Benjamin Karl
Benjamin Karl
English Language Arts
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Texts, Tasks, & Learning Goals
Texts, Tasks, & Learning Goals
This was our first exercise in our 12th Grade English unit on William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. All of these students had studied Shakespeare’s works to some degree before this point, but I knew that many of them had only read Romeo and Juliet and/or Macbeth—and not even the whole of either play at that! Still others, were much more well versed, having come to 12 Lit & Comp from an Honors track.
The first thing that I wanted to do with this group was to find out where each of them was, and to level-set before we moved forward. This lesson was the first of several, interspersed throughout the unit, designed primarily to demystify Shakespeare’s language by introducing specific skills useful for breaking down his texts’ sometimes complex forms.
Following a brief entrance ticket review of the unit expectations which had been discussed the day before, and calling roll (with a fun get-to-know-you twist), we launched directly into the first of several tasks for the day. The agenda was displayed on the board, as it is at the start of every day, but I resisted explicitly announcing the deeper meaning behind each item as I didn’t want to color the results of our exercises. I’d also found in previous session that students tended to either become overwhelmed or to work ahead and get out sync when I’ve explicitly reviewed the day’s agenda before launching.
Today, students would begin with a short writing exercise designed to explore their prior knowledge of both the play and the playwright. In their journals, they completed the following stems: “Shakespeare wrote in…” and “Hamlet is about…” Some students had clarifying questions: “What do you mean by ‘Hamlet is about?’” I let them know that in this case, I was being deliberately ambiguous in order that they might interpret it for themselves and so I could see what first came to their minds.
They then engaged in a brief think-pair-share task, following which I invited each table-cluster to volunteer something interesting they’d discovered. Many of the responses were about Shakespeare’s writing style, iambic pentameter. Some students offered vague descriptions of his style as “hard” or “weird” and in each case, I probed for something more explicit: “what do you mean ‘weird?’” or “can you elaborate on that?”
For their next task, I asked them to draw a ’T’ on a piece of paper that they would later turn in. On one side of the ‘’T,’ they were to write “notice” and the other side “wonder.” I also brought up a slide with a visual representation of my expectation. I asked them to perform a cold-read of Hamlet’s “Too too solid flesh” speech from Act 1, Scene 1 of the play. I let them know that I fully expected this to be an enormous challenge, considering that they hadn’t read the play at all yet. They were to write on their ’T’ what they noticed in the reading; this was an exercise designed to help determine their baseline with Shakespeare’s language. Again, there were questions about exactly what they were supposed to be noticing, and I answered that they should be looking to note what is going on, what is the speech about—if they were going to tell someone else about it, what would they say?
Following another round of think-pair-share, and me recording their thoughts on a ’T’ on the document camera so that all could see our collective record, we determined that one of the primary items the students were "noticing" was indeed the language—to the point of distraction, for some! I probed for what solutions they thought we might use to discover the meaning of certain words and was gratified to hear several students suggest that we explore context clues. This would feature heavily in a later parsing lesson.
After a few passes with reading the text, digging deeper and deeper into the particulars that the students were noticing or wondering about, I returned to a comment a student had made earlier in the lesson—that Shakespeare generally wrote for viewing and listening audiences, not for readers. Our last task with this text was for them to listen to my dramatic reading of it and then make final notes about what they noticed or wondered.
After the students recovered from having forgotten that I have an acting background—they apparently don’t generally expect such drama from their teachers—they recorded their findings and shared them with the class. Many commented that being able to hear tonal shifts, specific words being emphasized, and changes in speaking rate all made the text much more understandable.
These skills and revelations where important first steps toward a series of lessons, spread throughout our unit, designed to practice new approaches and methods of parsing Shakespeare’s language.
This day’s lesson ended with an ‘Elizabethan Jigsaw’ assignment that would span three class periods. Students were given worksheets with research questions divided across several domains, but all focused on the Elizabethan era. For this final task, I instructed the students to divide the research questions evenly among themselves and their table partners, and to be ready to present their findings in a specific upcoming class period. Some students asked clarifying questions about how much detail they should record and I responded that it was not meant as an essay, but that simple bullet points were not sufficient either—that it should be detailed enough for someone to take away meaning without being present to ask clarifying questions.
One of my personal goals with this lesson was that students would have some excitement or buy-in beyond earning credit for the course. Indeed, some students became quite excited. Particularly near the end of the session, one student can be seen on video excitedly telling a table-mate about his theories. After the class had been dismissed, several students stood gathered at the front of the room enthusiastically debating the possible meanings of this text. I finally had to tell them that they must go to their next classes so that I myself can start mine!
Time-indexed Annotations for Video Excerpt
Time-indexed Annotations for Video Excerpt
00:00 Formative Assessment of the prior day’s learning.
01:07 Roll call: Students are asked to answer a fun get-to-know-you question.
02:29 Task: Prior knowledge exercise: briefly complete the following stems: “Shakespeare wrote in…” and “Hamlet is about…”
02:49 Answering Student Questions (ASQ) A student seeks clarity about what I mean by these stems. In this case, I remain deliberately ambiguous, saying only that this is to “get the juices flowing.” My hope is to discover what they already know and what comes to mind first; the exercise is the literary equivalent of an ink blot test.
03:13 Task: Think-Pair-Share (TPS): “Chat at your table and tell each other what you came up with?” At 03:40, I begin asking students to share what their tables came up with. Iambic pentameter, revenge, and several other vague but accurate answers are given. Many say “Old English,” which I do not challenge immediately because, while wrong, is immaterial at the moment and may stifle further guesses.
04:58 Eliciting and Interpreting Student Thinking (EIST): Responding to “Hamlet is about…”, one students says “A college kid.” I ask him to elaborate on that—to tell me more. This is unexpected detail, so I want to know more in order to determine the context of this student’s knowledge.
05:23 Sequencing: Here, I preview our next steps and check for prior experience with Shakespeare in pop-culture. Many students have experienced at least some Shakespeare on film. The most common experience seems to be via The Simpsons parody of Hamlet.
06:34 ASQ: A student asks “wasn’t [Shakespeare] multiple people?” I take this opportunity to briefly address the evidence and merits of the authorship debate. I suggest the film Anonymous for those who are really interested in the case against Shakespeare having written his own works.
07:41 Task: Notice and Wonder Exercise: Here, I give students explicit explicit directions to examine Hamlet’s first soliloquy (“Oh, that this too too sullied flesh would melt…” from I.i). They are to read it cold and, on a separate sheet of paper marked out with a T, on one side write they what notice—that is, what stands out to them—in the text. I tell them that they should not concern themselves at this time with the ‘wonder’ portion.
09:18 ASQ: Here, I answer student questions about they should be looking for or ‘noticing.’
09:37 Task: TPS, including (at 09:51) me sitting with individual groups while they work
10:06 Modeling/Class Record: As students call out what they’ve noticed, I write them on a central Notice and Wonder sheet displayed on the document camera. One student makes an especially insightful observation that there seem to be allusions to the Ten Commandments. Considering this is Hamlet’s first mention of suicide, this notice will be critical to later understanding the context of “To be or not to be.”
11:11 EIST: One student’s ‘notice’ is that there are a lot unknown words. “What strategies can we use to deal with unknown words?” This is a useful bridge to one of the next parts of the lesson which is about using context clues. Indeed, several students say exactly this when I ask the question. At 12:38, another student
12:38 EIST: To a student who responds “he talks really weirdly” I ask can you elaborate on that?” This follows closely upon the 11:11 item, again referring back to context clues.
13:54 Task: Now that they’ve had a chance to overhear each other’s ‘notices,’ I ask them to individually revisit the text and work out what it is that they wonder. At 14:30, students begin to volunteer their responses; they wonder who’s speaking, how’d the father die, what happened before and after…though they still don’t entirely understand what’s going on, they’re quite engaged and curious at this point.
17:30 Task: After aligning with the class about the difficulty of cold reading Shakespeare, connecting back to a student’s earlier comment about Shakespeare writing for theatre-goers as opposed to book readers, at 16:03 I give specific instruction to revisit their Notice and Wonder documents. At 20:22, students begin to volunteer their responses, noting that tone, pause points, and emphasizing specific words further clarified meaning for them.
20:47 ASQ: At this point, several students have really begun to dig into the text. Here, one of them is seeking a definition for “fie” and, at 23:38, wondering at the subtle implications of Hamlet likening his father to a demigod rather than a full god.
24:35 Task: I pass out a jigsaw task and give instructions that students should work with table partners to research different aspects of the Elizabethan era including particulars about lives of both Shakespeare himself and Queen Elizabeth. I also tell them when it is due.
25:26 ASQ: Students ask about when it is due (which I just told them), where they should record this information and what level of detail is expected. I tell them that there is a space on the back of their handouts to record information and that they should aim for something more than bullet points, but less than essay. It must be easily digestible by someone who isn’t there to ask clarifying questions.
26:31 EIST: Three student are so caught up in decoding this passage that they stay after class to debate it emphatically. I finally have to tell them to leave and go their next classes.
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