Long-term objective:
Learn to identify themes, learn to analyze works of literature, and learn to recognize and identify literary techniques.
Short-term objective:
To be able to understand the major themes of Pride and Prejudice.
Specific lesson objective:
In groups of two, students will pick out quotations from the novel Pride and Prejudice. These quotations must fit under the following categories: visiting, meals, customs and practices at parties, leisure activities, or engagement and marriage customs. Understanding each of these categories will provide the students with a more in-depth understanding of the novel, and will better enable them to identify the novel's major themes. Once the students have completed this assignment, they should present their findings to the class.
Materials:
Paper, pencil, and Pride and Prejudice
Procedures:
Divide the students into pairs. Assign a specific category to each group.
A. Identification
Get the students to skim the book and look for quotations which fit into their categories. Tell them to write down each quotation, and its page number.
B. Analysis
Once the students have identified the quotations, have them analyze each quotation in the context of the novel. Tell them to look at who said it, to whom he or she said it, and the situation in which the person said it.
C. Synthesis
Each group presents their findings to the class and the class has a discussion on how each of these categories relate one another and to the overall meaning of the novel.
Evaluation:
Students would not get a grade for this assignment. Because this lesson is not extremely time-consuming nor is it too difficult, it could be completed in one class period; thus, the teacher could give a class participation grade instead.
Long-term objective:
To help students better understand character development and character traits, and to help students understand how characters relate to the overall theme of novels.
Short-term objective:
To help students understand the characters in Pride and Prejudice, character development, and character motivation. Helping the students understand the characters will help to elicit a response other than "so what" or "who cares." It may also help the students empathize with or relate to the characters.
Specific lesson objective:
Ask the student to write a paper on a specific character from Pride and Prejudice. Get the students to pick three defining character traits of the character they select, and write an in-depth analysis of that character based on those traits, making sure to include supporting details and specific quotations from the text. Make sure to note the character's moments of interaction with others as well as his or her dialogue and/or thoughts to himself or herself in private moments.
Materials:
Paper, pencil, Pride and Prejudice
Procedures:
Assign the paper two weeks before the due date in order to give students time to organize their thoughts and perfect their papers.
1. Outline and thesis statement
Get the students to develop their thesis and design the paper's outline the night the paper is assigned. Check over these in class and make helpful suggestions to the student.
2. First draft
Have the students bring their rough drafts to class the week before the assignment is due in order to keep them on task and to make sure they are on the right track with their assignment.
3. Proofreading
Pair the students and let them proofread each other's papers in class, making sure to check for grammatical errors such as comma splices, pronoun-antecedent agreement, errors in verb usage, etc.
4. Final draft
Have the students type their final draft on computer and turn it in on the due date.
Evaluation:
Give the paper two grades: one for grammar, one for content. As for the content, check to make sure the student has a three-point thesis (in this case, the three defining character traits), make sure he or she intersperses specific quotations from the book, and make sure he or she backs up what he or she says. As for grammar, check to make sure the student writes clearly and coherently. Check for subject-verb agreement, pronoun-antecedent agreement, comma splices, misplaced modifiers, etc.
This assignment is very similar to a character analysis, only a bit more in depth and a bit more difficult.
Long-term objective:
To help students better understand character development and character traits, and to help students understand how characters relate to the overall theme of novels.
Short-term objective:
To help students understand the characters in Pride and Prejudice, character development, and character motivation. Helping the students understand the characters will help to elicit a response other than "so what" or "who cares." It may also help the students empathize with or relate to the characters.
Specific lesson objective:
Have the students select a character from Pride and Prejudice. Instead of writing in the third person as with the character analysis, students will write in the first person, taking on the persona of the character, exploring the character from a personal and critical perspective. Write a letter from the you as the specific character to another character in the play. This will require the student to study both the character he or she is portraying and the character he or she is writing to.
Materials:
Paper, pencils, and Pride and Prejudice.
Procedures:
1. Character study/Analytical skills
Each student picks a character from the book, and traces the character throughout the entirety of the book, making sure to look at character development, character traits, the character's fears, concerns, values, likes and dislikes, friends,and enemies, etc. In other words, the student must find what makes his or her character tick. The student must also decide which character he or she is going to write the letter to. Therefore, the student must do exactly the same with that character as he or she did with the other one.
2. Writing skills
The letters must be grammatically correct and must be clear and coherent. The letters must flow logically from one sentence to the next and must show that the students have a firm grasp on the characters as well as the novel as a whole. Furthermore, students must include supporting details from the text and use specific quotations from the text.
Evaluation:
Students will read their letters to the class and turn in a written copy. Thus, students will get an oral and written grade. The oral grade will be determined based on the student's speaking skills, his or her presentation as a whole, and his or her knowledge of the character. The written grade will be based on content and grammar.
Long-term objective:
To show students how cultural events and social customs affect the people in pieces of literature.
Short-term objective:
To teach students about the society, the culture in which Jane Austen lived, and how the social customs affected her writing and the people and world in which she lived.
Specific lesson objective:
Have the students write a society column, ala Miss Manners, on the society in which Jane Austen's novels take place, focusing on one particular event, such as the ball at Pemberley in Pride and Prejucide or tea at the Dashwoods in Sense and Sensibility. Students must act as an etiquette columnist when writing these columns, making sure to note social conventions, social attitudes, social structure, etc.
Materials:
Paper, pen, a Jane Austen novel, and computer access
Procedures:
1. Identifying social conventions, social attitudes, social structure in the novel.
Once students select a novel and a particular event in the novel, have them make a list of identifiable social conventions, etc., which will help them to narrow their focus.
2. Writing the column
Students can be as creative as they want with this column as long as they fulfill the requirements of the assignment. They must organize their thoughts, back up what they say, and use direct quotations from the novel. Remind students to check for grammatical errors and suggest that they proofread each other's columns.
Synthesis
Divide the students into groups of four-six. Have them create a society newspaper on a computer. The number of articles in the paper must be equal to the number of students in the group. Each group's newspaper must have a title, a table of contents, and a logo, and each article must also have a title. Each group must have copies to distribute to the other students in the class.
Evaluation:
Students will turn in the final copy of their group newspaper. Each group will get a grade based on effort, grammar, content, creativity, and neatness.
Long term objective:
To give the students a more in-depth understanding of Victorian and early modern British literature.
Short term objective:
To learn about specific authors of Victorian and early modern British literature.
Specific lesson objectives
Each student selects and researches a specific British author. Personifying that author at a Victorian tea party, the student reports on the author by responding to questions posed by the teacher and other members of the class. The librarian prepares tea, tea sandwiches, and scones or shortbread with lemon curd or strawberry jam and whipped cream. Before the tea is served, the Queen, portrayed by the teacher, rings the bell and the home economics teacher brings in the royal tea service. Then the home ec. teacher instructs the class on proper tea etiquette. Before the day of the tea, the teacher has selected a master of ceremonies from the list of authors. At this time, with the English teacher impersonating Queen Victoria, each student is introduced to the Queen as the assigned author. The "author" discusses personal/literary accomplishments, interests, and attitudes about contemporary Great Britain. The student may bring information on an index card and is required to bring a three-dimensional prop.
Materials
Encyclopedias in library, CD-ROM encyclopedias, Information Finder by World Book, books by and about the selected British authors, Nineteenth Century Literary Criticism, Moulton's Library of Literary Criticism, Dictionary of Literary Biography, Oxford's Companion to British Literature, The Critical Temper, and others
Procedures
1. Selecting an author
Students must select an author from the following list: Jane Austen, Matthew Arnold, Dylan Thomas, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Thomas Hardy, Joseph Conrad, H.G. Wells, Rudyard Kipling, Charles Dickens, George Elliot, James Joyce, Charlotte, Emily, or Anne Bronte, George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, A.E. Housman, Lord Alfred Tennyson, Gerald Manley Hopkins, William Butler Yeats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, or Virginia Wolfe
2. Researching author
Students must assume the identity of the author. As soon as the student is sure which author he or she wants to be, he or she must sign up immediately for the author. Th students must be find out the author's full name, place of birth, party attending, age, present accomplishments, literary accomplishments, best-known and favorite works, subject matter, interests, attitude toward social conditions during the reign of Queen Victoria, interests in common with other guests, family life, and date, place, and circumstances of death.
3. Presentation
Students must present the Queen, her court (librarian, another English teacher, and world history teacher), and the other authors with all of the required information at the tea party.
Evaluation
Students will be graded on the amount of material they cover and on their presentations to the class. They will be given a participation grade and will be rewarded with the food at the Tea Party.
Feel free to email me at JenE1996@aol.com!!