Experiencing Shakespeare: Up On Your Feet A FREE Electronic Field Trip Presented by the IQ Learning Network and the Folger Shakespeare Library

Transcription

1 Experiencing Shakespeare: Up On Your Feet A FREE Electronic Field Trip Presented by the IQ Learning Network and the Folger Shakespeare Library Date: April 23, 2013 Shakespeare s Birthday! Time: 1-2 p.m. EDT Grade Levels: 6-12 Cost: FREE DESCRIPTION: Celebrate Shakespeare s Birthday with a field trip to the Folger Shakespeare Library home of the world s largest collection of Shakespeare books and materials, and the leader in Shakespeare education! Experiencing Shakespeare: Up On Your Feet is based on the Folger s decades of experience working with all kinds of students and teachers, and their knowledge that the best way for students to understand Shakespeare is to get his language in their mouths and do Shakespeare having some fun and reading closely at the same time. Join four middle and high school students and a middle school teacher as they discover Shakespeare's language, make meaning of the words, and learn through performance. Participate in live, interactive segments that use Web 2.0 technology to allow students to ask questions, vote in polls, and more as they explore Shakespeare s plays and language. Experiencing Shakespeare: Up On Your Feet provides students and teachers alike with a valuable "Shakespearience," designed to expand both their knowledge of, and their interest in, our 449- year- old playwright. Register today at and get information on how to PARTICIPATE in the webcast. Experiencing Shakespeare: Up On Your Feet will be streamed live on April 23, The archived program will be available on demand for a limited time. Experiencing Shakespeare: Up On Your Feet is produced by The IQ Learning Network, a division of Alabama Public Television, in partnership with the Folger Shakespeare Library.

2 Experiencing Shakespeare: Up on Your Feet 2 STANDARDS: This field trip will help you meet the expectations of the Common Core State Standards as well as other standards. The ELA Common Core Standards specifically mention Shakespeare as an author of the kind of complex literary texts that our students need to be able to navigate and understand. Since the field trip is interactive and participatory, it takes you and your students through the sort of deep learning experience that the ELA Common Core State Standards describe and recommends. (Please visit literacy for more information on the Common Core.) In addition, Experiencing Shakespeare: Up On Your Feet correlates to the following NCTE Standards for the English Language Arts: Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts. They draw on their prior experience, their interactions with other readers and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification strategies, and their understanding of textual features (e.g., sound- letter correspondence, sentence structure, context, graphics). Students conduct research on issues and interests by generating ideas and questions, and by posing problems. They gather, evaluate, and synthesize data from a variety of sources (e.g., print and non- print texts, artifacts, people) to communicate their discoveries in ways that suit their purpose and audience. Students use a variety of technological and information resources (e.g., libraries, databases, computer networks, video) to gather and synthesize information and to create and communicate knowledge. Don t just watch: InterACT! JOIN STUDENTS FROM ACROSS THE COUNTRY! HOW TO PARTICIPATE: 1. Share your Shakespeare with us, and we ll share it across the country! Using these scenes from Romeo and Juliet and Much Ado About Nothing as your scripts, record your students or have them record themselves performing them. Get started today, and then upload their performances anytime between April 9 th and April 19 th. THE DETAILS Videos may be in in mp4, wmv, avi, or mov format. All video clips must be received by April 19th. Videos must be less than 50 MB in size. HOW TO SUBMIT YOUR VIDEO If possible, upload unedited videos in their original quality. Do not upload other file formats or project files. To upload your unedited video, simply transfer the clip from your camera to the computer hard drive, and then upload it. If using encoding software, such as Windows Movie Maker or imovie, make sure to encode videos in their original format and resolution. Videos encoded with high bitrates produce better quality.

3 Experiencing Shakespeare: Up on Your Feet 3 TIPS FOR MAKING A GREAT VIDEO Students should look at the camera when they deliver their line(s). PAUSING between the lines in the scene is really important. Record the entire scene. Feel free, however, to split up a role so that it is played by more than one student. It s a great way to involve more students. Pay attention to framing your subject. Send us both single person shots and two person shots. (For example, shoot one version in which Juliet is on screen and Romeo delivers his lines off screen; then make another in which Romeo is on camera too!) When shooting single shots, make sure your subject s eyes are in the top third of the screen. And don't cut off the top of someone s head! If editing and/or encoding is desired, we suggest Windows Movie Maker, free software for PC users that can be downloaded here. Or imovie, that can be purchased through the Mac App store. For best audio quality, minimize the distance between the person talking and the microphone, and record in a quiet area with no background noise. And don t forget to PAUSE between the lines! 2. Twitter: Be ready! PREPARE for the live event set up a class Twitter account and FOLLOW the IQ Learning to interact during the broadcast and for updates on this exciting adventure. Then PARTICIPATE in this live, electronic field trip! Tweet your questions NOW and during the live event Don t forget to RETWEET updates about the program to your followers and friends. 3. POLL your students Poll Everywhere will be used to allow students to vote on their favorite performance! Get familiar with how it works now! Use text messaging, online voting, or Twitter to submit responses to live poll questions during the program. Just be ready with your phone or computer. Instructions will appear onscreen during the broadcast. Use this dynamic, interactive, live, electronic field trip to discover Shakespeare s words, study them in context, and learn through performing! WORKING TOGETHER BEFORE THE FIELD TRIP: Try several of these varied activities so you all will be sharpened up, and ready to head to the Folger! 1. Establish prior knowledge by doing a class brainstorm about Shakespeare, his plays, and related topics. Keep the list visible during the field trip. 2. Try your hand at Twelfth Night. During the field trip, you will see our students and teacher at the Folger rehearse a bit, and then perform a short scene from Twelfth Night. You rehearse and perform the same scene for your script, and you ll be experts in the audience! In this scene, a little crowd of Lady Olivia s servants and relatives (Sir Toby Belch, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, Fabian, and Maria) decide to play a trick on Malvolio, Olivia s chief servant who always seems so vain, arrogant, and stuck- up... and always treats them with such disdain. They decide to convince Malvolio that Olivia is in love with him, so that he will make a big fool of himself in front of her, his boss. How do they do it? And do they succeed? Pass out the scripts and find out!

4 Experiencing Shakespeare: Up on Your Feet 4 3. Watch the brief video clip (5:00) in which Dr. Michael Witmore, the Library s director, talks with Daniel, a high school student, as they look through three of Dr. Witmore s favorite books in the Folger vault. o Book of magic with instructions for invoking spirits, written by hand sometime between 1577 and 1583, and its connection to The Tempest o Essayes, published in 1603 and written by Michel de Montaigne who is credited with inventing the essay o The First Folio, the volume containing 35 of Shakespeare s plays collected by two members of his acting company and printed for the first time in 1623 Then, with your students, consider these questions: o What do Dr. Witmore and Daniel feel is important about the Folger collection? What other things do you think might be important about a collection of books like those at the Folger? o Have you heard the word magus before? How is it pronounced and what does it mean? Why is Dr. Witmore talking about it? o Are there other plays written by Shakespeare that include elements of magic and witchcraft? Why might he be writing plays on these kinds of topics in the early 1600s? o Do you write in books? Why? Why not? Have you observed others family members, fellow students, or other members of your community writing in books? Why and in which books? In the year 2500, will people know what you thought of the books you are reading now? Why? Why not? 4. Watch the brief clip (4:15) of Dr. Gail Kern Paster, Shakespeare scholar and former director of the Library, with Vidya, a high school student, in the Library s Reading Room answering her questions about what scholars do. o The kinds of topics that scholars from all over the world come to study about in the Folger collection o A significant difference between the first printed quarto* version of Romeo and Juliet (printed in 1597) and the second version, printed two years later in 1599 o The kinds of choices editors must make when they are putting together the version of the play that you are reading in class o How scholars and students go about studying the plays in similar ways Then, with your students, think about these things: o Dr. Paster and Vidya look at and think about two very different versions of the wedding scene in Romeo and Juliet (act 2, scene 6), one printed in 1597 and the other in Below are more excerpts from those scenes for you and your class to read through and think about. We have left the original spelling so that you and your students can see that people pretty much spelled words as they wished in the late 1500s. o Some questions for you to consider: These scenes were written two years apart. Talk through where these versions of the same scene seem similar and seem different to you. Pay attention to who is speaking to whom, and what specifically they are talking about. Does one of these scenes seem to be

5 Experiencing Shakespeare: Up on Your Feet 5 moving faster than the other? If so, which one and why? Does one of these scenes seem to be darker and hinting of their sad future? If so, which one and why? Which of these scenes seems more dramatic and effective to you and why? * a book with pages of a size traditionally created by folding a single sheet of standard- sized printing paper in half twice, giving four leaves or eight pages 1597 Quarto I: Romeo. morning here she pointed we should meet, And consummate those never parting bands, Witnes of our harts love by joyning hands, And come she will. Friar. I gesse she will indeed, Youths love is quicke, swifter than swiftest speed. Enter Juliet somewhat fast and embraceth Romeo See where she comes, So light of foote nere hurts the trodden flower: Of love and joy, see see the soveraigne power. Juliet. Romeo. This

6 Experiencing Shakespeare: Up on Your Feet 1599 Quarto II: Romeo. Amen, amen, but come what sorrow can, It cannot countervale the exchange of joy That one hort minute gives me in her sight, Do thou but close our hands with holy words, Then love devouring death do what he dare, It is though I only but call her mine. Friar. These violent delights have violent endes, And in their triumph die like fier and powder: Which as they kisse consume. The sweetest honey Is loathsome in his owne deliciousnesse, And in the haste confoundes the appetite. Therefore love moderately, long love doth so, Too swift arrives, as tardie as too slowe. Here comes the Lady, Oh so light a foote, Will nere weare out the everlasting flint, A lover may bestride the gossamours, Enter Juliet 6

7 Experiencing Shakespeare: Up on Your Feet 7 That ydeles in the wanton sommer ayre And yet not fall, so light is vanitie. Juliet. Good even to my ghostly confessor. EXTENDING YOUR STUDENTS LEARNING AFTER THE FIELD TRIP: 1. As a class, check through your prior knowledge list that you made before the field trip. Make corrections and additions based on what your students new knowledge of Shakespeare. 2. Perform the very short pieces from A Midsummer Night s Dream that our Folger friends experimented with during the field trip. 3. Then, do another short scene together as a class. You don t have to start with Act 1, Scene 1 and you don t have to do an entire play! Many middle and high school students like to perform the following scenes: Othello, 1.1 (Iago rudely awakens Desdemona s father) Julius Caesar, 3.3. (Cinna the poet is attacked by a mob) Hamlet, 1.1 (Hamlet s father s ghost appears to the soldiers) Macbeth, onwards (Macbeth meets the Weird Sisters) A Midsummer Night s Dream, 1.2 (The rustic actors are introduced) Much Ado About Nothing, 4.1 (Beatrice urges Benedick to kill Claudio) Romeo and Juliet, 3.5 (Juliet angers her parents) The Taming of the Shrew, 2.1 (The two sisters quarrel)

8 Experiencing Shakespeare: Up on Your Feet 8 4. A little about iambic pentameter: The way we speak has a natural rhythm, and Shakespeare used this to great advantage in his plays. Rhythm, just like music, is measured in feet or meter. An iamb is two syllables, the first unstressed, the second stressed, like a beating heart: ta TUM. When there are five iambs in a line of poetry, we call it iambic pentameter: ta TUM, ta TUM, ta TUM, ta TUM, ta TUM. Shakespeare wrote most of his plays in iambic pentameter. Here are a few examples you already know: But SOFT, what LIGHT through YONder WINdow BREAKS? So FOUL and FAIR a DAY i HAVE not SEEN. What other poems are written in iambic pentameter? Try writing a short poem in iambic pentameter. 5. Students as Directors: Use Houston teacher Erica Smith s smart ideas about engaging all of her students in interpreting Shakespeare s plays. She s on video at and- Learn/Teaching- Resources/Audio- - Video/Teacher- to- Teacher- Series/Students- as- Directors.cfm

9 Experiencing Shakespeare: Up on Your Feet 9 6. Shakespeare in today s culture: What movies, songs, or television shows have your students seen that remind them of Shakespeare s plays? Shakespeare continues to influence popular entertainment. Check out Songs Inspired by Shakespeare for a list of songs that connect with Shakespeare, his characters, or his language: On/Digital- Folger/Play- On.cfm EXTENDING YOUR OWN LEARNING AFTER THE FIELD TRIP: The Folger Shakespeare Library is a center for Shakespeare education in the United States. We publish the Folger editions of the plays as well as workshops, educational books, toolkits, and extensive online materials for elementary, middle and high school teachers. The Folger s Teaching Shakespeare Institute has provided professional development programs for teachers across the country since Can we help you teach Shakespeare? Please find us at IQ Learning Network is a division of Alabama Public Television