Ms. Rumble's Portfolio
Standard #4:
Content Knowledge
The teacher undestands the central concepts, tools of inquiry, and structures of the discipline(s) he or she teaches and creates learning experiences that make these aspects of the discipline accessible and meaningful for learners.
Artifact #1: #15SecondsOfShakespeare Videos
Description: Shakespeare can be a very daunting topic for students in English class, so I wanted to give my students a Shakespearean experience they would never forget. So, by the time we finished the unit, they would fully appreciate his work. And one of the ways I did this was by having my students create videos as part of the #15SecondsOfShakespeare challenge that has been going through Hollywood as a means to bring awareness to the Red Cross foundation. The students chose a modern song and then videotaped themselves reciting their chosen song with a Shakespearean persona. It got the students involved with Shakespeare’s language in a way that connected to their own lives, with their favorite songs.
Rationale: I understand that Shakespeare has a stigma attached to his name that creates anxiety within students. I also used to have that same anxiety, but then I learned to love Shakespeare because I had teachers who made his amazing work worthwhile to learn. So I decided that we could get creative with this seemingly “archaic” material by creating fun videos that got the students comfortable with Shakespeare’s language and how Shakespearean performances were played. I put a modern twist on Shakespeare and the students couldn’t have had more fun with the assignment. They finally did work with a subject that can be really hard for a high school student to connect to.
Rationale: I read aloud to my students as an instructional modification. After getting to know my students via conversation, the student survey, and the CFA, I knew that reading aloud would be beneficial for their understanding of the texts. My students had so much going on after school that reading in class was helpful. I’ve also read articles that discuss the power of reading aloud to your students, helping in teaching them how to pronounce words and become better writers by enriching their vocabulary. For plays, each student took on a role each class to read aloud, like Hamlet and Our Town, because plays are supposed to be read aloud and should never be read internally. We would then stop periodically to discuss what was going on in the play and, with guiding questions from me, we would delve deeper into the material and actually see the textual evidence that supported those conclusions.
Artifact #2: Reading Aloud
Description: On the first day of teaching Hamlet, I stressed to my students that Shakespeare’s works are meant to be read aloud because they are plays, not novels. Each line is a piece of dialogue, and a play is one big conversation. So why would we ever read Shakespeare alone and in our heads? But it’s not just Shakespeare that I read aloud. I read I Am The Messenger aloud, as well as The Catcher in the Rye and Our Town. Reading aloud has been a really powerful tool to help teach the texts and for my students to better understand the material.