Trifles

"Trifles" is  a one-act play by Susan Glaspell. It was written in 1916.

 As well as it happened with the previous short story, the meaning of this play quite complex to interpret. Therefore, these activities can also be used in a B1 level and students will be working in groups, between 4 and 5 members each:
 

 

PRE-TEACHING ACTIVITIES:

 

1. "Trifles" was written right before the First World War. At that moment, women were not considered as human beings, they were treated badly by men, they were oppressed... The social system described in the play is that one in which the father is the head of the family and mean have authority over women and children. Do you know how this kind of society is called?

 

 

2. During this period of time, women's domain was limited to the home. Read the description of the scene:

The kitchen in the now abandoned farmhouse of JOHN WRIGHT, a gloomy kitchen, and left without having been put in order -unwashed pans under the sink, a loaf of bread outside the bread-box, a dish-towel on the table- other signs of incompleted work.

Have a look at the picture on the right. Why do you think the play starts in the kitchen?

3. Do you know the classical myths "Aracne" and "Philomela and Procne"? If no, look for some information on the Internet before carrying on with the activity:

• Can you represent them? Have a go with www.goanimate.com or www.bitstrips.com.
• Do they have something in common?
• Can you guess which is the connection between these classical myths and the story?

 

 

ACTUAL TEACHING

4. There are some characters who represent the law in the play. Can you name them? Is there any female character among them?


5. Can you explain the importance these images have in the story?

APRON

QUILT

BIRD

BIRD-CAGE

  

 6. Here you have some expressions found in the text:

• "I guess we'll go upstairs first- and then out to the barn and around there. [To the Sheriff.] You are convinced that there was nothing important here - nothing that would oint to any motive."
• "Nothing here but kitchen things."
• "Well, you can beat the women!"
• "Well, women are used to worrying over trifles."
• "Ah, loyal to your sex, I see."
• "They wonder if she was going to quilt it or just knot it! [The men laugh]"

    All the above quotations belong to men. Can you explain which is the topic of triffles?

 

POST TEACHING ACTIVITIES:

7. Read the following excerpt:

MRS. PETERS: She was piecing a quilt.

[She brings the large sewing basket and they look at the bright pieces]

MRS. HALE: It's log cabin pattern. Pretty, isn't it? I wonder if she was goin' to quilt it or just knot it? 

MRS. HALE: [Examining another block] Mrs. Peters, look at this one. Here, this is the one she was working on, and look at the sewing! All the rest of it has been so nice and even. And look at this! It's all over the place! Why, it looks as if she didn0t know what she was about!

 [After she had said this they look at each other, then start to glance back at the door. After an instant MRS. HALE has pulled at a knot and ripped the sewing]

This is the moment in which they destroy clues, the of  climate of the story. The quilt is one of the most important elements in the story. Can you create a "quilt" of all the words which are significant for the understanting of the story? Have a try with this tool: www.wordle.net

 

 

8. Get to imagine that you are Minnie Foster, John Wright's wife. How would you convince the Sheriff that you are innocent? You can either  write a letter from prison using www.kerpoof.com or make a personal phone call using www.vocaroo.com

 

 

 

This is my interpretation of the play "Trifles":

Susan Glaspell in this play wants to transmit the impossibility for men to understand women's universe. In a patriarchal society, men cannot interpret the evidences or read the clues beuse they think women are innocent  Female characters establish a sort of sisterhood between them, they identify themselves totally with Minnie when Mrs. Hale says " [...] we live close together and we live far apart. We all go through the same things- it's all just a different kind of the same thing." By the end of the play, both women share experiences and identify with Minnie but this process of identification is carried out throughout the whole play.

The Fall of the House of Usher

"The Fall of the House of Usher" is a short story by Edgar Alan Poe. It was first published in September 1839 in Burton's Gentleman's Magazine. Poe transformed tales of terror into psychological histories because he dealt with the mysterious recesses of the human mind.

 

I really like this horror story but, in my opinion, it is quite complex to interpret. Therefore, these activities can be used in a B1 level:

 

Students are going to work in groups, between 4 and 5 members each. I like making students working in groups because, in the real world, people work hand in hand with others. Thus, they learn to be collaborative and cooperative, too. They learn that they have a role in the group

 

PRE-TEACHING ACTIVITIES

 

1. It is claimed that "The Fall of the House of Usher" reminds of the gothic novel because of the setting, the landscape and the topic. Do you know what gothic means?

 

 

2. Read the following excerpt of the short story:

[...] I scanned more narrowly the real aspect of the building. Its principal feature seemed to be that of an excessive antiquity. The discoloration of ages had been great. [...] Perhaps the eye of a scrutinizing observer might have discovered a barely perceptible fissure, which, extending from the roof of the building in front, made its way down the wall in a zig zag direction, until it became lost in the sullen waters of the tarn.

   Can you think of any relation between this passage and the title of the short story?

 

 

3. Now that you already know what gothic is and that you have read the beginning of the story, can you design a new cover for this short story? Feel free to use whatever tool you know, the one I propose is www.kerpoof.com.

ACTUAL TEACHING

 

4. As you have already seen, "The Fall of the House of Usher" has got several characteristics from a Gothic tale. Can you find in the short story some references to...

• a haunted house
• a dreary landscape
• an inclement weather
• a misterious sickness
• a character with double personality

5. Here you have some statements. There is a mistake in each of them, can you correct them?

• The Ushers were a poor family.
• The rooms in the House of Usher were very light.
• When Roderick was a boy he was awful.
• Roderick went out a lot.
• Madeline was dead when they put her in the coffin.

6. Can you anwer the following questions?

• Why did Roderick Usher write to the narrator?
• Where did they put Madeline's coffin?
• Why did the narrator walk around the room during the storm?
• What are the sounds that Usher and the narrator hear?
• Who was the figure standing outside the room?

POST-TEACHING ACTIVITIES:

 

7.Can you spot the differences between the characters of Roderick Usher and his twin sister Madeline Usher? Do you think Madeline is the sick carácter in reality? Discuss with your partners and reach an agreement.

 

 

8. Now that you have already read the short story. Read the excerpt in activity 2 and, then, read the following excerpt:

 While I gazed, this fissure rapidly widened - there came a fierce breath of the whirlwind- the entire orb of the satellite burst at once upon my sight - my brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing asunder - there was a long tumultuous shouting sound like the voice of a thousand waters - and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the "House of Usher".

   Did you do wellin activity 2? If not, can you explain the relationship between both fragments and the title of the short story again?

 

 

9. Everything we know about the story is filtered through the eyes of the narrator. Can you rewrite the story from the point of view of Madeline Usher?

 

 

 

 

This is my interpretation of the short story "The Fall of the House of Usher":

If you read the beginning of the story carefully, I'm sure you'll have realised that the beginning kills the end: Roderick Usher is doomed to destruction because he lives in isolation, surrounded by products of his mind and his imagination and, on the other hand, Madeline represents the reality, the outer world. So, in a way, the crack in the house represents Roderick's madness.

A different celebration of the 'Book Day'...

April, 24 - ACTIVE TEACHING

In this post, I'm going to explain what we did in the 4th session of the course. It was quite an unusual way of dealing with literatura but, in fact, it was a really catching one...

 

First of all, placing ourselves in the role of a secondary school students, we had to choose a book from the, let's say, library. Some of us explained our choice:





"I personally chose Jane Eyre's book because it is a classic. Moreover, it is a book I want to read in a near future because I like  its author, Charlotte Brontë, very much and the feministic background of the novel is also attractive to me. However, if I take the place of a teenager, the justification of my choice would be slightly different: it is a thin book, it hasn't got many pages and it seems easy and fast to read."

After picking one book up, there were some booklets distributed around the class. They explained the characteristics of many different methodologies such as project-based learning, cooperative learning, collaborative learning, problema-based learning, games, simulations and role-plays, etc.

 

Our task was to create some activities, namely pre-teaching, actual teaching and post-teaching, related to the book.

With this activity we learnt different methologies that can be used to teach literature in an English class but, what's more, we learnt to be creative in order to make literature appealing to teenagers. So, thought about dividing the class into 5 groups of 4-5people and these are the activities I proposed to work with the adaptation of Jane Eyre's:

 

PRE-TEACHING

1. First of all, I would show the students some images of the author, of 1830s lifestyle, of the geography in the North of England, about the feminism, etc. This is done with the purpose of showing the students the context in which the story develops so that they can read and interpret the story with a critic eye.
2. Secondly, I would show them the beginning and the ending of the story. The idea is that students guess what the story is about: this way students can work collavoratively, that is, they will work in groups and provide a plot for the story. Students can learn from each other and it also estimulates their creativity.

 ....

 

 

ACTUAL TEACHING

1. There were some activities in the book dealing with true and false which were quite interesting and adapted to the content of the book. So, as I hadn't read it, I decided not to creaty any activity for this section.

 

 

POST-TEACHING

1. Once students have read and unsterstood the story of Jane Eyre, each of the groups has to pick up an envelope with the name of a character written on it. There are two task to be carried out:
• Two or three members of the group have to rewrite the main plot of the book, telling it from the point of view of the character they have chosen.
• The rest of the members have interpret the story from the same perspective but through pictures, using kerpoof.
2. Finally they have to make a short presentation of their work: they have to tell the story to the rest of the class by showing the pictures to their partners.

After this class, I realised that it is very important to make students reflect on their learning. It is a good feedback for us, as teachers, and it is also positive for them because it makes them ware of their learning process.

 

 

This way of teaching litertature can be also appealing in highschool. It becomes a new way of exploring literature because it implies something else than sitting down, opening the book, reading it and answering the questions I can find at the end of each chapter. Unlike the traditional way of teaching literature, students can participate actively and they get involved in the activity almost without realising.

STATION 3: REPRESENT A SCENE

April, 10th - STATION 3

 

The activities in this station deal with Roald Dahl's short story "Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel's Coat".

 

We, thinking as teachers, were supposed to classify the activities proposed into three different groups depending on the moment we would use the activity and this is our classification taking into account that "pre-teaching" is the teaching learners need before an activity to get involved into it, "actual teaching" implies the main activity and "post-teaching" is the teaching that helps students reflect on what they have learnt and what they still don't know: 

 

PRE-TEACHING

d) Discussion:

This is a warming-up activity because we want our students to activate their previous knowledge of the topic, the author, etc.

f) Think pair-share:

Students have to predict the plot of a story taking into account headlines/titles. They also have to make comments on their reflections with the rest of the class.

 

ACTUAL TEACHING

c) Analysis:

It is a reading comprehension activity. Students have to find out and justify if the information in the statements is true or false.

 

POST-TEACHING

a) Writing:

Once they have read the short story, students have to carry on writing a different ending for the story: in the end, Mrs. Bixby's coat is still in the pawnshop and she is planning a strategy to get it back.

 

b) Discussion:

Students discuss the real ending of the story and what will happen next.

 

e) Role play:

Students work in pairs and they have to perform Mr and Mrs Bixby's conversation by the end of the story.

 

 

Do you feel like acting?

The idea of representing a scene is really attractive because it is not the traditional way of acting, but a new one I'm sure they will like more. Maybe students feel uncomfortable and shy about the idea of acting in front of the rest of the class but, nowadays, it is plenty of helpful online tools through wich students created avatars and write whatever dialogue they like. 

This is ours... Hope you like it!

http://goanimate.com/videos/0I5g-Pp7MF8U?utm_source=linkshare

 

I guess that the representation of the scene can be done by both students and the teacher:

• Students can represent the scene as a sort of comprehension activity of the shortstory or as a writing activity. It can be useful to make students write: they can explain the scene using their own words, they can describe what they see in the video/images, etc.

• The teacher can show a  scene to the students as a pre-teaching activity or post-teaching activity: students have to talk about what they think it is going to happen next or what happened before that scene, for example.

The idea of sharing the scene/comic with the rest of the class through Edmodo or Fakebook is interesting because students use this kind of applications and social netweorks everyday. Students can see each others representations and give their opinions, this will create a sort of debate and interaction between the members of the class. It is important to create a good environment in order to learn, in my opinion. Finally, I think that it would be a great idea to connect their English or Literature lessons to their day to day. If they see the connection of the classes with their daily life, maybe they feel more motivated and their interest on the subject rises.

Are wordclouds useful for students?

Wordclouds can be used in many different ways.

• As a pre-teaching activity:


• The teacher can provide some words and the students have to create a sentence which contains that particular word or the teacher can present the difficult words within the history to prepare students before reading the text, for instance.

• As a post-teaching activity:


• Some of the words that have been previously studied are provided in the wordcloud and students have to crreate a writing using all of them or, at least, some.

This is the idea we have had in relation to the shortstory "Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel's Coat". The wordcloud can be used as a sort of assessment for students to Foster writing and stimulating them to flow their creativity. The activitiy would consist in doing a writing using the words given in the wordcloud patchwork to build up a posible denouement for the story. Here is the tool they need to use to write their own ending for the story of Mr. and Mrs. Bixby:

http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/6604013/Untitled

 

This station has been an interesting one because it shows how teachers can enter the world of adolescents. Thus, it is not so difficult to make literatura appealing, attractive and funny: students can participate, they can choose what they prefer doing... the important thing is that literature and new technologies can live in perfect harmony!

 

 

STATION 2: SIMULATION

March, 27th - STATION 2

This station deals with some of the characters from the short stories by Roald Dahl we had to read before coming to class: Mrs. and Mr. Bixby from "Mrs Bixby and the Colonel's Coat" and Mary Maloney from "Lamb to the Slaughter". It is worth pointing out that all the activities of this station not only makes the students reflect on their readings but they also deal with some moral values such as prejudices against people and also with human rights.

 



This is the case of the simulation in the first activity, for example: students have to choose seven people from a list of canditates, they have to pick up the people they want to be saved and leave the rest behind. It is a huge responsability for us to decide who decide who will live and who will die, don't you think? People are always influenced by their religious beliefs, sexual or racial prejudices and, therefore, their choice is going to be clearly based on them. There will be many different results after doing this activity because, although we live in the same society and we may share the majority of the ideas, each individual has his/her own beliefs and his/her own way of interpreting reality.

As a team, these are the people we chose and some of the arguments of our choice:

• William Patween. Although he is old and he has cancer and it is sure that he is going to die soon, he is an indigenous tribe leader who knows the island pretty well. So, he is the only one who can teach and explain the rest of the group how to survive in the island in the Pacific.


• Father Eugenio. Although he is a priest and he is not going to have descendants. He knows the South Pacific and is an expert on agriculture and growing is a vital knowledge in order to survive in a desert island. Being priest, he may also act as a sort of diplomat in the island.


• Robert Sisulu. We take him because he is an experienced hunter and his hunting knowledge will be very helpful in order to feed people in the deserted island.


• Kris McDonnell. The fact that she is a police officer and she carries a gun may be helpful in order to survive in the island, but we mainly take her because she is 3 months pregnant.


• Mary Maloney. Although her story is quite impressing and we kind of understand her reaction, we basically take her because she is pregnant. As she is a housewife, she can be in charge of cooking and feeding the whole group.


• Dr. Hammed Bedrouni. As we are taking pregnant women, we need a doctor to help them give birth. We don’t care if he is Muslim or not, but the role of the doctor is almost the most important when we think in terms of surviving.


• John McDonnell. He is a firefighter. We need strong people in order to built shelters but we also need fertile men in order to reproduce the species.

We tried to be as objective as posible but, sometimes, our preconceived ideas came to the surface of our decision. However, our choice was not only based on the prejudices of the people of the team but also on the importance of the role each person would fulfill in the deserted island: people from different religions, races and of different sexual orientation are forced to cohabite in our deserted island!

 

Making a Glogster or not?

The idea of making a glogster is a good one. It is a visual way of working with students and I really believe that it is a useful tool to introduce new vocabulary and new topics through funny images, trendy videos and songs, etc. Thinking about the role of the teacher, glogster becomes a useful tool in order to activate the previous knowledge of the students and to make them feel engaged in the activity almost without realising.

This is the one our team proposed:

http://www.glogster.com/group2ucv/desert-island/g-6ks4b6irldlv11f9edk01a0

 

This glogster is to be used as a pre-teaching activity: the survival topic is introduced through videos, songs and questions. Thus, the students are allowed to thinkg about the positive and the negative aspects of being trapped in a deserted island or they can express their feelings, while they learn vocabulary related to the topic almost without realising. However, I strongly believe that this glogster in particular can also be used as a post-teaching activity if you are dealing with the grammatical structures of the second conditional because being trapped in a deseted island is a hypothetical situation.

Now thinking about the role of the students, glosters can also be a different way of making presentations. It is more visual and more up-to-date than Powerpoint presentations. However, the best point of it is that, as there is not much text, students won't be reading the whole presentation. They will be expressing themselves, with their own words. Making a glosgster is also a way of fostering their creativy because students are free to compile the information however they want.

 

What about writing a postcard?

The idea of making a postcard or a picture of the island is also attractive. I had never thought about it before and I didn't even heard about these webpages. I think that this can be a perfect teaching activity because it lets the students put into practice the vocabulary of the topic and the grammatical structures reviwed in class but, at the same time, they are allowed to be creative.

This is the one we propose:

 

 

 

 

 

The internet is plenty of resources that can help teachers working with appealing activities for teenager students. Related to the topic of survival, the webpage www.freerice.com provides a huge quantity of vocabulary realted to several topic: human anatomy, geography (flags of the world, world capitals, country identification and world landmarks), the identification of famous artwork, and literature (classic and popular books). However, the most important thing of this learning tool is that it is a free online game that allows players to donate rice to fight world hunger while learning though, multiple-choice games: students donate 10 grains of rice to the World Food Programme for each of their correct answers. They are not only learning English but also important values and human rights because, eventually, we are educating and helping people grow. Teachers have also a social role, they are teaching students to be part of our society.

 

 

Teaching values is also important and the simulation arised at the beginning of the station is really useful to make students realise to what extent we are influenced by prejudices when judging other people (sexual inclination, race, religious beliefs, etc) and the importance of the human rights, that is, of the fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because he or she is a human being.

STATION 1: COMPARISON

April, 10 - STATION 1

 

The activities in this stations deal with the comparison of the female protagonists of both short stories, Mrs. Maloney and Mrs. Bixby. However, they pay more attention to Roald Dahl's shortstory "Lamb to the Slaughter".

 

The first activity implies a group discussion of the personality of Mary Maloney. After reading a description of her mood, students have to find similarities and differences between both female characters. This is the ones we, as a group, have found:

Mary Maloney is a scheming housewife, completely devoted to her husband and housework. She feels frustrated because he doesn't pay attention to her and she only wants to please him.

Mrs. Bixby is an ill-mannered woman who has everything in life: a hard-working husband, money, she's full of life but she lacks passion in her life.

 

Similarities: Both women suffer from unrequited love from their partners; they have everything in life except for happiness.

Differences: Each of them behaves in a different way; Mary Maloney actually kills her husband in an outburst and Mrs. Bixby has to resign and continue with her dull life.

I strongly believe that group discussions are an interestnig way of teaching because, as students are working in little groups, they feel free to give their opinion and they all interact with each other, even the shy ones. The personality of the student influences the performance of the students very much and it is a pity that some goog students do not participate in class because of their fear of speaking in public. So, working in groups can help this kind of students improve their speaking skills.

Using EDMODO or not?

I didn't know this platform and I found it really interesting. So, I'm sure I will use EDMODO in my classes because it's a platform where both teacher and students can share different points of view about the same activities, students can interact with each other, they can see the other's work, etc. As a consequence, they are learning from each other.

I also believe that it is a good idea to use EDMODO as a source of feedback for students: both, the teacher and the student, can see the progress with the language. First of all, the teacher is able to give immediate feedback to the students, but the most important thing of all is that students can see their own progress: they can compare their activities at the beginning of the course with their activities at the end of it. This is also a way of making them aware of their learning process and reflect about it.

Lots of activities can be adapted into pre/actual/post-teaching and they can be shared in EDMODO so that students create a sort of debate and share their knowledge with the rest of the class. However, in the case if this station, this activity could be used as a post-teaching  activity. As students have to discuss the similarities and the differences between the female characters of both shortstories and this means that they must have already been working each shortstory individually.

 

 

The idea of looking for ironic symbols is interesting too. Students have to read the story between the lines, they have to go a step beyond, they have to read the story with a critical eye. This is our analysis of the ironic symbols from both shortstories:

• Lamb to the Slaughter:


• It is an ironic symbol in the story because it is the weapon that Mary uses to murder her husband and no one realises. It can also have a religious interpretation being the lamb a sort of redeaming symbol.

• Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel's Coat:


• The neckpiece is the ironic symbol because it represents unfaithfulness, disdain and greed. 

 

What about using a voice recorder in class?

In my opinion, it is a good idea to use a voice recorder in class because they can listen to themselves speaking. Thus, students get to know their mistakes in pronunciation and they can improve by themselves. However, improving pronunciation and the speaking skill are not the only important aspects of it. Letting students create a dialogue and record it by themselves also fosters their creativity.

 

This is the audio we proposed for the activity:

mrs_maloney_interview.mp3

The good point of using a recorder is that teachers can suggest that students use their own mobile phones to record their voices. It is a good opportunity to make the students realise that technology can also be applied in a language class. Teachers can also record their voice and use the recording in differente ways. For instance:

• A recording can be used to give the instructions of an activity. Im my opinion, it is a different way of catching the attention of the students and, thus, they get involved in the activity without realising.


• It can also be used to give feedback to students in a different way. For example, recorded feedback can be much more significant for students than the traditional correction of texts and exercises. I'm sure they would pay much more attention to a recording in which the teacher is explaining their err

Depending on the content of the voice message we can adapt the activity to pre/actual/post-teaching. However, taking into account that it is an interview to Mrs. Malony, it can be considered as part of the actual teaching of the shortstory because, while students are writing the reasons which justify her acts, they are reflecting on the plot of the story and they are also putting into practice their speaking skills.

 

 

This station was a really interesting one. We, as a group, were working in different activities at the same time and, eventually, we ended up completing the whole task. It is a good idea to work like that because, after that, we put all our activities in common, we explained each other what we had done and why we had done it, etc. The idea of working cooperatively is a great one because, in real life, people needs to work cooperatively at home, at work, etc. We live in a society, that is, in small groups and we, as members of the group, have a role on it and a goal to achieve.

PRESENTATION OF THE SUBJECT

There are two main questions to think of during this part of the semester...

• What is active learning?
• Active learning occurs when students are given the opportunity to interact with the subject matter of a course. Students are able to do something else than passively listening to the teacher and it also implies active teaching.

 

• Is the any difference between group work and team work?
• Students need to be taught in a way that reflects real life, they must develop interpersonal skills after all. The difference is in the role students have within the group: do they all work on the same activity to achieve their goal? or do they have different roles and are in charge of part of the task?

After the methodology of this course was explained, we started to experiment it: ACTIVE LEARNING and TEAM WORK. So, the class was divided into 6 groups and each of the groups started to work together with the different activities Laura had prepared.

 

Mine was group 2 and it was a ladies' group: Maite Boix Pérez (language manager), Sara de Julián Ponce (assistant), Ana González Escuder (assitant), Cristina Maldonado Rubio (secretary) and me (leader). Let's try to start working as a team!