Educational Observation I observed a high school English teacher as the teacher led the students through a study of Shakespeare's Hamlet. While the students have to complete a certain number of English classes to graduate, they can choose most of the English classes they take. This was not an advanced placement class, but the students in it had chosen it and so presumably had an interest in Shakespeare. There were 18 students in the class.

The teacher used a variety of activities to encourage her students to think about what Shakespeare really was trying to communicate and to foster a deeper understanding of the play.

She fostered intellectual development -- increased understanding of the play with the activities; social development as students produced projects in teams of three students; personal development as they were encouraged to find creative new ways to present old information. Students knew from near the beginning of the unit what kinds of projects they could choose.

She said that the teachers met periodically to plot out when they would have large projects due so that students did not have to prepare a large project such as what she would require for this unit, and studying for a major test in another course, and a large research paper, all due in the same week.

She connected lessons to the students' lives today. One example of this is a class discussion prompted by the question, "This is a political play. It's about someone who wants to lead his country and who finds a way to get the top job. Today, he would be president. How could the story of Hamlet relate to modern life?"

The teacher was well prepared and expected her students to come to class as well. For one homework assignment, given two days before the actual class discussion related to it, she asked them to write three ways Hamlet might have some kind of parallel to today's high school students' time outside of school including extra-curricular activities and part-time jobs.
One of the most interesting responses to this came from a student who said, "What if Lyndon B. Johnson had plotted to have Kennedy assassinated so he could become president?" Another suggested, "What if the monarch for Great Britain was chosen from among all the royal heirs instead of automatically going to the first-born child of the king or queen?" How would they decide who inherited the crown?"

The topic of another day's discussion was "What kind of play would Shakespeare write today?" Again the students were given two nights to generate ideas. This approach assured that all the students would be able to participate in class discussion. Some of the students suggested that he might write about Al-Qaeda, or the assassination of Martin Luther King.

For the project, she allowed a large variety of approaches. She had some ideas for them including:

-- Rewrite part of a scene into today's language

-- Rewrite a scene humorously

-- Act out a scene

-- Make a model of what a set for the play might look like

-- Write and act out an interview with Hamlet. What would you ask him?

She provided a grading rubric along with guidelines about how it would be used to grade the project. Each project had to be accompanied by an oral presentation. For instance, if a group acted out a scene, they had to explain what their character did in the scene and how it contributed to…