Caitria Jade Cunningham

Professor Keeley
Education 302/303
10/6/14
Unit Plan Purpose Statement
The ultimate purpose of this unit plan is to equip students to be able to interact with visual,
auditory, and written media with more success. Shakespeares Twelfth Night, as a play, makes use of all
of these things and is an excellent vehicle for teaching them. The students will interact deeply with the
written text. They will also be reading and hearing it read aloud, moving to an auditory medium, and
they will both perform and see it performed throughout the course of the unit, covering the visual
aspects.
This unit should be extremely relevant to students lives. Although it is Shakespeare, which feels
very distant from todays literature and society, the study of the characters and their relationships, as
well as a close study of media and visual culture, and a very close look at the power of music, ought to
bring the issues this play addresses very close to the students. The exploration of these topics is very
relevant as todays culture is very visual, and many plotlines and relationships of todays literature,
movies, and television shows are deeply rooted in Shakespeares plays. In fact, the movie Shes the
Man, with which many of the students are familiar, is based on Twelfth Night, down to the names of
the characters.
One of the most important aspects of this semester of sophomore English is defined by my
teacher as cultural literacy. The desire to raise students knowledge of literary cultural heritage in
Shakespeare, here, and to cultivate their understanding of how words and poetry interact to create
something more than simple dialogue. The power of poetic devices and awareness of their presence is
something that will be developed in this unit. The students vocabularies will also greatly increase, which
leaves them better prepared for their continued education and place in society as they begin to grow up
and out of academia. Shakespeare is more than an old play, and this unit teaches it as fresh and new.