{"id":2161,"date":"2010-09-01T21:17:17","date_gmt":"2010-09-02T02:17:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shakespeareteacher.com\/blog\/?p=2161"},"modified":"2013-09-01T18:21:27","modified_gmt":"2013-09-01T23:21:27","slug":"shakespeare-teacher-the-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shakespeareteacher.com\/blog\/archives\/2161","title":{"rendered":"Shakespeare Teacher: The Book!"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am proud to announce that I have recently published a chapter in this book<\/a>\"\" on teaching literature through technology. You can ignore the description; it seems to have been inadvertently switched with that of this book<\/a>\"\". Neither page describes my chapter, but you can read the abstract on the publisher’s page<\/a>, or I could just tell you what it’s about.<\/p>\n

Unlike this blog, the book chapter is actually about teaching Shakespeare! No riddles. No anagrams. No politics. (Well, maybe a little bit of politics.) <\/p>\n

Here is the basic idea. I begin by citing experts who are skeptical of the ability of elementary school students to do Shakespeare. Specifically, I discuss the Dramatic Age Stages chart created by Richard Courtney<\/a>\"\". <\/p>\n

Courtney describes “The Role Stage” as lasting from ages twelve to eighteen, at which point students are capable of a number of new skills that I would consider essential for understanding Shakespeare in a meaningful way. These skills include the ability to think abstractly, to understand causality, to interpret symbols, to articulate moral decisions, and to understand how a character relates to the rest of the play. So based on this chart, I would have to conclude that a student younger than twelve would not be ready to appreciate Shakespeare in these ways.<\/p>\n

But Courtney bases his chart on the framework of developmental phases of Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget<\/a>\"\". These phases describe what a lone child can demonstrate under testing conditions. A more accurate and nuanced way of looking at development is provided in the work of Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky<\/a>\"\", who described a “Zone of Proximal Development” (ZPD), which is a range between what a child can demonstrate in isolation, and what the same child can do under more social conditions. <\/p>\n

So I wondered if fifth-grade students (aged 10) would have some of the skills associated with “The Role Stage” somewhere in their ZPD. If so, a collaborative class project should provide enough scaffolding to develop those skills and allow ten-year-old students to understand and appreciate Shakespeare on that level.<\/p>\n

So I developed and implemented a unit to teach Macbeth<\/em> to a fifth-grade class in the South Bronx, using process-based dramatic activities, a stage production of the play performed for their school, and a web-based study guide to apply what they had learned. The idea was to use collaborative projects to get the kids to work together to make collective sense of the play. I then examined their written work for evidence that they had displayed the skills associated with “The Role Stage” in Courtney’s chart, and I was able to find a great deal of it. <\/p>\n

I also create a three-dimensional rubric to assess the students’ work over the course of the unit. I say a three-dimensional rubric because I use the same eight categories in all three rubrics, but they develop over time to reflect the increased sophistication that I expect the students to demonstrate. I then compare the students’ performance-based rubric scores to their reading test scores to demonstrate that standardized testing paints only a very limited picture of what a student can achieve. (I did say that it had a little bit<\/em> of politics.)<\/p>\n

Anyway, that’s what my chapter was about. I just saved you $180! And I’m hoping to return to a regular blogging schedule soon, so more content is hopefully on the way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am proud to announce that I have recently published a chapter in this book on teaching literature through technology. You can ignore the description; it seems to have been inadvertently switched with that of this book. Neither page describes my chapter, but you can read the abstract on the publisher’s page, or I could […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86,88,71,89,16,6,52,9,23,3,20,7,101,87,13,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-assessment","category-classroom-ideas","category-data","category-ed-policy","category-education","category-international","category-macbeth","category-politics","category-science","category-shakespeare","category-social-justice","category-studies","category-teaching-matters","category-teaching-shakespeare","category-technology","category-the-brain"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shakespeareteacher.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shakespeareteacher.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shakespeareteacher.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shakespeareteacher.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shakespeareteacher.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2161"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/www.shakespeareteacher.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2161\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4610,"href":"https:\/\/www.shakespeareteacher.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2161\/revisions\/4610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shakespeareteacher.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shakespeareteacher.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shakespeareteacher.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}