Sir Gawain and The Green Knight
Consider The Green Knight: a new movie for British Lit When you’re teaching a new class, you just can’t do it all. You ease into the new routine, the new texts, the new lesson plans, and activities. For example, even though I taught British Literature to high school seniors for three years, I never taught…
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Beowulf Lessons for High School
Seven Beowulf Lesson Plans and Resources It’s that time of year again for British Literature teachers. It’s time for Beowulf! Have you started your journey into Anglo-Saxon poetry? My usual early fall Anglo-Saxon routine culminates with a three-week unit on Beowulf followed by a short unit on The Hero’s Journey. I didn’t always enjoy teaching…
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3 Resources for Shakespeare in Love
3 Resources to Build Prior Knowledge and Background Last week, I published a post about the 1998 movie Shakespeare in Love, one of my very favorite movies. That post recognized the fact that while the movie is indeed R-rated, it’s still one you can watch IF you know the parts to skip. In that post,…
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Shakespeare in Love: What Not to Watch
Despite its R rating, you can still teach with this film. Here’s how. If you need a good movie for your British Literature classes, but have always shied away from Shakespeare in Love due to its sexual content, shy away no longer. At the bottom of this post I’ve outlined the exact scenes to skip…
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Doctor Faustus: 10 Multi-Media Resources and Activities
High school students need to know the basics of the Doctor Faustus and also come to appreciate the staying power of Marlowe’s most famous work. Do that with multi-media selections to the max! Here are ten resources that have worked for me.
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Canterbury Tales Lesson Plan Resources
There seems to be quite a bit of interest in this Canterbury Tales post from last year, so I’m reblogging it so more readers will locate it more easily! I’m getting ready to teach Canterbury Tales again in about a week, and if things go like they usually do, I’ll be creating some new resources…
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A Better Beowulf Unit Begins with Sutton Hoo
The Dark Ages discovery builds Beowulf engagement Need an awesome nonfiction text to enhance your Beowulf unit? Look no further! I have a resource for you that you really must check out. It’s titled “Revisiting Sutton Hoo, Britain’s Mythical Ship Burial.” Written by Sam Knight and published in The New Yorker (August 9, 2019), this…
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A New Poem Activity for The Wanderer
While our study of The Wanderer included some note-taking, reading the poem aloud, and completing a close-reading activity, I wanted us to go one step further to get more out of this beautiful verse. So when I read about something called the “Ubi sunt” motif present in The Wanderer, I took notice… especially when I…
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Gulliver’s Travels & The New York Times’ Anatomy of a Scene
Using the New York Times Anatomy of a Scene collection as inspiration, high school students provide director’s commentary for a movie clip and thereby showing their understanding of satire.
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Paradise Lost: My British Lit Students Translate Lines into Braille
My senior British Lit students recently tried their hands at embossing Braille code. Here’s how they did it.
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The Dream of the Rood: A Dream of a Poem
Last fall, as I read and planned lessons for Beowulf, “The Wanderer,” and “The Seafarer,” I kept coming across “The Dream of the Rood.” It wasn’t included in our textbook, but since I kept reading about it (and it was included in my trusty Norton anthology, after all), I became more and more curious. Fast…
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A New Movie for Your Anglo-Saxon Poetry Unit
The 1-hour and 52-minute movie is captivating, and builds suspense and excitement around the very culture awash in The Wanderer, The Seafarer, The Wife’s Lament, and Beowulf.
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Everyman: Resources for the Morality Play
A media mix brings Everyman to life My senior British literature classes ended the first semester with a study of Everyman, the 1510 morality play. Again, just as with The Canterbury Tales and Le Morte d’Arthur, I felt challenged to find a supplemental text and activities as a result of the minimal two-page treatment our…
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Le Morte d’Arthur: Resources for High School
My quest with my high school seniors into British Lit continues with one of the last two texts in our Medieval Era unit: Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur. This text, published in 1485, provides the tales of the legendary King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. (A post on our last medieval…
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The Canterbury Tales Lesson Plan Resources
This year, I taught The Canterbury Tales for the first time. Here are the resources and activities I used.
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When Christian Bale becomes Beowulf
Here’s another way to infuse relevance into Beowulf When you extend your Beowulf unit into a mini-unit on Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, three things will happen: 1) You’ll build excitement to read an Anglo-Saxon poem so old we don’t even know exactly when it was written or by whom. 2) You’ll open students’ eyes to…
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Life Lessons from Beowulf
I tried this Life Lessons in Beowulf essay with high school seniors. Here’s how it went.
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Three New Articles to Pair with Beowulf
Three contemporary articles to pair with Beowulf to build relevance for high school students.
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Check Out The Hero’s Journey Podcast
A great supplement to teaching the hero’s journey Have you discovered “The Hero’s Journey” podcast? Subtitled “Books & Films Through a Mythical Lens,” this is a fantastically interesting podcast I used in February to supplement my hero’s journey lessons. Use the monthly show to introduce students to Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey in popular movies, some…
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Friday Eve Photo: A Beowulf Hero’s Journey
Students work on Beowulf Hero’s Journey posters.
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New Year, New Units: Beowulf and The Old Man and the Sea
Lots of planning comin’ up! Now that the new year has started, I thought I would write a short post about the units I’m starting with my juniors and seniors next week. My junior classes will begin Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea on Wednesday and my senior classes will start Beowulf on…
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