Janelle's+5th+Journal

Jon and I had the opportunity for starting a totally different unit in poetry: sonnets. Our lesson mainly revolved around what makes up a sonnet (what kind of rhyme scheme it has, how many syllables are in a line, what kind of meter sonnets are written in, and what rhythm is used), and how Shakespeare wrote them in "Romeo and Juliet" (poem within a poem). Monday was a rundown, really, of what to look for in a sonnet, and what is included in a sonnet, so they have the knowledge in order to write their sonnet when the time comes.

Most of our lesson was based on the New American Lecture strategy, with a few instances of the class active with the lesson. We started with an analysis of Sonnet 116, "Let me not to the marriage of true minds", and had gone through each of the terms (rhyme scheme, rhythm, meter, syllable, iambic pentameter, sonnet) a few times in the sonnet. We also had them try to interpret Shakespeare for the first time, and while some did try, others had no clue, so we interpreted the sonnet so they understood it before they examined it in-depth. We also went ahead and analyzed Sonnet 130, "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun", which we had the class go ahead and engage in the lesson. Some came up to the board to mark the rhyme scheme, identify the rhyming couplet, and some even went ahead to mark the unstressed and stressed syllables. Our final activity was translating "Romeo and Juliet", particularly Act 1, Scene 5's sonnet that show the exchange between Romeo and Juliet for the first time. We wanted them to translate into their own words the sonnet as homework, so having a little bit of knowledge from the classroom exchange with us would be helpful when they tried to translate it.

We did not have any disruptive behavior in either class we taught, but in 3rd hour, we did cut close to the bell, and when that started to happen, the kids started to pack up for their next class. It became very noisy in minutes flat and we tried to get their attention back to the sonnet in "Romeo and Juliet", but it was unsuccessful. We had discussed what we could've done to get their attention back in the final minutes of class, but we could not figure out a way to grab their attention. Fourth hour did not have the same problem, as they were engaged until the final moments of the lesson, so we couldn't have tried another way to get their attention.