Shakespeare invented more than 1700 of our daily words, but Dr. Seuss grabs our students' attention at an early age and makes words fun, too, as he creates his own terms that make the English language come alive. I use Dr. Seuss' books in my high school classroom to teach literary terms such as assonance, consonance, alliteration, onomatopoeia, personification, and rhyme. When the students can grasp the concepts in a way that is fun and reminiscent of their childhoods, they suddenly come alive when transferring to Shakespeare and his poetic language. What started out as intimidating can turn into a treasure hunt as they scrutinize the text looking for matches from Seuss to Shakespeare.
Here is a link to an epic rap battle between Dr. Seuss and Shakespeare. It is NOT school appropriate due to one word, but modifying it to use would be fantastic!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3w2MTXBebg
Other children's books like If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Numeroff are fantastic when teaching dependent clauses and the comma rule that applies to introductory phrases and clauses! I have students write their own version of the story with things like, "If I give a student a hall pass,..." or "If tomorrow were a snow day, ..." where they must come full circle with their discussion as well as practice creating dependent clauses and following them with commas.
Here is a link to the YouTube video that reads the story If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFKzriYtEt8
We are never too old for great children's literature!
No comments:
Post a Comment