Teaching literature: contemplating about E.A.P and Shakespeare

 This is my first year of teaching literature, I must confess. It's interesting and exciting, especially, because the major analysis of the literary works I'm teaching, we discover with my students. Of course, I do a lot of research and I also analyze the dramas and novels we are reading, but then my students have bright ideas too and I feel that they are also valid, so I incorporate them, as well. It's exciting! 

What's more, I feel inspired and creative. So here are two tips (mostly for myself for the future). I just jot it down that I don't forget these ideas that were sparked in me these weeks and possibly, hopefully, I can use them again for different writers / novels/ works. 

1.) Teaching about Edgar Allan Poe, I had the idea of creating an escape room for my students. They had to find the keys with which they opened the lockers where - instead of escaping - a bag of candy was waiting for them. First of all, students received this letter: 

Dear Class,

welcome to the room, where you will meet some works of Edgar Allan Poe. Your courage, wit and knowledge will be equally used and needed today! Are you ready for the challenge? Come with me!

1.       You will meet riddles.

2.       You need to find a key.

3.       But first, find the padlock, that needs to be opened up.

4.       You only have 40 minutes to complete all the activities.

5.       Each clue will take you to the next one!

My friend, Dupin is a polyglot. He is not only good at solving mysteries,but he can speak several languages, as well. Whenever we used correspondence between us, he used his own encryption: he wrote the letters in a different language, according to the pronunciation. However, not everyone is capable of speaking Spanish or  ----- , so my beloved friend has left the following clue with him before he was taken away by the Death:

Y = 5
J = 2
Ä = ?

Can you find out the meaning of this, then?

YJÄ-------------IÄYYÄX

Hint: Alphabet helps!

Besides giving them help with the alphabet, I just randomly chose the letters. ä = e in German, j = pronounced h in Spanish, therefore the comment about polyglots. :-) If you would like to find out the solution by yourself, stop scrolling down and stop here. 

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The solution is The ____________ Letter. 

As we read "The Purloined Letter", students have guessed it correctly, the word we look for is "purloin". So the hint, "alphabet helps"is already a hint for the next clue. Students found the dictionaries on the shelf and when they turned it on the page where the word could be found, they found the following riddle: 

Whose motor only starts when it's happy?

The answer? 

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The answer is: the cat. On the board, there were three pictures (a cat, a raven, an owl), and under the picture of the cat, I stacked a sheet of crossword. :-) The solution of the crossword was "The Raven", so students needed to move on to the desks, put the poem (the first 3 verses) in order, and when they did that, the following question appeared on the edges of the slips of paper: When did he write this? The only known date for the Raven is 1845, and the key was under a cup with the number "1845" on. 

Although my escape room didn't contain scary figures or horroristic elements, my students have enjoyed it and spent quite a lot of time with it! :-) (Also I spent a lot of time with reorganizing the room and finding out interesting riddles, lol :-D )

2) I did that with EAP later on, but the first idea came up for Shakespeare: a live-boardgame for students. I found some unused sheets of paper, and I used them as "tiles". Then, I only needed to have some questions on them. Some questions were: 

Who is the antagonist? 
Who is the protagonist?
What is your favourite scene?
Write a short poem of Caesar.
Imagine, you're Calphurnia, write a letter to Caesar why he shouldn't go to the  Senate. , etc. , 

However, in order to make the game more fun, some tiles had physical activities on them, such as: 

Stand still in 5 minutes.
Step back / forward 2 steps.
Squat down 5 times.
Sing a song. :-D 
Run around the room twice.

It was also great fun, students could use the board individually, so they just could go in their own pace. It was not really a competition of who wins, but more like something fun to do and mix it with boardgame elements, while revising what we've learnt about. I keep the slips of paper in this case, as well, as the physical elements of this game can be reused for any other games, as well. Of course, I  won't revise everything with this method as I understand it would be boring after a while, but it was good for once and it will be good for another topic, too - not in the near future, of course. 

As I said, I enjoy so much! My creativity is boosted so much by these students! :-)