Summary
This lesson focuses on connecting the theme of honor and respect in Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” to the students’ world and everyday experiences. Through looking carefully at how the definition of honor is dynamic depending on the individual, culture, life experiences, and time period, students will discover that the characters within Shakespeare’s tragedy have different definitions of honor in the same way that we do today. By engaging in discussion and debate, generating hypotheses, analyzing societal trends, and completing an authentic assessment that aims at making Glen Allen High School a more honorable environment, students will develop a personal respect for and appreciation of the characters and themes in one of English literature’s most loved works.
TIPC Ratings
N/A: This is not the focus of the lesson. Students acquire knowledge on the subject of honor and respect based on their experiences and their knowledge of Romeo and Juliet.
Approaching: Students work in self-selected groups to create an honorable/dishonorable classroom. They have an opportunity to use any digital or non-digital tool they needed to create an environment they felt represented their interpretation of the classroom they are assigned. They also use a collaborative online bulletin board (Wallwisher) to record and share their honorable actions with each other and their teacher. Group norms are developed prior to this activity, and are utilized during the group work.
Approaching: Students are challenged throughout the class to not only determine what honor and respect means to them, but how it is interpreted in education and how they can display it in their own lives. The teacher uses ActivEngage to get all students involved in the discussion. The classroom scenario and online bulletin board are used to further develop students’ understanding and implementation of the topic. It is through these activities that the students will be pushed to not only explain what honor and respect means, but to give examples and reasons as to why they have come to that understanding.
Ideal/Target: Students are asked to create a classroom environment that is either the definition of honor and respect or the opposite. They are also asked to go out and create opportunities to show honor and respect in a purposeful way. Creating and acting out the classroom scenario provides students with an authentic task. The online bulletin board allows students to reflect on how they have implemented their learning.
Student Artifact
