Process Paper

Readers/Writers Process Paper

I decided to conduct my Readers/Writers project on the following question: “What are the ways to engage the WHOLE class when reading a play?” While this was my original topic, I chose to narrow it down to mostly focus on Shakespeare’s plays as my work progressed. This topic is particularly important to me because of my background and career aspirations. I believe that Shakespearean plays are critically important staples in the world of literature due to the relevance and timeless appeal of their stories, coupled with the fact that his plays have greatly influenced countless works of literature and even pop culture.


While working on the multiple unusual genres that comprise this project, it was important to me that the audience was very different for each one. In fact, I attempted to make each genre as unique as possible from the other two. I feel that I have achieved this, as one is directed at fellow teachers, one at parents, and the final at students.


I first created a “WikiHow” article that shares eight steps for teachers looking to engage their class in reading a play. I used “Hamlet” as the example text for this. The only frustrating thing about this genre that I did not realize as I was creating it is that anyone can and will change what you have written. For instance, one of the edits to my page by a random stranger involved removing the word “found” in the phrase “found poem.” Of course, this completely changes the meaning of the term. I considered changing it back, but as time went on more and more changes were made and it is virtually impossible to keep up with them all. Nonetheless, the link I have included to my WikiHow article links to my original draft and displays some of the edits a stranger has made to it.


The next genre that I made is in the form of a letter to parents from the teacher. In the letter, I take some time to introduce myself and my teaching philosophy, before delving in to what our Shakespeare unit is going to entail. I conclude the obviously-angled letter by asking for volunteers to help with our production. Besides just asking for help, I believe that it is important for parents to have to opportunity to understand the relevance of a piece of literature that some might perceive as antiquated. Even more importantly, I believe that parents/guardians need to be onboard to some extent when you are taking on a project as massive as a mini production of a Shakespeare play. It is crucially important to explain to parents why such an activity would be useful and not a waste of class time.


My final genre might weirdly be considered the most unusual as a choice of “genre.” I am choosing to call this genre “model piece.” It is designed to have an audience of my students. This piece I created would serve as a model text for when my students take monologues from the Shakespeare play at hand and attempt to translate the language into the modern vernacular. I realize that many of my students might say to me, “But Ms. Meyer! Don’t you know that they have No Fear Shakespeare for this?? Why would I spend time doing this myself when I can just look up the translation online or in that book?” Well, my answer to that would be this: Don’t just go jumping in to the No Fear Shakespeare book. Try it yourself first with at least a small section of text, and then, later, see how close you came. You will probably surprise yourself, and you just might have done a better job than the cheat sheet!


As for my research, I feel that I included a very broad range of resource types ranging from personal interview to journal article to lesson plan. I was amazed and comforted to find how many resources are available to teachers. I was also encouraged to see that many of my own assumptions about the teaching of plays in English class were supported by the resources I found. In fact, more than once I found myself making an inference and then backtracking to see if I could find someone more experienced than be that supported it. More often than not, I could.


I am looking quite forward to implementing many of these ideas into my own classroom in my student teaching of plays. However, I do not in any way think that these methods should be limited to the teaching of plays, exclusively. Many methods, such as acting out scenes and rewriting monologues can also be applied to works of fiction such as novels and short stories to encourage better understanding. In the end, this project taught me a lot more than just how to get students excited about plays. It taught me how to get students excited about reading.

Note: Compiling the project was not really that inspired. I wanted to put it into an online, accessible space while avoiding simply emailing it to my professor.