Shaking Up Shakespeare: an AP Literature Mash-Up _King Lear_ Project
Tuesday, 18 September 2007 Clay Burell 
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In one of the great ironies of my life, I’m probably the only HS teacher at KIS not to have a 1:1 classroom, since I teach only AP Lit for seniors – the only grade level not required to buy MacBooks for school this year. But yesterday, I jumped in anyway with a project that incorporates the constructivist and 21st century literacy / web 2.0 ideas of having students create a “legacy product” for their assessment, instead of turning in stale homework to teacher.
Here’s the scoop: We’re reading Shakespeare‘s greatest and most difficult tragedy, King Lear. The syntax and diction of the play are over the students’ heads, with a couple exceptions, but they have to become proficient at reading 16th century English for the AP Exam. So that’s the learning objective: give them practice at accurate comprehension of 16th c. English.
So here’s the “Constructivism 2.0″ project to work toward that goal:
1. I created a wiki on Wikispaces (free for teachers), entitled “King Lear Street Talk.” We’ll use this wiki to create a student-written modernized prose translation of Shakespeare’s play. (Setting up the wiki took only ten minutes, max. An eight-year-old can do it.)
2. In teams of two, students have to write a translation of one page of the play into today’s English. Accuracy counts, and so does the quality of the script they’re re-writing. If any team has a disagreement about how to translate any section of their page, they have to cover their butts by explaining, in the wiki page “Discussions” page, what they disagree about. Pedagogically, we all know that to translate archaic language into modern language, we have to comprehend that archaic language. So this is practice and close reading and comprehension on a line-by-line, focused level.
3. We’ll keep translating the play until we have the full 5-act play translated. We’ll publish that as a free e-Book using Lulu.com, which anybody can download to read.
4. We’re also going to record “radio performances” of our modern translation of the play on GarageBand podcasts, and upload them to Librivox.com, a literature podcast site that is a library of readings of copyright-free, public domain world literature. Senior citizens, blind people, and people who just like audio-books use this site to listen to 1,000′s of different titles. This can also be used by future classes as an intro to the tragedy – ESL students, younger students, and others can benefit by listening to these podcasts before reading the original version. So the students are becoming teachers of future students with this product.
So this will give students practice in all the AP Lit and Language Arts skills on our Standards and Benchmarks – reading, writing, speaking, listening, critical thinking (which comes when they debate opposing interpretations with their teammate, as well as when they decide how to act out different lines when they record their radio play podcast).
But instead of doing that in the old, stale way – handing in their translations to teacher, and performing a giggly mess in front of the class – they’re making a real product that they can share with the world, and – for the excellent performers – mention on their college applications as an example of their best work as part of their “digital portfolio.”
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Tags: assessment, audio, critical thinking, lessons, literacy, speaking skills, teaching, wiki Print This Post
No. 1 — September 18th, 2007 at 6:58 pm
Clay,
Fantastic project! My Current Events class is still in the “lurkers” stage of development (awaiting permission to use a private PBWiki site – all interaction is blocked on our server and must be reviewed and given the O.K. by our Superintendent. Sigh.) but I’m trying to show the students what’s going on in the wider world: they had a glimpse of Anthony’s history wiki today.
I spent a golden glorious summer studying at Oxford when I was an undergraduate. We focused on 17th century poetry and Shakespeare’s “King Lear”. Our course included an impromptu performance of the play in class, followed by a trip to Stratford-on-Avon to see the Royal Shakespeare Company’s much grander version.
Lear’s Fool would do well in an educational setting:
FOOL: The reason why the seven stars are no more than seven is a pretty reason.
LEAR: Because they are not eight?
FOOL: Yes, indeed: thou wouldst make a good fool.
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No. 2 — September 18th, 2007 at 7:09 pm
I taught Hamlet five years ago by having students translate a few acts into modern English. That was, by far, the best experience I’ve ever had teaching Shakespeare. The students were incredibly engaged and gave the text the closest reading I’ve ever seen.
Your 2.0 refinements are inspiring and, as I happen to get to teach Hamlet again this year, I look forward to borrowing from you heavily.
Thank you for sharing.
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No. 3 — September 18th, 2007 at 8:32 pm
Diane (*sigh* indeed!) and Matt – thanks for the encouragement. Matt, we should talk about making a web archive of Shakespeare works over the years. That would be interesting, huh?
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No. 4 — September 18th, 2007 at 10:12 pm
Clay,
It’s great to see your vigor for the classroom is alive as ever with the introduction of yet another truly authentic learning experience.
I am going to scout out our curriculum tomorrow for our AP Lit teachers and see if they, too are reading King Lear and have them use your page as “cheat sheet” when they have difficulty.
We need to talk soon about some possible projects.
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No. 5 — September 19th, 2007 at 12:54 am
Patrick – let’s. Good to hear from you. Love the work you’re doing!
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Renee Reply:
January 25th, 2010 at 9:20 am
I am very interested in your King Lear project. I’m just wondering how long it took for the full translation and did your students do this on their own time or your class time? I have very small AP classes and think it would take weeks on end to finish this project as much as I would like to try it. Any info or advice you could give would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks!
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Clay Burell Reply:
January 25th, 2010 at 9:46 am
Hi Renee,
Jeez, that was two years ago, so all memories have passed their expiration date.
I think I divided the text between two classes with no redundancies, so that roughly 20 pairs were doing 2 pages or so each in class for around 30-minutes per class for a couple of classes. That would equal 40 pages in one day, so I don’t think it took more than a week.
And yes, it was in class so that they could ask for clarification of the vocab, allusions, syntax, and all the rest, and use me as a resource.
Be warned: Sparknotes now has translations of all of Shakespeare free online, so unless you give it a twist, plagiarism will be a real temptation.
Good luck
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No. 6 — April 17th, 2010 at 12:17 am
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