My idea that worked so well last year started with one that Tim gave us at St. Johnsbury - Family Therapy.  It was amazing how well the students did.  I will attach a basic handout that I gave the students.  I pair Death of a Salesman with Fences.  I give the students background information for them to read along with the book that includes information on the authors, the basic story, a study guide, some information on style and devices, etc.   They finish the books before we start and we only spend a total of 5 days on both plays.  If you have a really sharp group this works great because they do a lot of the background/informational reading ahead of time.  I also divide my class into two equal groups - one to cover Salesman and the other to cover Fences.  I brought in a family counselor on the first day who addressed some of the issues listed on the handout.  On the second day I had a doctor's consultation.  The group who had concentrated on Salesman discussed the Loman family as their patient identifying all the problems and possible solutions as discussed by the counselor I brought in, the handout and their own reading.  The other group played the doctors in the audience by questioning and testing the first group's theories and ideas.  They would questions them about why they believed something about a character, the proof they had, the solution, etc.  The next day the roles were reversed and we concentrated on Fences.  That left us two additional days for full class discussion on both books or to continue the consultation if it was working really well and needed more time.  The texts served as the case study in that everything that was said had to be completely supported by the text and the students made constant references to it as proof.  It was amazing how much the students learned and how much they were able to pull the story apart to see all that was actually happening.  I recommend it.  Thanks Tim.

 

At the end, an interesting writing idea was to have the students choose a character from one family to insert into the other family.  The assignment was to discuss how that character would change the other family both positively and negatively.

John Hendrix 

>>> kdburnam@together.net 03/18/02 08:25PM >>>
Good Evening List Folk,

I am going to be teaching Death of a Salesman for the first time.  If you
have something that works, would you mind sharing?  I'm starting from
scratch with this play - which is both exciting and overwhelming.  And
besides, my AP kids are smart but starting to act like seniors ... at a
most inopportune time.

In advance, thank you!
Kathryn


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