When I posted about trying to make Hamlet unfamiliar to students who think they really know it, Fie upon this quiet life shared an idea about having students trace a few words through the text.
It sounded like a good idea, but it wasn't. It was a GREAT idea!
I did it the next day, using "fear," "revenge," "sleep," and "noble" (and asked them to also look for other forms). It gave me the chance to talk about concordances, and on-line concordances, and to show them how to look stuff up. It also reinforced their sense of the instability of the text as a text.
And they mostly did a fine job teasing out how their word worked, and how it changed. The best was the "fear" group; "noble" worked the least well, I think.
So, thanks, Fie! You made my day way better!
Oh awesome! I'm glad that it went so well. We had a ball with it in the couple of times I used it last year. It's really fun with Shakespeare! I really want to write about it.
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