Macbeth Day #2: The Wolf Pit

Well friends,  I had the weekend to prepare for the second half of Act I of The Tragedy of Macbeth.  If you read Friday’s post, The Bard is Hard, you’ll quickly understand my struggle of teaching Shakespeare for the very first time!

I spent a lot of time active-reading my text of Macbeth over the weekend.  The first time I would read the scenes, I would read for comprehension.  I rewrote phrases in the margins, made notes concerning what was going on, and read for enjoyment.  The second time I read the scenes, I read as a teacher.  I looked for the phrases and words the students would struggle with, I made connections between ideas and scenes, and wrote discussion questions in the margins.  This strategy helped me out tremendously!  I felt much more prepared after “reading like a teacher”, instead of reading as the student.

The other thing that I did that made a big difference was that I included discussion questions in my lesson plans.  I think of them while I am reading, but then forget them when I begin teaching.  So by writing them down and carrying my lesson plans with me, I am able to refresh my memory when we got to certain points of the lesson.  I have never been the strongest extemporaneous speaker, and so I am figuring out strategies to be able to build in that area.  Writing the discussion questions (and in 10 words or less the answer I am looking for) has helped greatly.  I am then able to ask follow-up and probing questions off of the students’ responses.

I mention quite frequently how my student teaching experience is both exhilarating and terrifying at the same time.  Today was probably the largest juxtaposition of these emotions when my cooperating teacher left the room for the class period after he took attendance!  Now he has done this before, and I have taught full class periods by myself multiple times….but this is Shakespeare!  Friday’s struggles (to me) were still fresh in my mind!  I’m pretty sure the parting conversation was something to the effect of:
Cooperating teacher: “Okay, you good?”
Me: “Uhm, yeah I think so”
CT: “You’ll be fine”
Me: “Uhm, yeah I think so”
CT swift exit out the door
Me: “Uhm…”

And from there I told myself that I had to do it, that I didn’t have another option, and that I would be fine.

And wouldn’t you know it, class went great.  Students participated in whole-class discussions and were pretty attentive for reading Shakespeare for most of the class.  It really helped to read a little bit, then talk about what we just read, then read some more, and chat again.  In fact, we ran out time for the final activity!

After class my cooperating teacher asked me if I knew why he left class.  He responded by telling me that he knew that I could teach the material, but I had to figure out for myself.   By throwing me into the wolves (the very nice wolves), I learned to fend for myself and tackle Shakespeare

I’m looking forward to tomorrow now.  I am going to do one of my very favorite activities: Talking Chips.  A great discussion generator, it helps students grapple with the text at hand, make predictions, analyze characters, and review the plot in an engaging way.  Hopefully it goes as planned!

Stay joyful, fight through the wolves,
-Miss Joekel

The Bard is Hard

Today I began my unit teaching The Tragedy of Macbeth.  While I have taught several units already (Beowulf, The Canterbury Tales, sonnets), I will be formally assessed on these lesson plans I am creating and teaching.  Usually, I work with my cooperating teacher to come up with a general plan for each day, and then I teach from that.  However, other than deciding how many scenes to do per day, I have been on my own!  This is both exciting and terrifying (as most of my student teaching experience has been).

Today was my first day teaching Macbeth, so I began with a brief history of the actual Macbeth, and then moved into Act I, scenes I and II.

First, I realized at the end of class, that talking about the history of the real Macbeth King of Scotland totally gave away part of the play.  *Facepalm* While it isn’t the biggest issue, I wish I would have put more consideration into where I talked about the history surrounding the actual events.  Next time I teach Macbeth, or a text with a similar background, I will probably wait until closer to the end of the text to explain the historical events.

Overall, I left class feeling discouraged with how I had taught.  I love Macbeth, I felt like I was well prepared, and I had good activities for the students, but when I actually began teaching I thought “Holy moly this is HARD.”  I haven’t taught Shakespeare before this lesson, and this was the first day that I really felt that in-class teaching was hard.  Students have to understand the plot before anything else can be discussed, but the language is weird (in the best way) and different and difficult.  While I understood it in my head, it takes a whole new way of looking at it to be able to teach it and get students to interact with the text.

My biggest struggle was that I felt like I was just lecturing at them saying “this is what the witches are saying…” “here is an example of figurative language….” “this is what this line means….”.  I don’t enjoy lecture-style teaching, and I am not very good at it yet, either.  I understand there are times where that needs to happen, but overall I like to push the students to learn and discover for themselves, especially with literature, because things can be interpreted so many ways.

I’m learning, too, though!  My cooperating teacher and I talked quite a bit after class and this afternoon about different things to try (choral readings, small discussion groups), and reassuring me the day wasn’t a total flop.  So, I’m taking the weekend to read like a teacher, and figure out how to make Shakespeare come alive!

Stay joyful,

-Miss Joekel