Once Upon a Shakespeare (EN-CUR-486)

The aim of this learning scenario is to get to know William Shakespeare’s life and work from the authentic Europeana resources. Students recognize strong relations between his sonnets and his life. The learning scenario focuses on improving knowledge in 3 disciplines – history (Shakespeare’s life, Stratford -upon -Avon, Church of Holy Trinity etc.), computational thinking, English language.

Exploring Europeana

Students’ do their research in three phases:

1) searching for images, texts and manuscripts from the period of 1550-1650 2) exchanging resources and discussing the material they found
3) reading, translating and listening to original manuscripts.

Shakespeare’s Tomb from “[Our own country. Descriptive, historical, pictorial.]”, British Library, PD

The evolution of language since Shakespeare

The second part of the class is designed to strengthen the modern English language skills: when reading, translating and discussing (Word changes from W. Shakespeare’s time up to now).

How much did we learn?

The final part of the class aims to check the knowledge students acquired via Kahoot quiz. They answer questions regarding historical facts and language understanding.

This learning scenario has been developed during the English version of the “Europeana in your classroom: building 21st-century competences with digital cultural heritage (Rerun)” online course. The course aimed to improve teachers’ understanding of cultural heritage in order to efficiently integrate it into their lessons and practices. The courses can be accessed here.

Author: Biljana Amidovic

Age of students: 17-18

Subject and topic: History, Technology, English/ Change of language throughout centuries

Learning Scenario:

Europeana-DSI-4-2020-CUR-EN-Amidovic-doc Download

Europeana-DSI-4-2020-CUR-EN-Amidovic-pdf Download

CC BY 4.0: the featured image used to illustrate this article has been found on Europeana and has been provided by the Wellcome Collection.

2 Responses to "Once Upon a Shakespeare (EN-CUR-486)"

barbaraturin says:

January 9, 2021 at 11:29 am

This blog post is a comment on the Europeana learning scenario Once Upon a Shakespeare created by Biljana Amidovic. My reasons for choosing this scenario to apply in my classroom with my students are the topic and the approach to the topic – since I am an English high school teacher and the scenario covers pretty much all the outcomes of the National English Curriculum, the choice was more than obvious. I managed to apply it entirely with my senior students, and one part with my second grade students.
Activities
Let me start with activities as they were presented in the scenario and if I could organize my lessons like that. First of all, I had to organize activities in my lessons a little bit differently than in the scenario because of the different period organization in my school (40-minute periods) and because we also had to go online. I kept the same order of activities, I made some shorter (e.g. research phase was part of homework assignment) and other longer (e.g. delivering presentations phase because of online classes – it took more time). I also did not include transcription competition and Kahoot quiz, but made them create questions and then we had something similar to pub quiz which they enjoyed. Students had the most fun with the activity of language challenge because they had an opportunity to use colloquial language to translate difficult phrases, sentences and, what I as an English teacher really liked, they got to know and learn more sophisticated vocabulary. All in all, the described activities can be easily used and could be just as easily modified if necessary.
Materials
The second aspect of this scenario I would like to cover is the connectivity of the materials on Europeana website to the main outcomes. Materials there definitely have a large role in the lesson and they gave me a sense of security that my students will go through materials that are of high quality. What became a problem during the phase of preparation for students’ research was the amount of materials. We tend to forget that our students need more guidance in web browsing and this is where I had to use more time to explain what to search for and how to approach the findings critically (that is which to use). So, the amount and the quality of the materials is perfect, but we, as teachers should also focus on the instructional part of web browsing and use of materials, especially copyright problems, which they mostly ignore.
Use of modern teaching methods
The following criterion I would like to mention is use of modern teaching methods in this scenario – this is what really made me choose it. It gives you so much opportunity to develop so much needed skills for your students – ICT skills (presentations), collaborative work (I put them in teams with given roles), communicative and presenting skills (persuading other members of their team to accept their ideas, making compromise, presenting their ideas and work), critical thinking (copyright problems), creativity (creating their presentations)…This aspect of the scenario is presented best and
Possibility of modification
Finally, what I would like to mention is how everything in this scenario could be modified and adjusted to the circumstances in my classroom and school – I omitted some activities, made them longer or shorter, changed the type of quiz…But, I have to mention I would like to see more detailed description in the scenario of the type of individual and peer evaluation since this is something I developed myself for these lessons (students evaluated their participation and contribution in teams and they did self-evaluation checklist) and it would be good to be part of the scenario.

Conclusion: opinion and recommendation
In conclusion I would like to emphasize that this scenario contains activities that are purposeful, fun and easily adjustable. Materials that Europeana offers for this topic are regarded as highly reliable. Learning for students throughout lessons was fun and motivational and so was teaching. I think that this topic and the way it was taught, as described in the scenario, was successful for my students and for me as well. I would definitely recommend doing it but give yourself more time for preparation to think in advance of possible time consuming phases, to think about and prepare evaluation sheets and finally to adjust everything to your circumstances and your students.
If you liked this scenario, you can also try:
Shakespeare with Europeana (EN-CUR-390)
“Brevity Is The Soul Of …Tweet” But What Happened To The Wit? (LS-GR-276)

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1. Biljana Amidovic says:
  
  November 5, 2021 at 2:20 am
  
  Dear Barbaraturin, thank you for choosing this scenario to implement in your classroom. I agree that small adaptations should always be made depending on the size and knowledge of the students. I am more than happy that you learned a lot and had fun as well.
  
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Exploring Europeana

The evolution of language since Shakespeare

How much did we learn?

Learning Scenario:

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