Fishbowl Seminar: Shakespeare--To Teach or Not To Teach?

Fungi kids did an awesome job today discussing the pros and cons of teaching the canon in response to the article "High School Teacher says Shakespeare not to be in her Classroom."

Some notable comments: Mary M.R. said, "It's not really about what she thinks--it's more about student learning."

Ben A. said, "Shakespeare may be great, but our generation may produce a writer that is better than Shakespeare."

Student observers  "mapped" the conversation by drawing a circle with the names of the participants in the "fishbowl" and then drew lines between each successive speaker. This encouraged all students to be part of the conversation.

We missed the Band students, but we hope they're having a great time.

On Monday, we will start the Reader's Workshop part of this unit.  Students will choose their books based on possible themes in which they are interested, using the Analyzing Universal Themes Graphic Organizer.  As students are reading, they will be annotating on sticky notes, using this guideline: Annotation Anchor Chart.