Story Nuggets
brining fragments of text to life
This is part of a series of posts about practices we are leading at the Habla Teacher Institute in Mérida, Mexico and Chicago, IL.
Teaching Shakespeare
Twenty years ago, Mary Hartman from the theater group, Shakespeare and Co. in Berkshire, MA led a professional development workshop for me and a group of fellow teachers. At the time we had just started The ArtsLiteracy Project in the Education Department at Brown University—we were learning how various organizations, theaters, and schools were integrating theater, dance, and movement into more traditional education settings.
Shakespeare and Co. founded their education programs in 1978 with the goal of “immersing students in the world of Shakespeare and classical theater in active, engaging, and personally meaningful ways.” We often think Shakespeare should only be taught in high school with the idea that Elizabethan language is too difficult for elementary school students. Shakespeare and Co. introduces the youngest of students to Shakespeare, not by giving them an entire play, but by offering phrases and asking students to embody the phrases vocally and physically.
Their approach is similar with older students. They placed us into small groups and gave each group a monologue from Othello (this is before we did anything else with the play). The instructions were “collaboratively bring it to life.”
As an English teacher who had spent many hours with Shakespeare in various settings, this approach was a complete paradigm shift for me. There was no formal “lecture” introducing us to his work. There was no orientation to the play. We began right in the middle of the play with a monologue bringing it to life. It taught me that sometimes it is better to begin with “doing” rather than “saying.”
Story Nuggets: Introduction
With Shakespeare and Co.’s work as inspiration we expanded their approach to use with all texts at all grade levels. If I had to choose a “desert island” practice it might be this one. It’s incredibly versatile, engaging, and immediately immerses students in the focal text. I usually lead it before we read the full text, but I’ve also used it as a post-reading experience as well.
It’s important to note that this doesn’t replace a deep reading and discussion of the text. As I mentioned in my previous post, One Word Beginnings, our anchor text for the institute is The Lost Words by Robert Macfarlane. I divided up his opening essay into four parts and took participants through the following process. I’ve attached the full essay in English and Spanish below and having led Story Nuggets for many years with different texts, I’ve also included a variety of slides that show the different guidelines I’ve given when working with diverse texts from elementary to university level.
