Thursday, January 10, 2013

Yoda Speaks Shakespeare!

Stellar students I have!

In an effort to help students decode Shakespeare before we start "A Midsummer Night's Dream," we've been working with a few lessons and demonstrations about the language strategies The Bard employs such as contractions, omissions, and reversed sentence structure.  And lo and behold, I think it worked!  Though they were a bit skeptical at first, my seniors ultimately learned somthing, though I don't know how many of them will admit it.

To begin with, I presented a diagram of the Globe theater and a brief video highlighting elements of Elizabethan theater.  Kids took a few notes, guided by my list of questions, and then we discussed a few things.  A quick survey revealed all but about 3 of my students had the faintest idea of the Globe to begin with so this was pretty worthwhile in my eyes.  And judging from their elongated attention spans and intent disucssion, they seemed pretty into it.

I followed that lesson with the language tricks.  Pairs were given an envelope with 16 pairs of contraction, omission, and Elizabethan word pairs.  They made a grid of the slips, face down, and then played a version of the MEMORY game, turning over papers and trying to find a match.  I let them struggle with the words on their own to try to complete the pairs rather than give a cheat sheet so it was interesting to wander around and hear comments:

 "Anon, what the heck is that?"

"Ope goes with open!"

"Often - I found it!"

So if nothing else, kids now have a bit of a visual of the words and some early exposure to the common ones before we get the text of MSND.  There's a great outline here of the language strategies.

The next activity had kids building and rearranging a set of given words to make a variety of sentences.  First they were to arrange the words to form one that makes sense in our standard, American language.  Then I asked them to rearrange the words so it still made sense, but had a different structure.  So "my mother is gone" became "gone is my mother."  We did that a couple of times and ultimately ended up with some pretty good Shakespearean-sounding sentences.  And when at least one student from each class observed "it sounds like Yoda!" I was thrilled!  Yup, Yoda speaks Shakespeare.

So don't tell me, my lovely seniors, that you "don't get it" because you most certainly do!

And BTW, did I mention Shakespeare also invented texting shortcuts?

10 comments:

  1. Wow! I never knew that the way Yoda talked would have come from Shakespeare!

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  2. I learned a lot about the Globe. It was unique and fun experience; I had fun learning about the flag. I would of never guessed that Yoda spoke Shakespeare! When we did the mix and match with a partner that was kind of difficult because some of the words pears didn’t sound anything like the other one.

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  3. I thought that rearranging the sentences was realy helpful to understanding Shakespeare's language. He doesn't always put the words in the order we expect, which makes it harder to understand. I enjoyed this exercise.

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  4. I never knew that Yodas form of speech came from Shakespeares plays. How interesting.

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  5. I like how Shakespeares plays are like the short cuts that we use today.

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  6. Boyfriend ExtraordinaireFebruary 4, 2013 at 10:37 AM

    I really enjoyed this lesson! I actually found it funny it funny, because freshman year when we first read Shakespeare play that is what i thought of. I came to realize that just like Yoda he says the same thing, just in a different sentence structure. So i was really happy when you shared this lesson with my classmates

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  7. I never knew shakespeares was our short cut we use for texting that was very interesting. When we rearranged the sentences it made me realized how hard it was. I enjoyed it very much.

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  8. It was cool and had fun rearangeing the words

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  9. I think it crazy that Shakespeares way of talking is used now a days for texting. That's interesting.

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  10. I think that it was interesting how yoda spoke Shakespeare!

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