UnitPlanGenreStudyConfer

- Hidden Identity: Finding Yourself in Romeo and Juliet (2008) by Stacie Rustin - Romeo and Juliet (2003) by Lynn Berry, Sarah Donovan, and Meghann Hummel - Shakespeare’s Word: Love, Marriage, Blood, and Hands in Romeo and Juliet (2009) by Beth Pitman 2. Freshman year is a pivotal time for young adolescents. Each of these unit plans are anchored around //Romeo and Juliet//, who happen to be around the ages of the students who are reading this play. There are so many ways to teach this, themes to pick out, and also life experiences to point out as well. It seems to be not only a masterpiece that students who are in adolescence can appreciate, but it is also so practical. 3. I enjoyed the unit plan by Berry, Donovan, and Hummel because it was thorough and their rationale interested me as soon as I began to delve into it. They gave reasons why they wanted to teach this unit while also stating why there are some objections to teaching //Romeo and Juliet// to high school freshman. I walked into this unit plan with an open mind and these educators convinced me that there are so many wonderful ways to adapt the play to real life while also introducing students to Shakespeare in a subtle way. The authors of this unit plan point out that Romeo and Juliet are characters whom students can understand because the issues, although we are hundreds of years into the future, are still the same. 4. All of these unit plans are well put together and include all the things necessary for it to be considered clear. If I were a substitute, I would be able to teach all of these units with little or no problems stemming from the content given to me. As far as something to change goes, I would alter Rustin’s rationale a bit. She tends to give a summary of //Romeo and Juliet//, rather than actually say more about why she’s teaching it or how students will benefit from it. She also mentions gangs and how it might be able to help those students focus if she ties in the familiarity of their fighting to that of the families. I felt like Rustin should have taken more firm of a stance on that subject. Don’t mention a relation to gang violence if you’re not willing to take the chance to discuss that with the play. 5. All of them have a rationale, timed activities and class periods, and descriptions of the actual activities. Berry, Donovan, and Hummel include everything from worksheets to rubrics in their unit plan. The other two do include most things but the full content is not as detailed. Their class period schedules are also a bit shorter. I found myself wanting more details or at least more visuals of these activities that I’m reading about. 6. Training, necessity for detail, and work ethic, probably account for these differences. They are all similar in structure because a unit plan or lesson plan are generally set up in the same ways. The content is different also because the largest and “best” of these unit plans was constructed by three educators, while the others have only one creator each. Three heads are definitively more effective than one. 7. - Relevance- If I look back to the rationale, I should understand the importance of each part of the unit plan. - Content- It should all be meaningful and not include busy work or fillers. - Organization- This plan should flow well and hopefully build with each lesson. It should not be flip flopping back and forth between ideas and themes. - Interesting- There should be activities and lessons that keep every student immersed. - Diversity- There should be something for every student to connect to and enjoy, while every learning style is addressed in some way. 8. The relevance and need for the information to be taught constitutes ELA curriculum. We teach what we feel will be lucrative for students in the future while also hoping that it will be of some interest as well. Good instructional practices are those that make every student have the desire to listen, at least to some part of what you are teaching. Not every student will be engaged or even remotely interested in what is going on in the classroom. If students are immersed and the educator makes sense, practices are clearly successful. If we know our students, our actions will be for them which is most important. 9. All of these plans put emphasis on the fact that Romeo and Juliet are characters whom students can understand. The play is full of themes, lessons, and scenarios that adolescents deal with every day. Love, competition, rebellion, hostility, family issues – the list can go on. Each of these lessons have the attitude that //Romeo and Juliet// can not only help the students ease into Shakespeare and sophisticated writing, but also to see that many of their problems are timeless. The educators who constructed these lesson plans knew exactly what they wanted their students to get out of the lessons. 10. I disagree slightly with the fact that Rustin focuses quite a bit on deceit. I’ve never seen Romeo and Juliet as a play meant to scare you into being truthful. To me, it’s more about a young man and woman who were caught in the pettiness family struggles. Yes, deceit is wrong and there are many tangled webs woven, but I do not think that it is appropriate to end this unit with such a weak lesson learned.
 * 1) The three unit plans that I chose are: