Technology Pursuit

Blending Technology Into the Language Arts Classroom

Tag: shakespeare

Linking to Images in Curriculet

Martletstick spot

 

 

Curriculet is such a great resource that I’ve found to use while teaching Macbeth.  Shakespeare uses so many metaphors and allusions that students don’t understand–such as the martlet on the far top and Lady Macbeth’s reference to the “sticking point” in the lower top.

With Curriculet, I can embed those images directly into the text, so students can see and understand the reference visually.  Extremely handy!

Curriculet has become my go-to app for assigned reading.  Instead of spending classtime reading the text with the students, explaining it, and helping them with the basic understanding, they can read it on their own here, follow my annotations, answer my reading check questions, and gain that basic level of understanding.  Then I can spend class time with deeper, richer activities, such as the Institute of Play’s Socratic Smackdown that we did earlier this week.

I also love the fact that students move at their own pace.  The ones who have questions I can work with one-on-one.  I also link the PBS Macbeth film to the Curriculet, so students can view the film while reading the text.  I love how students can see the play come alive with professional actors; seeing the film version simultaneously with the text also scaffolds their understanding.

Teach Macbeth Through Curriculet

Curriculet MB A1S3,4

 

In between parent-teacher conferences today, I made a new Curriculet for Act 1, Scenes 3 & 4 of Macbeth.  If you’re planning to teach Macbeth in the imminent future, you can check it out here.

The great thing about Curriculet is I can embed video links that allow students to view the scene before they read it.  Or, if they resize windows, they can watch it side by side with the text.  This allows for 1) students to pick up on body language and non-verbal cues and better understand the text, and 2) consider the lines that aren’t included or are rearranged in the film and why the director made these choices.

Below, you can see the side-by-side windows that I encourage my students to use when they’re “reading” Macbeth.  This method is a great way to “flip” our classroom, especially when I have several student-athletes who plan to be gone.

Next week, we tackle Lady Macbeth’s opening soliloquy in  Scene 5–then I’ll be testing out the Socratic Smackdown.  I’ll keep you posted with how it goes.

Side by side Macbeth.jpg copy

Mingling with Macbeth: Getting Students Used to the Language

Macbeth Tea Party Quotation Analysis

 

Students often struggle getting used to Shakespeare’s language.  (No, it’s not a foreign language; no, we’re not going to read a translated version like Chaucer’s.)  As an introductory activity to acclimate them to the language and realize that it’s not as hard as it first looks, we did a “Mingling with Macbeth” today.

Each student drew a quotation from the next three scenes (here are the ones I used), and then typed it into the first box of the Mingling with Macbeth form.  Then students interviewed two classmates about what they thought the quotation meant and wrote the results in the next two boxes.  Last, each student then wrote their final interpretation into the last box.

The activity forces students to examine the language of Shakespeare but encourages them to work with each other, think about what their classmates suggest, and make a final decision about their own interpretation.  Most of the students showed excellent understanding of the quotations afterward, plus it provided students some predictions of what was to come and a bit of a teaser for them to look forward to tomorrow.

 

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