Project: reworking classic literature

I love literature, and when you love something, you try to share it... don't you? Back in November, my 1º Bachillerato students worked on Poe's masterpiece The Raven, and the experience was really good. However, I thought it would be good to challenge them a bit more, by asking them to look at classic poets differently and therefore, to consider their works more relatable in spite of the time and cultural distance between, say, Lord Byron and a 17-year-old girl from Madrid.

When I was at university, I managed to change my view of classic poets- from cold, statue-like, unapproachable, venerable figures to warm, human and immediate people with day-to-day problems just like anybody else. I likened them to modern-day artists, and in a way they were. In an era (and a long one!) when the only way to make your works known was by writing them down, the immediacy artists enjoy nowadays,with Twitter accounts and media coverage, was unavailable to them, but that is not to say that poets in the past didn't behave unlike modern-day rockstars and had their quirks, eccentricities and diva moments... not forgetting that the reason why they have gone down in history is because they wrote wonderful poems, in the same way that, say, John Lennon has written wonderful songs and they supersede his personal life.

I digress. I presented my students the following:

The first step, of course, was to try to understand the poems. I didn't dwell in the literary devices, figures of speech or structure more than was strictly necessary- these are English language learners without a huge interest in such things-, so I tried to reach the meaning of the poems by asking the following questions:

- what is the topic of the poem?

- have you experienced something similar?

- have you read/watched/listened to anything similar?

- what sort of situation might have led to this poem being written?

By answering these questions, students had a more direct way to find themselves in the poem, as it were- they found links to their lives (either first-hand experience or witnessed events), and imagined situations which could have inspired the authors to write those lines, or other situations where the content of the poem would apply.

Their imaginations were working and their creative muscle was being exercised. Exactly what I wanted!

I split the students into groups of 4. I gave them a grand total of 5 periods for this. As usual, some of them threw themselves into it while others went through the motions-- but nobody was in their comfort zone.

You can check the final products clicking here.

Have you done anything like this in class? How was it? Please share your experience! 

The Raven

I've come to realise that, no matter how old my students are (ahem, ahem...), they always enjoy celebrating foreign holidays such as Halloween. Last October, I decided to humour them, but I had my rules.

1-. They were going to read a poem.

2-. The poem was long.

3-. It had lots of strange words.

4-. I wanted to record their voices reading it.

Their enthusiasm somewhat subdued, I showed them the following video:

Some of them were touched by this point. Most of them, though, still had their suspicions. It was long, it had a lot of long, difficult words, and the subject matter wasn't all that clear. Who was Lenore, anyway? 

Printed copy of the poem in our hands, we went almost line by line, focusing on the rhythm and the sounds, just getting used to the cadence and the images conjured up by the extensive use of alliteration, repetition and rhyme. Even those students who still didn't understand the poem were starting to let themselves get carried away by the intricate, elaborate and resounding mechanics of the poem. 

OK, then. Death, loss, insanity, obsession... the themes started to fly around in class. Written on the board, bubble diagram covering the white surface. The words started to gain meaning, up until then unclear. Mythological figures became more concrete and significant. Most students were on board and started to make decisions about how they were going to read their lines. 

They wanted to read their lines in pairs, so I gave each pair of students two stanzas. We went over difficult words, drawing their attention to internal rhyme so they could predict their pronunciation. Without saying they were turning into actors, the students were interested in the speaker's frame of mind in order to give their performance some substance. And then, the big day arrived. 

I used WavePad, a voice-recording app on the iPad, and recorded stanza after stanza. The students felt satisfied after we finished, our 10-minute long recording testament to their efforts, to the journey they had to make to reach the master of horror literature, even if it was only with their fingertips. 

When we finished, the general comment was... we should do this more often! 

I agreed. 

Have you used Poe's masterpiece in class? What was your experience? Let me know in the comments below!