read a novel and love it; and my teacher would completely ruin these good feelings by asking us to restate menial facts about the story. (i.e. What color is the hat John wears?) These things have no relevance to the meaning and themes of a text, whether it be by Shakespeare or any author. I think that I will follow Christenbury's approach when teaching Shakespeare, and even other texts, in my classroom. It opens the door to creative extensions and activities that can be done with students, which facilitate a much higher level of thinking than fact spewing.
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"This method would be way less intimidating to students, I think, because many are discouraged before they even begin a play by its length and language."
ReplyDeleteDo you think that your students would eventually become less intimidated at the thought of Shakespeare and have an interest in his work? If so, do you think you would then move towards presenting one of his texts in its entirety? How would you create a smooth transition from using quotes that represent the whole, to displaying the whole?
I used to get so mad at teachers for asking us questions like "What was the name of the cat Bobby had when he was three?" Is it relevant? Nope. We need to focus on the more important qualities of the text (i.e. the theme, symbols). Quotations are so powerful, and when chosen correctly, can really tell the reader a lot about the story or character.
ReplyDelete"We need to be sensitive to our students' feelings about Shakespeare and other complex texts, and facilitate enjoyment of reading more so than just pulling out facts."
ReplyDeleteAt the same time, we need to push our students to be successful at completing tasks. Using quotations to teach a play sounds like a great idea; however, at some point they need to be able to read and understand a full play. Knowing how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide is great, but not if you can't solve word problems with those skills.
"She pulls specific quotes from scenes of plays to teach the Shakespeare unit to her class, rather than having them read the plays in entirety. Smaller chunks of text focus students and provide more structure."
ReplyDeleteI absolutely love this!! As a teacher, we can pull out what we want to get across to our students with it still being effective.
I don't know.. I feel as if it is very important for students to pay attention to details. So I think it would be plausible to ask "menial facts" for assessing students.
ReplyDeleteChristenbury reminds us that the "big picture" of a novel or play is of utmost importance; students should not be treated as fact machines. "I remember so many times in high school where I would read a novel and love it; and my teacher would completely ruin these good feelings by asking us to restate menial facts about the story. (i.e. What color is the hat John wears?) These things have no relevance to the meaning and themes of a text, whether it be by Shakespeare or any author."
ReplyDelete-This is so true! My article talked about when assessing you should use higher level thinking questions such as the one you mentioned so that you can tell if students read/ect. Yet it is important to not have students feel the way you did. There needs to be a balance, and have students reach that balance when assessing.
I think it would be really fun to pull out a handful of quotes and have the students write a magazine article on a particular character from the quote using the quote to generate a BUZZ kind of like in OK or The National Enquirer..I think this would be a fun way to talk about character analysis, theme and/or plot. Check out the Folger Shakespeare library for more fun teaching strategies like this one.
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