The introduction is lively and would definitely appeal to high school students. I like that you highlight the ins and outs of the Globe Theatre so that students can gain an understanding of the context in which the plays were performed. I think this intro provides important information, even though it does not talk specifically about Macbeth at the Globe. The rest of your edition focuses in on the play itself enough so that the introduction can be a means for students to enter the world of Shakespeare in general.
Suggestions: It probably wouldn’t hurt to add some more information about where Macbeth came from in the introduction. It might be intriguing to high school students to know that Macbeth was a real king and that the current king of England (James I) had connections to Scotland. Obviously you might not want to sway the readers to believe any particular theories about why Shakespeare wrote the play (if he wrote it for James, etc.), but providing some factual historical context would be helpful and interesting. Plus, from looking at the rest of your edition, I am confident that your group can make something like this fun! Your supplemental resources are great and really legitimize everything you are doing with the edition.
So your guys' "essay" is really your letter to the editor. I don't see any section including anything on criticism (which is the section I authored and am therefore critiquing on your prototype) and feel like an introductory section to criticism might be helpful for high school students. We included a brief explanation of what criticism is and how it can add depth to a reading of a work so high school students can understand its importance. Overall I think your edition is really cool though. I think the footnotes are minimal and helpful enough. I like the introductory material and supplementary material for the play. My suggestions would be to trim down your introduction and material on meter and the theater to keep the students' attention. While that stuff may be important for a Shakespearean scholar, for a high school English class, it might not be so relevant. Include more about the importance of this play in changing the genre of drama and invoking themes that are still applicable today. Also, I would remove some of the funnier supplementary material from the student editions so that the students aren't zoning out looking at that stuff as opposed to listening to their teacher and reading the play. These are my suggestions, but overall you guys did really well.
Annotated ToC: I don't have much to say about this part. It was well done. Straight forward, to the point, and it seemed like all the pieces in your edition flow together smoothly.
Student Discussion Questions: Your discussion questions are crafted so well. You guys did an excellent job at making Macbeth relevant for the students through the discussion questions. A lot of the questions had students reflecting on their own life and connecting it to Macbeth. The questions seemed to really hit the core themes. Well done!
Teacher: This was one of my favorite parts! I loved the different activities that you guys provided. That is SO helpful for a teacher. I also loved the resources section. Not only did you provide the teacher with other outside sources but you gave a short and sweet summary of what they can find through those other sources. I cannot express how helpful I think that is for teachers.
I apologize. I don't really have anything you guys could work on. Those specific areas of your edition were all so well crafted! If I find anything else that could use some work with those sections I will let you know! Well done!
Awesome edition! You guys made it super engaging as you set out to do, so good job there. I’ll be focusing on what I loved and some suggestions that I have for your “text” section. But I’ll also touch on the rest of the edition as well. I also printed out your edition and made notes on it so I will get that back to you through Prof. Kerr so that you can see what I had to say there.
LOVE IT:
• The Tidbit Boxes: These rock. I wanted to read through all of them because they were super interesting. I feel like they make Shakespeare accessible and real to high school students. I do agree with one of the other comments in that I would be wary to include too much of that so that it doesn’t take away from the play. But I do love what you have. Here’s another one you could use:
o Did you know that Shakespeare wasn’t always considered the best writer in the English language? It wasn’t until the 19th century that Shakespeare was given that mantle.
• The Scene Summaries: Really helps high schoolers to not get lost in the text. I like it a lot. There were some places that I thought you could clean up the language in the summaries a little better to make it less confusing but all in all I love the idea.
• Visuals: Honestly a lot of people are visual learners. This helps everyone out. • I love the references in the intro to the movies that have adapted Shakespeare texts. This makes high schoolers realize that Shakespeare is indeed alive and well in our media. • “Location” orients them from the get go. I love it.
SUGGESTIONS:
• Footnotes: The footnotes are simple enough but I do feel like there were a few places that you could have footnoted better. For example, “crossed,” “eminence,” and “chuck” were just some of the ones that you don’t annotate that maybe you could. Obviously it’s up to you. See my hard copy for more suggestions on this point. • Just a few perhaps textual errors that you’ll need to correct, i.e. a missing “return space” here, or a misplaced capitalization there, or you left a word in its archaic spelling but obviously the rest of the edition doesn’t do that. Once again, I marked all of the ones that I found on this point on my hard copy. • Dumb down the iambic pentameter section. Compared to the rest of your edition it uses “stuffy” language and I think that high schoolers will clock out. I think for high schoolers, who most likely will not care about this (at least I didn’t in high school but maybe that’s me), you will have to make this section super short and concise or else you will lose them. • Your essay claims that your edition will do some things that it is not currently doing, at least from my perspective. I’m sure you plan on doing this later. But some of the examples that I saw are: giving descriptions to the characters in the character list, giving a historical basis of the play, and giving us some secondary scholarship. (With that secondary scholarship you also might want to consider summarizing the article that you plan to include rather than including the entire thing. Just a thought.)
Overall it rocked! It really did. It showed us that we need to be more creative so thanks for that! Good luck with the rest!
The introduction is lively and would definitely appeal to high school students. I like that you highlight the ins and outs of the Globe Theatre so that students can gain an understanding of the context in which the plays were performed. I think this intro provides important information, even though it does not talk specifically about Macbeth at the Globe. The rest of your edition focuses in on the play itself enough so that the introduction can be a means for students to enter the world of Shakespeare in general.
ReplyDeleteSuggestions: It probably wouldn’t hurt to add some more information about where Macbeth came from in the introduction. It might be intriguing to high school students to know that Macbeth was a real king and that the current king of England (James I) had connections to Scotland. Obviously you might not want to sway the readers to believe any particular theories about why Shakespeare wrote the play (if he wrote it for James, etc.), but providing some factual historical context would be helpful and interesting. Plus, from looking at the rest of your edition, I am confident that your group can make something like this fun! Your supplemental resources are great and really legitimize everything you are doing with the edition.
So your guys' "essay" is really your letter to the editor. I don't see any section including anything on criticism (which is the section I authored and am therefore critiquing on your prototype) and feel like an introductory section to criticism might be helpful for high school students. We included a brief explanation of what criticism is and how it can add depth to a reading of a work so high school students can understand its importance. Overall I think your edition is really cool though. I think the footnotes are minimal and helpful enough. I like the introductory material and supplementary material for the play. My suggestions would be to trim down your introduction and material on meter and the theater to keep the students' attention. While that stuff may be important for a Shakespearean scholar, for a high school English class, it might not be so relevant. Include more about the importance of this play in changing the genre of drama and invoking themes that are still applicable today. Also, I would remove some of the funnier supplementary material from the student editions so that the students aren't zoning out looking at that stuff as opposed to listening to their teacher and reading the play. These are my suggestions, but overall you guys did really well.
ReplyDeleteAnnotated ToC: I don't have much to say about this part. It was well done. Straight forward, to the point, and it seemed like all the pieces in your edition flow together smoothly.
ReplyDeleteStudent Discussion Questions: Your discussion questions are crafted so well. You guys did an excellent job at making Macbeth relevant for the students through the discussion questions. A lot of the questions had students reflecting on their own life and connecting it to Macbeth. The questions seemed to really hit the core themes. Well done!
Teacher: This was one of my favorite parts! I loved the different activities that you guys provided. That is SO helpful for a teacher. I also loved the resources section. Not only did you provide the teacher with other outside sources but you gave a short and sweet summary of what they can find through those other sources. I cannot express how helpful I think that is for teachers.
I apologize. I don't really have anything you guys could work on. Those specific areas of your edition were all so well crafted! If I find anything else that could use some work with those sections I will let you know!
Well done!
Awesome edition! You guys made it super engaging as you set out to do, so good job there. I’ll be focusing on what I loved and some suggestions that I have for your “text” section. But I’ll also touch on the rest of the edition as well. I also printed out your edition and made notes on it so I will get that back to you through Prof. Kerr so that you can see what I had to say there.
ReplyDeleteLOVE IT:
• The Tidbit Boxes: These rock. I wanted to read through all of them because they were super interesting. I feel like they make Shakespeare accessible and real to high school students. I do agree with one of the other comments in that I would be wary to include too much of that so that it doesn’t take away from the play. But I do love what you have. Here’s another one you could use:
o Did you know that Shakespeare wasn’t always considered the best writer in the English language? It wasn’t until the 19th century that Shakespeare was given that mantle.
• The Scene Summaries: Really helps high schoolers to not get lost in the text. I like it a lot. There were some places that I thought you could clean up the language in the summaries a little better to make it less confusing but all in all I love the idea.
• Visuals: Honestly a lot of people are visual learners. This helps everyone out.
• I love the references in the intro to the movies that have adapted Shakespeare texts. This makes high schoolers realize that Shakespeare is indeed alive and well in our media.
• “Location” orients them from the get go. I love it.
SUGGESTIONS:
• Footnotes: The footnotes are simple enough but I do feel like there were a few places that you could have footnoted better. For example, “crossed,” “eminence,” and “chuck” were just some of the ones that you don’t annotate that maybe you could. Obviously it’s up to you. See my hard copy for more suggestions on this point.
• Just a few perhaps textual errors that you’ll need to correct, i.e. a missing “return space” here, or a misplaced capitalization there, or you left a word in its archaic spelling but obviously the rest of the edition doesn’t do that. Once again, I marked all of the ones that I found on this point on my hard copy.
• Dumb down the iambic pentameter section. Compared to the rest of your edition it uses “stuffy” language and I think that high schoolers will clock out. I think for high schoolers, who most likely will not care about this (at least I didn’t in high school but maybe that’s me), you will have to make this section super short and concise or else you will lose them.
• Your essay claims that your edition will do some things that it is not currently doing, at least from my perspective. I’m sure you plan on doing this later. But some of the examples that I saw are: giving descriptions to the characters in the character list, giving a historical basis of the play, and giving us some secondary scholarship. (With that secondary scholarship you also might want to consider summarizing the article that you plan to include rather than including the entire thing. Just a thought.)
Overall it rocked! It really did. It showed us that we need to be more creative so thanks for that! Good luck with the rest!