I plan instruction that offers support to each student in meeting rigorous learning goals by drawing upon knowledge of content areas, using cross-disciplinary skills and knowledge of learners and the context of their every day lives.
One must consider when contemplating this Standard: am I using varied instructional strategies to foster deeper learning? Am I helping students understand how content areas are connected? Am I helping students build skills and apply knowledge in meaningful ways?
1. The Theatre of Ancient Greece
(the lecture I created to explain Ancient Greek Theatre)
At the beginning of this unit, the first place I turned was the discipline of history in order to lay out the context for the play we were going to be studying. In my lesson plans for Greek Theatre, students benefited from this cross-discipline approach by first understanding the context of the circumstances of the society in which the play was written, the meaning to this society of tragic plays in particular, and how one might have seen this play performed. The assignment to create a Greek Theatre Mask, understanding that the Greek word for actor gave us the modern day word for “hypocrite”, and that the Greek word for mask was “persona” allowed students to apply knowledge of the ancient world with knowledge of the world in which they live today, expanding upon the “persona” of the mask they created, and what it means in the modern world to present a “persona”, a word of ancient origin.
3.The Twitter DM Translation Assignment
(student sample of this assignment)
In my lesson plans for Antigone, Scene 3 Ode 3, Scene 4 Ode 4, I leaned more heavily on the aspect of this Standard dealing with the use of learner knowledge and community context. In Antigone, we were contending with some very dense language and a play set in a world thousands of years ago. How could I make this relevant to them? How could I help them navigate through all of this unfamiliar language to the meaning it bore? In this particular part of the play, a very important exchange occurs between our antagonist Creon and his son, Haimon, betrothed to Antigone. I wanted to make sure the students actively understood what was being exchanged between the two of them. So I tasked the students to consider what the argument would have looked like if it had taken place over Facebook or a Twitter DM in the present day. Students were encouraged to read the passages (alone or with a partner) and “translate” the text. By engaging the prior knowledge of my students (what it means to engage in an argument over social media) and also draw in a community context (for students, social media interactions comprise a large part of what community means), students were able to grasp the meaning that would have otherwise been lost in archaic language.
2. Ancient Greek Funeral and Burial Research Assignment
One of my favorite examples of how I satisfied this standard during my student teaching experience occurred during the lesson plans for Scene 2 Ode 2 of the play. In Antigone, our eponymous protagonist vows to bury her brother at the risk of being put to death due to the decree of the newly crowned king. Although it was understandable that she would be highly upset, I asked the class, was I alone in wondering if this seemed somewhat extreme? In order to fully understand her motivations, we had to step out of our own modern context and consider the context of the Ancient Greeks and how they conceived of funeral and burial. Students took to the internet and searched for ten fascinating facts about this topic, and then shared their findings with the class. We then drew conclusions from our findings to better understand, in this historical context, why it would make perfect sense that she would be so willing to die: to the Ancient Greeks, a funeral wasn’t merely a funeral; her brother would be unable to pass on to an afterlife. So it makes perfect sense that she would give up her life in this world so that she could ensure that her brother had an afterlife, where she would join him. By considering the impact that the discipline of history could have on our study of this work of literature, by comparing and contrasting the world view of the ancient world with our world-view today, student learning was deepened and enriched. Content areas were indeed connected in meaningful ways, and cross-disciplinary skills were used.