When I teach Macbeth, I like to use as many things as possible to make it immersive. We have crowns, witches' hats, and sashes for nobility. For atmosphere, the fog machine comes out and we always add a Sound FX role to the parts list. The Sound FX person just makes ambient sounds (people walking, owls hooting, thunder, etc.).
I also have a background for each scene that I have displayed on the screen in the front of the room that I will share with you here. None of these are my own artwork or photographs and when I made these long ago, I had no intention of anyone seeing them but my students, so artwork attribution is absent.
Be that as it may, you may find it useful and you may find other images that work better (if so, please send them my way!)
There is no book that I have found that generates student interest than The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. You know the students I teach - seniors who have given up on the thought of enjoying a book, struggling with reading, generally ready to be done with school to start a life that will never ask you to find the symbolism in that chapter - yet, this book has them reading ahead on their own time, jumping into class discussion, and getting passionate in class. If you don't know why you should be teaching this book, read this and come back. I'll wait.
What I have done is to break down this book chapter-by-chapter. This is not a book summary. This is a guide to how to teach it. Each chapter has my what-to-look for moments, what to emphasize, a heads up on what may throw off a student, how long it takes to read it aloud, which chapters work best read aloud, and along the way, I throw in fourteen activities - some in class, some for students to do on their own. The students will immerse themselves into the games that Christopher plays, find the constellation he looks at, make predictions, read parts, and learn a quite a bit about how to treat others who are different.
It is exactly how I have taught this book for years, tweaking and adding along the way. If you teach high school kids, especially ones who do not believe reading can be an enjoyable experience, YOU NEED TO TEACH THIS BOOK! And this guide will help you to do it.
Students often have a hard time understanding a text from the author's perspective, a question type that appears on many standardized reading comprehension checks. The following lesson works well to teach that concept and it also works well to teach Chapter 11 "More Than It's Gonna Hurt You: Concerning Violence" from How to Read Literature Like a Professor (for you AP Lit teachers out there).
First, start with this clip from Star Wars: Episode 4 - A New Hope. This is part of the first time we meet the character Han Solo. The only background needed at this time for the non-Star Wars fans is that they are in space at a bar and this guy we just met gets stopped by a bounty hunter (the green guy).
This scene serves as our introduction to this character. What does this tell us about Han Solo? Various answers will be given, but most will center on how calm and collected he was in the face of death and how clever he was kill Greedo without Greedo knowing he was in danger.'
Things were all fine for a while in Star Wars fandom, but then the director, George Lucas, kept toying with the scene - specifically the shooting scene and more specifically with Greedo's role in the shooting. Now show them all five shooting scenes and ask they why would George Lucas want to change the scene?
There will be various answers, but help them focus on that Lucas wanted the character of Han Solo to be more heroic. Having Han not just shoot first, but to be the only one shooting when Greedo had made it clear that he was going to take Han in alive, shows Han to be more of the Byronic hero type. If Greedo is shooting, then Han is shooting back in self defense. Changes the character just a bit (and drives old Star Wars fans insane).
This is a rare opportunity for us to see how an author (director) changes things up. Everything is done on purpose with a specific rationale. For a reader to move from what the plot means to how the author reveals it is a major step in advancing reading comprehension.
As far as AP Lit goes, this is an excellent way to show how this violent scene reveals character and how small changes in the scene reverberate out into changes to the characters as well.
I love teaching Macbeth. We break out the fog machine every time the witches make an appearance. It's just a lot of fun. I created a Google presentation for this that I have found to be great for a day or two lesson plans and can be used as a group project or solo.
The presentation presents Act IV scene i where the witches brew the pot and gives students to requirement to look up the ingredients to see what they actually could be or what they symbolize. How deep you want them to go is up to you and largely based on what your students are capable of.
For my regular level students, I provide them with a list of websites to help them find what I want them to find. For my AP and honors, I delete the links.
Here's what the second witch's potion looks like:
For my regular classes, it is an exercise in research and introduction to annotating. For my upper level, I require more information on what the ingredient may symbolize.
If you are interested, you can find it here: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/XET-Annotating-Shakespeares-Witches-7401238
And if you are about to introduce any Shakespeare unit, Macbeth or not, you may find this introduction useful help students grasp iambic pentameter and what it means by using the way the witches talk to show Shakespeare's command of the language: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/XET-Introducing-Shakespeare-to-Reluctant-Readers-7397714 It's title "Introducing Shakespeare to Reluctant Readers", but to be honest, it works great with my AP kids too.
I was sitting around yesterday and musing to myself that I needed to check for reading/review with the students what we read and I didn't want to do yet another reading quiz or Kahoot for it. Then I had an idea!
I don't get them often, but this one worked out pretty well with the first class I tried it on and I am looking forward to trying it on my next class, which is much bigger.
Here's the idea - I get the students to pair up (I'm going to try triple up in my next class) with someone who they feel has a comparable knowledge of last night's reading (in this case two chapters of Wuthering Heights). They play rock-paper-scissors and the winner can decide if he/she wants to go first or last.
Player 1 then tells Player 2 something that happened in last night's reading. If Player 2 agrees that it did indeed happen, Player 1 gets a point. Player 2 then tells Player 1 something else that happened in last night's reading. As before, if Player 1 agrees, then Player 2 gets a point.
This continues until eventually one player can't remember anything new and decides to make up something. Let's say Player 1 tells Player 2 that Heathcliff painted a life-size mural of Catherine on the wall of Wuthering Heights. Player 2 then decides whether or not it actually happened. Should Player 2 believe it, Player 1 gets the point and play continues. Should Player 2 not believe it, they call "Creative Nonfiction" and the game stops. At this point, Player 1 must then prove that what they said happened. If they can, then Player 1 gets to keep his/her points and Player 2 gets nothing. If they cannot, then Player 1 loses all of his/her points and Player 2 gets to keep his/her points. Their game is over and we wait for other groups to finish where we will then ask for students to point out the important parts we want to review and move on to the next lesson of the day.
What you use the points on is your call. I'm playing the Pyramid of Enlightenment in our class, which is a silly little game, so I use their points for that. You can use it for anything you'd like to reward your kids with.
Want some more types of reading checks that are not the norm? Try:
I have a Google Slides with memes on it relating to what we are reading in class. It is fun to have it on the screen when students enter the class and by having on Google Slides, I have easy access to it and can repeat it year after year. The majority are memes I found elsewhere and at this point, I don't remember which ones I made, which ones students created, and which ones I found, so let me just say that probably all of these are ones I found. Here are a few for your reading pleasure!
This is not my idea, but it is my presentation. I've always loved short ways for students to practice (thus the short daily reading comprehension questions I use for our state test (The Daily Dose of EOC).
When we have a spotlight reading day, the students come in to see this on the screen:
The idea behind this is that students are given a short passage and then a few minutes to start analyzing it. This cuts out the long reading process and allows us to get straight to literary analysis. I'll give my AP Lit class anywhere from 5-7 minutes for them to write this into their Spotlight Reading Journal and then we talk about it. If I were to use this for honors, I would probably give about the same. If I wanted to use this for regular level or younger classes, I would probably require two minutes of thinking before I started the writing process.
Most of them have guidance questions to help them if they need a push in their thinking.
The first question is always a "What did you notice first" type question. I also stress that they do not need to answer the questions nor even read the questions. I am always more interested in their thoughts. This can be done with art or video as well.
Initially I used these twice a week, but found that it became a chore for the students at that frequency. Now I do it once every two weeks (the class is a year-long class) and that has been more successful.
If you want to use mine, please do! If you create some yourself, I would love to see it. I am constantly trying to add better ones in to replacement my weaker ones that I started with a few years ago.
