Rationale

Our PLC chose to focus on the relationships within Midsummer Night’s Dream to make it

more relatable to students. Shakespearean language may seem like something that students

cannot connect to, so we wanted to ensure that they stay engaged and encouraged throughout this

unit. How we plan on doing this is by starting to explore different types of love and relationships

throughout the play, and how it shows up in their own lives and then they can connect their

experiences to relationships that are present within the play.

Some of our goals for skills students should have by the end of this unit is knowing how

to follow and describe plot in terms such as exposition, rising action, climax, falling action &

resolution, paraphrasing, citing evidence, and connecting several texts to one another. Our

dramatic lesson prompts students to create a play of their own, which they will need their

plotting skills for. Their scene will mimic a scene that our PLC has chosen from the text, but will

allow them to connect the play to present day language and culture. When talking about

scaffolding Smagorinsky states, “Whose building is being constructed here? Whose needs will it

serve? Who is learning what through this kind of construction? Are there other possible ways to

envision and build this text?” ((Smagorinsky, 2019) We used this way of thinking to create our

scaffold which unpacks the elements of a play, brainstorming with their groups on how their

scene will mimic the play and also include modern day culture. They also will be shown as

examples of how their scene could look for inspiration and direction.

Our language lesson will be focused around similes and metaphors as Shakespearean

language is filled with them. Students will explore what similes and metaphors look like within

the text, their effect and complete an interactive quiz online using Quizalize. Checking for
understanding throughout this play will be important because of the language; therefore, this will

be a useful lesson in ensuring that they can decode the literary devices.

Finally, our engaging lesson will encourage them to look at how detail is presented in a

play. They will create an image (digitally or on paper, whichever they are more comfortable

using) of a scene that they pick out of a hat, at random. They will have to include as many details

in their image as possible, so that when they are posted and the class does their gallery walk they

can guess which scene their peer has illustrated.

Shakespeare writes about many various themes, and important views on different cultures

that students should be able to learn about. We see the value in teaching Shakespeare because it

has been performed for decades. Having our students dive into a play that was written by him

can make a convincing argument that “studying Shakespeare is central to understanding the

themes of Western culture and the metaphors that are invoked to explain it” (Smagorinsky,

2019). Some people may criticize teaching Shakespeare to middle school students because the

themes or language are too mature. We justify using this text with 7th graders because of the

scaffolding and discussion that students will participate in. Throughout the unit students will

grow emotionally with the characters and be able to lead discussions about the relationships

within the play while citing specific examples.

Every component of our unit is designed to grow students academically and emotionally.

The text, Midsummer Night’s Dream provides an opportunity for discussion, creative

performance assessments, and language development that my group saw as valuable to the

learning experience of 7th graders.

 References

Smagorinsky, P. (2019). Teaching English by design: How to create and carry out instructional

units. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.