Using Shakespeare to Breakdown Ethnic and Geographic Barriers

Grade Level: 9-12

Academic Areas: Language Arts

Duration of service: 1-2 Months

Character Virtues: Giving, Respect

Service Areas: Human Services, Education/Tutoring

Service Learning Project:

Using Streams Online (a Linux-based, open-source software available free of charge at sol.tenpennyplayers.org), students will discuss and analyze Shakespearean sonnets with a distance learning partner that is from a geographic location that differs economically and socially from their own. Each pair will work to write its own sonnet. This sonnet will be presented in any format the pair feels comfortable with (reading it, performing it, creating an illustrated version of it, etc.) at a public venue such as the local library or public access television channel to which members of both communities involved will be invited. The participants will be "peer educators" for their schools either through assembly or class presentations (example - high school presenters to middle school students). Participants will perform or present their sonnet and share the growth process of learning about each other and breaking down barriers.

Learning Goal: Students will be able to analyze and define the qualities of a Shakespearean sonnet with the purpose of writing their own.

Standard: ELA #1 #2 and #3

Learning Goal: Students will be able to discuss the themes of sonnets and compare and contrast them with other Shakespearean works they have read

Standard: ELA #2, #3, #4

Community need: Students attending high schools in neighboring school districts have been in continuous conflict with each other. Students stereotype other students based on where they live/attend school (city, suburban, urban school districts) and their ethnicity.

Possible Community Partners: Streams Online, local libraries within both geographic areas

Objective: Breakdown stereotypes that exist between geographic areas and people of different ethic groups

Objective: Increase contact between students that are different from each other.

Character

Virtue: Respect

Objective: Students will increase their regard and value of the varying communities around them.

Virtue: Giving

Objective: Students will share their learning with the involved communities.

1. Students will brainstorm stereotypes that exist about the community they will be in partner with in the form of a KWL chart – What do you know? What do you want to know? (These two questions will be discussed and answered prior to beginning the project.) What have you learned? (This last question will be answered at the end of the project as a reflection activity.)
2. The teacher will find another class in a geographic location that differs economically and socially from that of the teacher’s class. Students will work in pairs, one student being from a rural/suburban school and the other being from a city school.
3. The teacher will be trained in how to use Streams Online: sol.tenpennyplayers.org
4. Teachers will conduct a brief review of any Shakespearean works that the students have read throughout their high school career.
5. Students will read and study two to three of Shakespeare’s sonnets.

Key Service Activities  

1. Using Streams Online, students will discuss and analyze the Shakespearean sonnets with their distance learning partner. Topics to be discussed include: How do the sonnets relate to students’ personal experience? How do the sonnets compare to other Shakespearean works? What are the literary elements of the sonnets? What clever ways did Shakespeare use to make his words and message fit into the structure of a Shakespearean sonnet?
2. Each pair will work to write its own sonnet. This sonnet will be presented in any format the pair feels comfortable with (reading it, performing it, creating an illustrated version of it, etc.) at a public venue such as the local library or public access television channel to which members of both communities involved will be invited.

1. (oral) As a class, students will discuss the "L" category of the KWL chart (see planning activity #1).
2. (written) Students will write a letter to their partner in the other school expressing their feelings on the project and on working together.
3. (performance) Students will invite the community to a forum in which they discuss what they learned about the community with which they were partnered. This might occur in conjunction with service activity #2.

Students’ poems will be collected and published in a book to be distributed to participants. Community members are invited to the performance mentioned in service activity #2. In addition, books will be distributed to participating members as well as attendees of the performance.