Teaching Ideas

Re-reading the Pardoner's Tale with all the translations and footnotes has really helped me to assimilate the story and that coupled with the knowledge I obtained from reading 'Death of a Salesman' has made me feel a lot not more confident about Chaucer, especially as I had never really looked at any of his work until the start of this course. I didn't expect this sort of literature to be so easily brought to life, and I feel that with a bit more thought, advice and experience I would be happy to start teaching the Chaucer, but I'm still not sure if I'd feel really comfortable teaching it to kids until post-16. This is due to a number of reasons: firstly, I'm just not sure that kids who haven't made the choice to study English (ie. for A-Level) would necessarily appreciate the reasons for studying something that they may arguably deem archaic/old-fashioned/pointless; secondly, there are some gritty issues involved that I guess I would feel a little uncomfortable broaching with kids that might not have the maturity to deal with them eg. homosexuality/transgender - I really don't mean to be patronising in that last statement, but 18 year-old boys struggled to keep a straight face when I was teaching them about transgender issues during an A-Level Psychology class, and that doesn't really bode well for students that are younger than them. However, I am aware that these 'issues' are becoming more acceptible/acknowledged and therefore it may be progressively 'easier' to broach them...

The Wif of Bath's Tale really intreagues me (especially as I have vague recollections of Dawn French portraying her in a BBC adaptation..?) and I really loved the activity that compared the teachings of 'The Church Fathers' with her views on feminism. There are so many cross-curricular activities that surround this topic eg. RE and history - and I would really like to discuss it with teachers in this department to see what comprehensive links can be made.

Now I'm off to catch the last few rays...enjoy people!!

Interesting - if brief - start. Thanks for setting the site up.