Shakespeare & Iambic Pentameter

Shakespeare and Iambic Pentameter: A multimodal lesson series
Day 1 - Chelsea L. Richardson
I. Common Core State Standards
1 CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.9-10.10 By the end of grade 9, read and comprehend literature,
including stories, dramas, and poems, in the grades 9–10 text complexity band proficiently, with
scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range.
II. Objectives
1 SWBAT recognize and identify the use of iambic pentameter in contemporary lyrics to prepare
them for the reading and comprehension of the Shakespeare texts to come.
2 SWBAT understand the significance of form, rhythm, and meter in the reading and
comprehension of musical or poetic texts.
3 SWBAT recreate the pattern of iambic pentameter by organizing a combination of stressed and
unstressed syllables.
III. Activities
1. Anticipatory Set: (10 minutes)
a Students will sit with their pre-assigned partners and do a partner-read-aloud protocol of two
typed up versions of the first verse of Eminem’s “Lose Yourself.” The first version will be typed
without any line breaks or punctuation, while the second will include all line breaks and
punctuation included in the official lyrics.
b Students will be asked to take notes on how the first reading went, and what they understood
about the meaning of the song.
c Students will then be asked to take notes on how their reading differed the second time, and also
if/how their understanding changed based on how the text was presented
2. Class Discussion/Minilesson: (20 minutes)
a Teacher will call partner groups back to their desks and lead a short class discussion on what they
discovered in reading the same set of lyrics in two different forms. Teacher will make links
between form, rhythm, and comprehension.
- How was reading the lyrics the second time different from the first?
- What role do you think form plays in our understanding as readers?
- How many students recognized the lyrics or were familiar with the song prior to today?
- What other factors go into our ability to read rap lyrics well?
- Link to beat and rhythm. Introduce meter.
b Teacher will transition into a short minilesson on iambic pentameter (5 iambs, 10 syllables),
which is one of the meters Eminem uses in “Lose Yourself”, and also one of the most common
meters employed by Shakespeare.
c Teacher will play clean clip from Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” music video and ask students to
listen for the rhythm and meter. (Start video at :53, Stop at 1:16)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYlqUSkBgwQ&feature=youtu.be
- Does hearing the lyrics performed with specific emphasis on rhythm and meter change
anything for us?
d Teacher will show students how to mark the feet and syllables on smartboard: We can mark the
divisions with a | . We can put an 'x' mark underneath the unstressed syllable and a '/' mark
underneath the stressed syllable.