12--Project #3: End of Week 1 (K&N2K, starting reading)

So the seniors started the Making Macbeth Modern project his week. We read a brief piece of Taming of the Shrew and then had a discussion about why we fear Shakespeare. I like starting Shakespeare this way because I try to be honest and share with my kids that in college I was TERRIFIED of Shakespeare so I just didn't read it.

Starting out with our fears and how we're going to try to overcome them is important. We also discussed how we can relate to Macbeth we just have to be open to the idea.

Students started reading the first, shortest, and in my opinion easiest part of the story -- Act 1 Scene 1. We discussed how to take notes and I showed them a new way to track characters, mood, setting, and meaning in their notebooks. We read that first section out loud, broke it down, and discussed.

We also used this opportunity to make our Knows & N2Ks list. Here is a picture of what we ended up with on our project poster! This poster is displayed in the classroom throughout the entire project and I try to reference it often.

Knows & N2Ks: 

After launching the project and doing the activity above we discussed what we would know and need to know for this project. Students worked in a think-pair-share environment and I had one student writing our ideas down up at the board. I have to say they came up with multiple things that I wouldn't have thought to put on our list. They really wanted to know about a lot of background on the story (history, lifestyle, etc) that I wouldn't have thought to do a workshop on. Because of this N2K this was one of the first lessons myself and my student teacher did.

I was a little disappointed to still see some of the following N2K comments on students lists in their notebooks:
"Why are we doing this project?"
"What is the point of this?"
I try to take these in stride and keep in mind these were from students who have drifted through school for the past 11 years and are frustrated with the fact that I'm making them think, asking them to go outside of their comfort zone, and asking them to actually do something other than a worksheet.
I addressed these items on an indivudal level by asking the students if we'd already asnwered their questions when we formed our problem statement (PS). When we create a PS as a class we fill in the statement "We as ____what is our title?______ will ______what will we do?_______ so that _____why are we doing this?__________." I asked the students if we'd already outlined that? If they gave input to that discussion? I told them that was their chance to speak up and make meaning out of the project. This usually got them to cross the items of their list or add it to their "Know" column instead.

However, I can see the students same bad attitude at the end of the project with their lack-luster final products. This is just one struggle when it comes to changing the expectations and culture with seniors!

Update: 4/3/13

Looking back on this project I needed to incorporate and revisit the K&N2K list more throughout the project. They had great "Need to Knows" for reading the story and we covered most of them throughout our reading process. Because we didn't revisit the N2K list I think there were many need to knows that had to do with creating their modernizations that I didn't do workshops on. I had them do an exit ticket sharing what workshops they needed rather than coming back to our N2K list. I guess I didn't think to do it as a class since they were all doing very different projects. I think next time I'll have each group create a N2K list on top of our class N2K list, especially once we get to the project creation part of the project.

12--Project #3--Making Macbeth Modern

Today we launched project #3 for the seniors. The base of this project came from the PBLU.org website as I am taking their courses this semester. I chose to adapt the Cyrano's Funk project in a few ways to fit Macbeth.

I think the launch went well....better than expected I have to admit. The seniors seemed engaged and interested especially when we started bringing in and discussing social media.

So to start this project out we went through the following steps: (Any resources mentioned are listed at the end of this post).

Step 1) I gave students a scene from Taming of the Shrew to start our discussion of why we "fear" Shakespeare. They had to annotate the text as they read marking the phrases or words they thought they knew or recognized along with writing their best guess at a meaning. Then they also had to mark the things they didn't understand or recognize. After annotating they had to answer two questions (a) why do we "fear" Shakespeare? What makes it difficult to understand? And (b) What can we do to overcome our fears/obstacles and learn to understand Shakespeare?

Step 2) Upon returning to class students were asked to review their annotations and answers. Then we went through the annotation together on the computer marking everything people understood and didn't understand. We did not really focus on the meaning of the text because that wasn't the intended purpose of the exercise. When we finished we looked at our class annotated text and moved on to answer the two questions and put our "fears" and strategies up on the board. Once discussion started to slow down on the last question I posed a new one. "So, why don't we (yes even me) read Shakespeare in our free time?" And beautifully one student answered,"because we can't relate to it." Perfect transition...

Step 3) After that discussion and getting our lists on the board I challenged the students comment about relating to classic literature, or as they put it "those OLD stories". I told them that's why our goal for this project is going to be to "Modernize Macbeth". I explained that we'd be looking at using various forms of technology to "translate", understand, and adapt/create modern adaptations of Macbeth to share with others and help them understand and relate to the story's themes to modern social issues.

Step 4) After giving them an idea of what we'd be doing I pulled up some examples of modernization on the computer. We looked at a blog post that talks about a Twitter performance of Taming of the Shrew and I showed them Kate's twitter account and we pulled a few lines from Feb 13th that matches up with dialogue in the scene we read. We looked at a blog that is supposed to be written by Juliet and a playlist on GrooveShark that was supposed to be created by Romeo complete with the opening song, "Foxy Lady". This really got the students talking about different types of social media and technology that they might be able to use, which was exciting.


Resources Used: 
Taming of the Shrew on Twitter
Article--http://mybigcampus.com/items/shakespeare-and-twitter-make-an-odd-couple---4795689?u57efbcb0-3a94-0130-4ab8-02aa22cab53c
Katherine--https://twitter.com/ShrewKate

Romeo and Juliet Blog:
http://julietisthesun.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2006-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&updated-max=2007-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&max-results=5

Romeo Montague GrooveShark playlist:
http://grooveshark.com/#!/playlist/Romeo+And+Juliet/61494496

Freshmen Project #3 -- Odysseus: A Man of Character

Project Launch (Entry Event): 

For the entry event for this project we watch the very beginning of The Odyssey movie (available free on YouTube).

Before watching I wrote "Epic Hero" up on the dry erase board and I posed the question, "What makes someone an epic hero?" I told the students that we were heading into reading The Odyssey, which is an epic with an epic hero, named Odysseus. I prompted the students to think about what it means to be a hero. We discussed and bullet point our ideas on the board.

Then I posed the following questions on the board:

• What makes Odysseus an epic hero?
• Why him? What makes him so special?
• What does he do in the beginning of this film that shows us or others that he's a hero?
• What does he say in the beginning of this film that tells us he's a hero?

We watched the beginning of The Odyssey.  (Up to 26:01) Students should've been taking notes in their notebooks by creating a bullet list that focuses on the questions above. They should reference events and/or quotes from the story as they watch Odysseus.

After we stop the film we had a brief circle share about what we saw in the movie. Then I asked students to choose three words they'd use to describe Odysseus using our list on the white board. Then we shared those traits.

This will help us move into a discussion of character and that all heroes should have good character.

The second half of this entry event brings in the modern, authentic element and introduces our community partner.

We'll listen to a podcast about a modern, real life hero named Alex. She's a little girl who had cancer and started "Alex's Lemonade Stand" to raise money for her hospital. After her death it turned into a nationwide organization that raises money for hospitals and kids with cancer.

While they're listening I encouraged them to create a bullet list of "traits" that Alex's possessed (words they'd use to describe her). 

http://www.values.com/inspirational-audio-stories/2-Alexandra-Alex-Scott 

After listening we'll share the traits on a Google Doc on the projector. Then we'll highlight the traits that students also see on their Odysseus list form earlier. This is to show students that character mattered back in the days of Odysseus and it's still important today. I love Alex's story because it really shows that even young kids can be inspirational and teach others what it means to have good character. This will transition us really well into our authentic final product -- teaching the elementary students what it means to have good character.

Character educaiton is one of our pillars in our school corporation and I think my students will really see the purpose and authenticity. The idea of good character can follow through all of our reading, discussion, as well as through the final deliverable.