Title: Sagas of Middle Earth
Opening activity or hook: Dol: Daily Diagram
Objectives
Materials needed: All the videos of LOTR you can lay your hands on. This includes the expanded version of the 2001, 2002, 2003 Academy Award winning films shot in New Zealand, as well as the earlier Ralph Bakshi films (c. 1978) and The Hobbit/Return of the King animated versions done in the early 70's (Rankin and Bass). Rankin and Bass are more intended for small children.
Tolkien has written a considerable body of work, and the students will be somewhat responsible for finding these themselves. Most are available through Amazon and Barnes and Nobel, as well as used bookstores. In addition, it might be wise to ask the librarians regarding holding on Reserve a complete set of those books edited by Christopher Tolkien, so that these are readily available for research.
Time Factor: should take no more than half of the course length (if not less), the first half being involved with Beowulf and close literary examination of Medieval Mythology.
Prep: Students will be given their groups and assignments early on in course, while Beowulf is still being worked through. LOTR presentations should be student directed as much as possible, and they will also work up the vocabulary list as we go.
Process and verbal directions:
1) Divide into groups, randomly.
Student directed portion of the course. Each group will somehow, via poster boards, Graphic presentation, recitation, etc present the section of the epic they were given. Bibliography will be provided, they are responsible for putting together a time line and a coherent story line, as well as a bibliography to go with the time line (something reproducible for everyone). Time for group presentation is set to no more than 20 min, no less than 10 min. Groups 2 and 3 should have more people in them.
2) As a class, assign parts or sections to various students, read aloud in class The Lay of Lethian. Start the section with this before you even get into the movies. Possibly do as a stage piece.
3) As a class, view all the movies (three video tapes and 6 extended DVDs of the LOTR movies). Second set of groups:
Each group will be responsible for a class presentation, and finding all the differences in the movies and the original texts. The movies will include those current popular movies, as well as the extended versions, and the movies by Rankin and Bass/Ralph Bakshi. Again, no more than 20 min, no less than 5 min. for presentations.
Movies if shown will occupy 17 days. If time at the end watch King Arthur movies and documentaries. Either edit severely or require signed releases from parents for the movie, as there is a lot of hacking and slashing in the King Arthur movie. Consider just showing portions of the DVD. The documentaries are pretty good and more appropriate.
Grading and assessment: May have groups assess themselves, internal evaluations. This is group work, and grading would be difficult from outside. A grade can be given to the group as a whole, and then combined with the internal evaluations.
I think some sort of final objective assessment should be given as to basic plot devices and characters in LOTR, taking great care (of course) to test on sections that are not included in the movies, or are written much different than presented in the movies. The purpose is to get the students reading. There is always someone who thinks they can slide through by watching the movie, and not reading the book.
Final: review elements of Beowulf, compare and contrast with Tolkien's saga (s) and review vocabulary
Reflection: This is a massive undertaking as I have it conceived, and by itself, might be worth an entire semester of study. LOTR is an incredible body of work, and I can say from personal experience, one of the best vocabulary builders I ever encountered in my own teen years. Up until the point I read this book, I have to confess to being a bit of a literary slug, and was pretty lazy about my personal reading selections. I can't remember how many times I actually set down the book (on the 5th reading) and actually looked up the word in a dictionary. Tolkien himself was an Oxfordian professor, and an expert in languages. My freshman year in High School, I was not only studying Latin and Spanish, but also Elvish in this book. Languages are very addictive, and if this book gets kids hooked on language, so much the better. Elvish script can be integrated into this course as well .
The nice thing about a course like this is that most of the kids will arrive having read the trilogy more than once. The purpose of the course is to get them into the earlier bits of the saga, some of which is really wonderful (The Lay of Lethian is one of the best things I've ever read.)
Again as with Beowulf, I intend to integrate Pagan mythology, and this course should be by elective only. The point is to engage the interest and the passion of the student and get them reading!!!!
Tolkien booklist
Children's books
Related writings and history: The Chronicles of Narnia. CS Lewis was a very good friend of Tolkien, and basically Narnia and Middle Earth came into being simultaneously. In the course of my research for this lesson plan, I found two factors which affected both authors and which pertain to the lesson. One is that both Lewis and Tolkien agreed that there was no definitive mythology for the English Isles (it had all been borrowed from elsewhere, that is Nordic/Saxon mythos and Roman mythos). So they wrote it, borrowing from all their reading and education. These two series are definitely English, but draw in elements from Norse, Classical Greek, and Celtic mythology and fairy tales.
The second has bearing on the time BEFORE Lord of the Rings. Lewis and Tolkien agreed to write in different areas: Lewis would take Space, and Tolkien would take Time. Lewis wrote the Perelandra series (sci-fi), and Tolkien began a fictional series about the Lost Continent of Atlantis. Eventually Tolkien's stories turned into his tales of Numenor (to be laid out in the never written novel Akallabeth) which, yes is part of the Lord of the Rings cycle.