LESSON PLAN for 1st Lesson Observation

Subject: English Literature Class: Secondary 2H

Unit: Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice Date: Term 1 Week 9
Topic: Act 1 Scene 3 Time: 1235-1335

Brief Description of the Class:

● Class of 29 students of middle to high ability
● Students tend to lose focus and attention after an extended period of teacher talk.
● Respond well and are enthused by tactile and physical experiences.
● Most are willing and ready to respond with personal insights when called upon.

Strategies for Differentiation:

● Use of collaborative learning so that students with different levels of ability can work together and learn from each other.
● Use of tactile experiences to excite and grab the attention of visual and tactile learners.

Prior Knowledge:
Students should already know:
1. How to identify poetics techniques such as simile, metaphor, personification, and imagery
2. Basic practice with writing paragraphs.
3. Basic Annotation Skills

Instructional Objectives

By the end of the lesson, students will be able to:

1. Explain “How does Shakespeare vividly portray Shylock’s thoughts and feelings in Act 1 Scene 3?”
 Time Lesson Development
1235-1240 Introduction
The teacher will instruct students to settle down. The teacher
must also ensure that the classroom environment is clean and
tidy — there should be no rubbish on the floor and the tables
must be aligned in an orderly fashion. Student’s desk must
only contain writing materials and their copy of
Shakespeare’s ​The Merchant of Venice​. All other materials
must be kept away in their bags. When all these
requirements are fulfilled, the teacher will then greet the
class.
Setting Expectations
Students will be reminded that while active and lively
participation is excellent for class discussions, some ground
rules must be established to ensure that all voices — not just
the vocal and louder ones — are heard. In this regard,
students are reminded to raise their hands, and respond only
when they’ve been prompted.
Students will also be reminded to watch the clock and their
volume level. A noise control physical routine will also be
introduced. Here, the teacher will raise his/her hands and all
the students will follow suit and remain silent. The class will
not proceed until the entire class is silent and paying
attention to their teacher.
1240-1245 Recap
The class will be reminded that today’s lesson will be a
continuation from the previous lesson which was on Act 1
Scene 2 of Shakespeare’s ​The Merchant of Venice. T ​ he
teacher will first show on a powerpoint slide the Lesson
Rationale (optional) Resources
Non-Learning theory: Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Maslow proposed that we possess a hierarchy of needs
that can be broadly categorised as deficiency needs and
growth needs. In order for a person to be motivated to
learn, understand, and grow, their fundamental deficiency
needs must first be fulfilled (Tan 2017).Routines
pertaining to classroom ergonomics such as desk
arrangement and bag placement ensures that our students’
physiological needs are fulfilled: when they are able to sit
comfortably and, students can then learn in an orderly
and hygienic environment.
Non-learning theory: Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological
Theory (Walls, 2017)
Setting the rules of engagement and establishing norms in
classroom interactions will help better ensure that all
students can have a voice in the classroom. The rules and
expectations implemented here will encourage quiet
students to speak up and to remind them that their voices
are important too. In addition, students who are usually
more active can also have the opportunity to develop
active learning skills. Both developments work towards
creating a more healthy and social microsystem, as
described by Bronfenbrenner in which students can learn
and grow in.
Learning theory: Three-Stage Information Processing
Model (Tan, 2017)
Revising the content covered in the previous class has
twofold benefits. First it helps students to remember what
was covered in the previous lesson. Second, it helps to
 Objective for today’s lesson; “​How does Shakespeare
vividly portray Shylock’s thoughts and feelings in Act 1
Scene 3?​”.
1245-1250 Sparking Interest: Video on Medieval Antisemitism
Students will be shown a short clip on Anti Semitism in
Medieval England. After the clip, students will be asked to
respond to the prompt? “How were Jews depicted in
Medieval England?” Students will be reminded that while
the historical sources depicted in the video occur about 100
years before the first performance of ​Merchant, ​Anti-Semitic
beliefs were still rife during Shakespeare’s Era and to some
extent still exist today.
1250-1310 Close Reading
After watching the video, the students will have a better
understanding of antisemitic tropes harboured by
Shakespeare’s English audience. Focusing on Shylock’s
monologue in Act 1.3, students will be asked to think about
frame the content and skills that will be covered in this
lesson. As theorised by the Three-Stage Information
Processing model, a person’s short term memory has a
limited capacity and will be forgotten quickly. Recapping
previous lessons and linking it to the present lesson will
thus help students transition their experiences and
knowledge into long term memory.
Lesson Objectives
In order for our students to store information, their
sensory registers must first recognise and focus on the
information we share. By projecting our lesson objectives
in large fonts and bright colours, we can capture our
student’s attention. This also gives them a mental
framework to store and remember the information they
will encounter for the rest of the class.
Video
The video gives a quick and succinct insight into the anti
semitic context of the play. The information gleaned from
this video will inform and enrich students appreciation of
the myriad emotions felt and expressed by Shylock in the
scene.
Close Reading
The worksheet provided is structured in a way that allows
students to leverage on the empathy exercise that they’ve
done earlier in class. The table helps to scaffold the
experience of reading a play which the students may not
 Shakespeare vividly portrays Shylock’s thoughts and
feelings. ​To help students organise their thoughts students
will be given a worksheet that will help them link their
thoughts to evidence from the text. .
1310-1320 Engendering Empathy
be familiar with yet. The sequencing of the guiding
questions in the table helps students to realise that there
are interpretatives routines and processes which they can
adopt when reading a play..

Students will be reminded that one of the reasons why

Shakespeare remains relevant even after more than 400 years
is that the experiences he write about are universal and in the
case of racism/discrimination/prejudice — timeless. Students
will be asked to think about a time they were treated unfairly
because of their race and to be ready to share their
experience with their class. At the end of the session,
students will be asked to write their experience on the black
cloak provided — a replica of Shylock’s gaberdine. Certain
volunteers will be asked to put on the cloak as a way to
engender an embodied form of empathy for Shylock’s
experiences.
1320-1335 Closure and Consolidation

In the last 15 minutes of the class, students will be asked to

volunteer to share their work and explain the thought process
that went behind their poems. Teachers will remind students
of instances of poetic techniques used in the exercise to
reinforce their understanding of poetic techniques.
What are Shylock’s thoughts/feelings? Evidence: Select a relevant word or phrase. Explain: How this example ​VIVIDLY
reveals Shylock’s thoughts/ feelings?