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Allison Butcher

Dr. Nolte

April 29, 2020

ENG 419

Drama Unit Reflection

When I began planning my drama unit, I first started by thinking of an idea for my

summative assessment. I chose to do this because I wanted to ensure that the assignments that I

would be using during the first week of my lesson plan would be beneficial when it came to this

project. Because my summative assessment uses vocabulary, stage direction, and adding sounds

into videos in order to encourage the students to think about rising and falling action, I was able

to find corresponding activities in Reading Shakespeare with Young Adults by Mary Ellen Dakin.

After this, I had to choose which two weeks of my unit that I would write lesson plans for, so I

decided to write one week of pre-reading activities and one week of the summative assessment

project.

I am teaching these objectives because my goal is to make students more comfortable

with Shakespeare. Though the language can be intimidating for young readers, I believe that

giving students the opportunity to baby step into the play is the best way for them to more easily

comprehend it. I made the objectives as similar as possible to the state standards as possible

while also trying to include details about the lesson plan within. I typically only include a couple

objectives within the lesson plan because I do not want the students to get overwhelmed if they

have too many tasks to accomplish in one day, so if the state standard has multiple aspects then I

tend to spread them into various days.

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The play, Romeo and Juliet, is the best Shakespearean play to teach to ninth graders

because it is most likely the one that they will relate the most to. The play is about love, being

rebellious, and has multiple fight scenes within. If the play is taught correctly, then this could

genuinely be something that the students enjoy learning about. Shakespeare is also important for

students to learn because of his impact on the English language. Understanding where words

come from can help students more easily understand how to use them.

This unit pulls some ideas directly from Reading Shakespeare with Young Adults by

Mary Ellen Dakin. There are three worksheets that she came up with that I utilized called weird

words, soundscapes, and explicit stage directions. I felt that the research from Dakin’s book was

the best research to use since it directly related to Shakespeare. The summative assessment was

also related to Dakin’s idea of film to lit. Though I extended the assignment for the students to

create a video and script aspect, this is where the idea originated.

Prior to teaching this assignment to a class, I think that I may extend it to make it longer

than a five-day project. If the students presented on a Monday and Tuesday of the following

week, then we could use half of the class time for revision and the other half to complete another

activity to help the students with comprehension. The issue with this plan would be having some

groups present before the other. I would have to find a way to make sure the students who

presented on the following day were not working on their projects after some groups had already

presented because giving one group more time would be unfair.

It would also be beneficial to spread out the days of videoing for the students so that they

could all work on it at the same time. I had originally planned to let students who finish one

activity early begin videoing, but I think it would be more beneficial to the group if they could

work on it all together. Giving the students fifteen minutes for a span of three days to complete
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the videoing would probably be enough time to finish it, but I would allow for extra time in a

contingency plan just in case.

One thing that I regretted doing in this unit was not adding an essential question to any of

the plans. I think that if this were planned out the right way, it would allow the students to relate

to the characters more. I could ask something like, “Have you ever disagreed with your parents

about something that was important to you?” and it would encourage the students to see that the

main characters of this play have more in common with them than they may realize. This would

most likely be something that I do if I were to extend the plan to seven days rather than five.