Simon Rodberg Sonnets Lesson Plan
Teaching Shakespeare Institute 2006
“So Long as Men Can
Breathe or Eyes Can See”
Simon Rodberg
teaches English at the
Plays/Scenes Covered
A sonnet of the teacher’s choice. Sonnets 18, 29, 116, or 140 would work well.
NCTE Standards
Covered
1, 2, 3, 4, 11, 12
What’s On for Today
and Why
Poetry can seem difficult and dense on the page, but come alive in performance – think of the popularity of slams, freestyles, and ‘dis’ sessions. Shakespeare’s sonnets can be used as performance poetry as well, to give students ownership of the language and help them understand the sonnets as goal-oriented performances rather than dead words.
This lesson uses a sonnet of the teacher’s choice, and divides students into pairs to work on one or two lines each. The pairs create a motion for every word in their line or lines, then teaches the entire class that motion. The entire class discusses who this performance is aimed at, and why. Based on that discussion, the class can adapt the motions of the performance. Students work just on one or two lines at first, without reading the entire poem, so that they can become the experts on those lines without being intimidated by the whole poem.
What to Do
1. As a warm-up, ask students to write about the following questions: Why would someone write a poem? Who might someone write a poem for? What might a person do with the poem once he or she has written it? Ask students to share their writing.
2. Explain that today’s project will be to perform a sonnet by Shakespeare. Tell students that Shakespeare wrote both plays and poem, and that today, a poem will be treated as a script to be acted out. Model, or as a whole group do, the process with the first line or two: for every word (even “a” and “the”), create a motion to represent the word. Perform the first line or two as a class. Get students up and moving!
3. Split students into pairs, each with one or two lines from the poem, so that the entire poem is covered but no two pairs have the same lines. Do not give students the whole poem! Direct students to create motions, which they will teach the class, for every word in their line or lines. Move around the classroom helping students with unfamiliar words.
4. When the students are done, in order of the poem, have the pairs teach the rest of the class their lines and motions. (Write the poem on the board or a transparency, line by line as it is taught.) If more than one pair has a word, but different motions for that word, note the difference but do not change the motions at this point. Again, everyone should be on their feet and moving.
5. As a class, discuss to whom this poem is directed. Use the motions to decipher the object of the poem. As a class, discuss why the poet wrote the poem. (Note that the discussion is not “what does the poem mean” – but that question is dealt with through more concrete, accessible questions.)
6. Based on the discussion, discuss whether to change any of the motions, and which motion to use for any duplicated words.
7. As a class, do a “perfect” final performance of the poem.
8. Discuss, or have students write about, how the motions helped them understand the poem. Discuss, or have students write about, how they might use the principles of today’s activity – poetry’s goal orientation; the presence of a speaker and an audience; and language as representation of physical reality – to understand other poems.
What You Need
A sonnet, split up into lines or
pairs of lines (make sure your pairs of lines work together – generally 1/2,
3/4, 5/6, 7/8, 9/10, 11/12, 13/14) to be given to students.
A plan for how to split up the
students and the lines.
A board or transparency on which
to write the complete sonnet.
Dictionaries for students (if
available).
Room to move.
How Did It Go?
Did the students participate actively
in their pairs and in the full group? If so, they had a good experience with
poetry – priceless! Did their choices of motion make sense? Were they able to
identify an intended audience and purpose for the poem? If so, they used
performance to understand a poem. Did they identify metacognitive
principles for reading poetry? If so, they are now better equipped to
understand more poems.