The Rain In Spain Falls Mainly on the Plains...I Think I've Got It...

Alright, I've been brainstorming all day about how to do my Macbeth unit because I knew I couldn't rely on journals alone to make capture my students' interest in Shakespeare.  I was having visions of a repeat from last year while lying in bed last night, so today I planned away. Here's the plan:

I'm going to introduce Macbeth using a music simile. The objective of the lesson will be to have students make the connection that a Shakespearean play is just like a classic, top-twenty-five song of all time. We'll talk about how people cover these songs (like a performance of a Shakespearean play) and people also adapt the songs like Puffy did with the song "With Every Breath You Take" (like an adaptation of a Shakespearean play). This music simile will guide the rest of the unit. 

I've created a Macbeth Unplugged blog that will serve as the journals I was originally thinking about having the students write in. All homework assignments will be on the blog and depending on what we've read in class they will have to "cover," "adapt," "choose a song," or "choose an singer" for a selection from the text. I'll start off posting the selections, but I'm hoping as they get used to the format they will eventually choose their own to post. 

I hoping this will encourage the close reading that I was having trouble incorporating, get them to think about the decisions Shakespeare made and how the literary devices add to the meaning and complexity of the text, and allow them to think about what captures their individual attention in the text. I'm also hoping it will add a little competitive edge to the discussions, and students engage with the text so they are not "copying" the ideas of their peers.

After we have finished reading the play, students will review everything they wrote in the blog and look for patterns in their thinking. This will be the self-reflective part that helps them see the influence of literature on understanding themselves as individuals better. Here is where the literature will become the tool for self discovery.

During the unit we will look at different "covers" and an adaptation of Macbeth (The BBC's Shakespeare Retold, which is awesome by the way!), and their final paper will be to write a proposal for a Macbeth production to submit to the theatre I'm working at now. They can use the self-reflection part mentioned earlier to come up with a unifying concept for their production. I'm hoping that if I bring up the idea to the woman I work for, who happens to have a soft spot for teachers, something may come of this. Imagine if I could get the artistic director to read their submissions and select one! That would be amazing!

And the icing on the blogilicious cake--minimal correcting!!