Don%20Quixote%20Reading%20Writing%20Renaissance

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Don QuixoteReading Writing Renaissance

• A lesson to engage English Language Learners in
  the Renaissance world view guided by the wisdom
  of Sancho Panza.

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Presented by Melissa ThompsonSheldon
I.S.D.Houston, Texas

• Created for the Greater Houston Area Writing
  Project, Summer 2005. Presented July 13, 2005.
• With many thanks to the National Endowment for
  the Humanities for a grant received July, 2004.

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Inquiry Strategies - Immersing

• In immersing themselves in either a lived or
  represented world, students need to consciously
  attend to their own reactions to that world,
  because these reactions suggest those aspects a
  person would find urgent or significant enough to
  study.
• Inquiry-Based English Instruction, Engaging
  Students in Life and
• Literature by Richard Beach and Jamie Myers

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Inquiry Strategies - Immersing

• Students who have a limited amount of time or
  access to a site may examine a social world as
  represented in literature and the media.
• Inquiry-Based English Instruction, Engaging
  Students in Life and Literature by Richard Beach
  and Jamie Myers

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Inquiry Strategies - Immersing

• Students have begun a unit to learn about the
  Renaissance. Since they do not have access to a
  site (i.e., they cant go there and see it for
  themselves) literature and the media will be
  employed in the classroom for the students to
  begin reading, questioning, and writing.

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Inquiry Strategies - Immersing

• The cover art is discussed and the main
  characters are introduced. Discussion is
  encouraged in discussing the animals on which
  each man rides.
• The word ass is defined and discussed.
  Laughter is encouraged.
• Prior knowledge is activated.
• The text is never watered down.

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(No Transcript)
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Inquiry Strategies - Immersing

• The readers primary goal as he meets the text
  is to have as full an aesthetic experience as
  possible, given his own capacities and the
  sensibilities, preoccupations and memories he
  brings to the transaction.
• The Reader the text the poem, the transactional
  theory of the literary work by Louise M.
  Rosenblatt

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Inquiry Strategies - Immersing

• In beginning this larger than life work of art,
  the students begin with smaller, typewritten
  passages that are read by the teacher, while
  students read along.
• They see the larger work in the readers hands
  and are read to from the complete work.

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Inquiry Strategies - Immersing

• Passages

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Passage 1 During this fortnight Don Quixote set
to work on a farmer who was a neighbor of his, an
honourable man (if a poor man can be called
honourable) but a little short of salt in the
brain-pan. To be brief, Don Quixote told him,
reasoned with him and promised him so much that
the poor villager decided to go away with him and
serve him as squire. Don Quixote told the man,
among other things, that he ought to be delighted
to go, because at some time or another he could
well have an adventure in which he won an island
in the twinkling of an eye and installed his
squire as governor. These and other similar
promises persuaded Sancho Panza, for this was the
farmers name, to leave his wife and children and
go into service as his neighbours squire.
Cervantes 61
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Passage 2 Whats a knight adventurer? replied
the wench. Are you so green you dont know
that? retorted Sancho Panza. Well, look here,
my dear a knight adventurer, to cut a long
story short, is someone whos being beaten up one
moment and being crowned emperor the next. Today
hes the unhappiest creature in the world, and
the poorest too, and tomorrow hell have two or
three kingdoms to hand over to his
squire. Well, youre the squire of this fine
master, said the innkeepers wife, so how is it
that, to judge from appearances, you arent even
a count?
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Its early days yet, replied Sancho, weve
only been looking out for adventures for a month,
and so far we havent come across any worthy of
the name. And sometimes you go looking for one
thing and you find another. The fact is that if
my master Don Quixote gets over his wounds or
fall and it doesnt turn me into a cripple, I
wouldnt swap my hopes for the best title in
Spain. Cervantes 123
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Inquiry Strategies - Immersing

• Response circle.
• Vocabulary is written informally on the board for
  students to see and incorporate into their
  reflections.
• Beach and Myers dual entry journal format is
  introduced, discussed and modeled.

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Inquiry Strategies - Immersing

• On the left side of the page, they may describe
  observations of particular objects, symbols,
  activities, interactions, or practices in a
  world. Here the Renaissance world-view seen
  through Sancho.
• Inquiry-Based English Instruction, Engaging
  Students in Life and Literature by Richard Beach
  and Jamie Myers

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Inquiry Strategies - Immersing

• Then, next to each of these observations, they
  note specific thoughts and feelings evoked by the
  practices and material conditions of the social
  world.
• Inquiry-Based English Instruction, Engaging
  Students in Life and Literature by Richard Beach
  and Jamie Myers

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Modifications

• Gifted and Talented. Same lesson, longer, more
  complex passages and a copy of the text in hand.
• Special Education Students. Same lesson with
  more group work and oral sharing of ideas and
  vocabulary and partner writing responses.

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Bibliography

• Beach, Richard and Jamie Myers. Inquiry-Based
  English Instruction, Engaging Students in Life
  and Literature. Teachers College Press, New
  York, NY 2001.
• Cervantes, Miguel. The Ingenious Hidalgo Don
  Quixote de la Mancha. Penguin Books, New York,
  NY.
• Rosenblatt, Louise M. The Reader, the text, the
  poem, the transactional theory of the literary
  work. Southern Illinois University Press,
  Carbondale and Edwardsville, IL 1978.