Julius Caesar Project Options

 I started a store on Teachers Pay Teachers! For more project ideas like this one, visit my store here.

Well, much to my students' excitement, we have finally finished reading Julius Caesar.

How can they not love a play that includes plotting an assassination and a woman swallowing fire?

 I gave them tests after each Act to ensure they were understanding it and the literary terminology associated with it, such as tragic hero, tragic flaw, theme, soliloquy, etc.

By the way, a really cool short cartoon film version of the play by Cliff Notes that I showed and they loved can be found here.

It does a nice job of hitting all main points, as well as labeling characters and including things like persuasion and rhetoric.

 In the past I've had them write in-class essays as sort of the capstone project, but I got bored with those, so I know the kids did, too. Plus we start our persuasive writing unit very soon, so they will be writing'd out.

Instead, I decided to come up with some more creative project options and let them choose which one they want to do.

I gave them 6 choices. On the handout they received, I inserted all of these into a chart and gave a description of the requirements for each. Here, I will be more brief.

1) Write a newspaper article including interviews with characters, photos, a headline, etc. that reports on all the major happenings in the play.

2) Write a modern-day version of this play: Students should write it in play format, but update it to 2013. They can change character names, setting, etc. but the THEME must remain the same. (I used the example of updating The Taming of the Shrew to the 90s film 10 Things I Hate About You.) Then the girls gushed about Heath Ledger for a few minutes lol.

3) Write a detailed interview with three of the main characters with you as the interviewer. I am making them do at least 2 pages for this one and write detailed and accurate responses for each question that are based on info from the play.

4) Plan out your own movie version of JC, including casting all main parts with modern-day actors, coming up with a setting, deciding which scenes you will cut and planning out at least 3 songs for the soundtrack.

5) Pretend you are one of the main characters and write three separate blog entries from that person's perspective. My students got so caught up on the fact that Portia killed herself by swallowing coals, so an example I gave was they could pretend they are Portia on the day of her suicide and blog about her thoughts and feelings leading up to her decision to kill herself as one entry.

6) Pick one Act and depict it in graphic novel format. It should contain at least ten frames, the drawings should have good detail, and the words can be in modern day language, but must be accurate to the play.

On Friday, I introduced the options and had them turn in a brief proposal outlining which option they chose and some preliminary decisions they made. So far, I have one student on each option except #6, but I had two absent students who both love drawing, so I think at least one will pick #6.

I love doing projects like this from time-to-time. Not only is it more interesting for the kids and they can hopefully find an option they really get into, but it is more interesting for the teacher to be able to read a bunch of different projects, rather than almost the same paper over and over again.

These options can be easily adapted to another play or even a novel or short story, as well as other content areas altogether. Feel free to steal it and tweak as necessary!

Breaking down the Bard

One of the most difficult units for me to teach sophomores is Julius Caesar. In general, Shakespeare is difficult unless they are really advanced readers because the language is so vastly different. There are many different activities I use to make Shakespare more fun, more current, and easier to understand, and I will post more ideas in other posts, but today I wanted to focus on an activity I did at school today--breaking down some of the longer speeches in Shakespeare and working with them.

If you are familiar with JC, you know in Act III there are two major speeches at Caesar's funeral: Brutus and Antony, with Antony speaking the most. Not only is this a great activity to teach the content, but also persuasive techniques and the use of ethos, pathos, and logos (more on that in another blog post because I do a LOT with it!)

I got some great ideas from the Folger Shakespeare Library, which is a great resource for all things Shakespeare, and made them my own.

I broke up all the big speeches into sections of about 20 or so lines. I copied them onto paper so I could blow up the font and also so students could annotate on them and mark them up; however, I had them keep their lit. textbooks open because they have some excellent vocab. definitions and footnotes in there to help with comprehension.

I broke the students into groups of 2-3 and each group got one of the sections of a major speech. They were given about 20 min. and asked to do the following:

1. Paraphrase this speech in your own words (we have been working with paraphrasing all year and I modeled it for them last week, so they are familiar with it. We also paraphrased a speech together in class on Friday).
2. How persuasive was this character? Point out examples of ethos, pathos, and logos with textual evidence (hello, Common Core!) Like I said earlier, we already would have covered these terms in an activity previously.
3. How did the commoners react to after this section of the speech was given? Whose side are they on currently (the conspirators' or Marc Antony's)?
4. When everyone was done, each group performed their speech in the tone and manner they imagined it would've been performed by this character. They then shared their answers and analysis with us.

Tomorrow I am going to show these speeches performed in a film version of the play to compare their interpretations and so they can see a fluent and dramatic reading of it.

Honestly I was so impressed with them today! When we read aloud as a group and I stop to ask questions and recap, they look at me like lumps on a log. This has proven to me they CAN interpret the meaning on their own, but just choose not to at times because it's convenient. Pretty much every group was right on in their paraphrase and correctly answered the questions, even using textual evidence well. 

Honestly, with difficult texts, you sometimes have to go line by line in order to get it, and the students need to be taught it's OK to spend a lot of time on a small piece of literature and really take your time with it. They are so used to getting everything yesterday, that it frustrates them :) Bonus for teachers: close reading is emphasized by Common Core!

Well the kids are hoping and praying for a snow day tomorrow. We're supposedly getting 6-8" and it may start around 5 AM. I am packing a bag tonight in case I can't make it home after school (I commute 50 min). So I might be hoping a little bit for a snow day too!