Schedule: 60 min class
Class: 9th Grade English
Source Material: Romeo and Juliet original text graphic novel adaptation by John McDonald
Common Core State Standards:
- CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.9-10.2 - Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze in detail its development over the course of the text, including how it emerges and is shaped and refined by specific details; provide an objective summary of the text.
- Students will be introduced to the theme of gender discrimination, motifs of gender such as values of masculinity and its relationship with honor, oppressive treatment of women
- Students will compare and contrast the gender norms of Elizabethan society and modern day society
Objective/Purpose (Daily Goals):
- We will discuss and dive deeper into the theme of gender discrimination
- Handout copies of the Social Psychology article, “ “Culture and Gender Stereotyping in Advertisements”
- Handout copies of Comparing and Contrasting gender norms from Elizabethan society and modern society
- Google Slide Presentation of Elizabethan Gender Norms
- [10 mins] Review what happened in the text so far, discuss together as a class. Use google slides to ask guiding questions and to point out crucial events
- Go over what happened in Acts 1 and 2
- [10 mins] Read this Social Psychology article, “Culture and Gender Stereotyping in Advertisements” http://socialpsychonline.com/2015/08/culture-gender-stereotyping-advertising/
- [10 mins] Discuss gender roles today
- Historical Context: What were the gender norms in Shakespeare’s time?
- Show Google slides - graphic organizer comparing Elizabethan men and women, and Elizabethan families
- Compare and contrast on a graphic organizer handout the male and female gender norms from Elizabethan society and today. What has stayed the same? What has changed?
- Students complete the graphic organizer handout in groups of 4
- After instructions are given, ask students if there are any questions
- Walk around and monitor the students while they pair up and discuss
- Ask the students to think about the scenes read so far, and whether the text has demonstrated acts of gender discrimination. Think about characters that are treated differently because of gender norms.
- HW: Choose one character from the play and write about whether they face gender discrimination
Overall Connection of Lesson Plan to the Unit:
The students have been introduced to the definition and examples of discrimination and the background of Shakespeare in the first few weeks. Eventually, the students will have started learning about class discrimination as they cover the first two acts of the play. They will have interacted with the text in various ways, and read or viewed the text in different adaptations. This lesson plan would reinforce what has already been taught about discrimination and Shakespearean language by learning about specifically another form of discrimination. Learning about gender norms and gender discrimination helps the students better understand the culture of the Elizabethan time and society and eventually self-reflect through text-to-self activities. The following lessons will have the students analyze several scenes in the play by looking closely at the language used to determine whether the characters conform to or deviate from traditional gender expectations. This has the students discuss power dynamics between the characters, which build upon the previous lessons of power struggles in class discrimination. This also has the students think critically about the different relationships between characters based on these norms. Simultaneously, in the human geography class, the students will be covering discrimination and the struggles of interracial marriages between different groups of people.