May 2009
Jonathan Jones teaches English at North Hollywood High School, Los Angeles, California.
Plays/Scenes Covered
Love’s Labor's Lost 4.3.321-348
What's On for Today and Why
The students will watch a short film clip that uses music, images, and sound effects to illuminate a portion of Biron’s speech about love in order to attend to a close reading of the text. They will use this information to create a graphic illumination of their own, which, when collected with those of the class, will create a visual representation of Biron’s same speech which can be displayed together on a bulletin board in the classroom. The purpose of the lesson is to allow the students to complete a close reading of a text in a way that attends to their multiple intelligences, while maintaining a focused look at the language of the speech.
This lesson will take approximately one 60 minute class period.
What You Need
Ability to play the film clip. We recommend you download windows Media Player-see link below.
Drawing paper
Pencils
Folger edition of Love's Labor's Lost or Handout #1
Documents:
Handout #1: Biron
Love's Labor's Lost illumination
Links:
Windows Media Player 11
What To Do
1. Have students read through the selected scene as a class. Distribute a copy of the text to each student and ask them to read around the room, each student reciting one line of text until the piece has been completed. The students should mark any unfamilair words.
2. After the reading, appoint a few students to use the dictionary to define any words that the collective group cannot define through use of context clues (ideally asking the students to use the text to find meaning as much as possible).
2. Have students watch the clip that incorporates text from Love’s Labor's Lost asking the class to pay close attention to the how the images appear to relate to the spoke words.
3. Have the students watch the clip a second time, following along with the text, marking words that connect with the individual images. After the viewing, ask the students to look back at their marking and indicate which three word and image combinations they remember most significantly.
4. Ask the students to share their findings in groups of three or four. Each student will share her/his top three; thereafter, the group will decide which three or four are most significant which they will then share with the larger group. Ask a student scribe to put this selection on the board creating a class list of these most significant words.
5. Each student will take their top word (either of her/his own or from the larger group list—either is appropriate and acceptable) and the teacher will provide paper and colored pencils so the student can make an artistic rendering of the word. It can be related to the clip or preferably something of their own design.
6. On the back of their image, have the students write two sentences explaining why their word stood out in the speech and why their image reflects that word.
How Did It Go?
If each student has self-selected a word and is able in some way to articulate why they chose that word and what significance it has in the speech as a whole, he/she has successfully achieved the goals of this lesson. Artistic skill is irrelevant and the image can be as abstract as necessary to ensure each student completes the task.
If you used this lesson, we would like to hear how it went and about any adaptations you made to suit the needs of YOUR students.
