Mike Rohwedder
Methods of Teaching Comp.
Unit – Geoffrey Chaucer
Lesson – Selected Canterbury Tales
Overview – The unit consists of notes on Chaucer and reading a few of his “Canterbury
Tales.” Students will take daily quizzes on the material that they were to have to read, on
topics such as the characters, what they did, what were their motives. There will be a
discussion in every class on the reading. The fifth day there will be a test on everything
as a whole.
Materials – Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales”, notebook for notes, and a
writing utensil.
Objective – In this lesson students will better understand a few of the works they have
read by Geoffrey Chaucer and his life himself.
Day 1
Activity – notes on Chaucer’s life/informative notes.
-Notes on his birth date
-Why he was such an important figure in English literature
-ect.
Homework assignment – read “The Knight’s Tale”
Day 2
Evaluation – Quiz on the notes on Chaucer from yesterday, combined with another quiz
from “The Knight’s Tale”.
-Quiz will contain questions pertaining to the characters, what events occurred,
and so on.
After the quiz is over, exchange papers with peers and correct in class. After they are
done correcting, we will go over the answers in class and then answer any questions or
ask if there are questions.
Activity - After the questions are answered from the quiz, we will start a discussion on
“The Knight’s Tale”. Ask the students questions about what they thought about it. Have
the students give their overall opinion on it. Did they like it? Why? What didn’t they
like about it? Why?
In class – The students will write a short story on “The Knight’s Tale.” They could write
about a certain character from the tale and give his thoughts, what he is doing, where he
is going.
Students could also write their own alternate ending. They could possibly take
one character and focus on him as the alternate ending, or they could do whatever they
want for the ending.
Or they could take each character and put them on a talk show or something
similar to that. Another possible class activity could be to actually act out a talk show
involving each character. The rest of the students who aren’t the people on stage will be
the audience. They will ask questions to the people on stage. Question should try to
focus on “The Knight’s Tale” but occasionally there should be a few “off the wall”
questions to get students involved. When asked a question by the audience, the character
should try to answer the question
Day 3
Activity – Students will prepare and polish the activity for class. They will divide into
groups. Individuals will be cast as characters from the “The Knights Tale.” This process
will be decided by drawing from a hat.
1. Knight
2. Squier
3. Yeoman
4. Prioress
5. Monk
6. Friar
7. Merchant
The students who will portray their character will freshen up their memory on
how their character acts. Students who are assigned the part of the audience, must
prepare to ask questions to ask the characters on the stage. They will be ready to answer
any questions that are asked to them by the audience members to their best abilities in the
way their character will answer them.
One student will be assigned the part of the talk show host. His or her job will be
to be the “ringleader” to take control of what is going on. That person should prepare an
introduction, introduce the guests on the show, and to talk to the audience and get them to
ask questions, and possibly to cool down the situation if it gets too intense, which would
be another fun thing for the class.
The audience should try to their best ability to ask questions about how, what,
when, why the characters acted in a certain manner or what they will do now. They
might think about asking questions about the aftermath of “The Knight’s Tale.”
Questions should be kept clean, and they should not try to get too hostile.
Day 4
Evaluation – students will meet with the teacher individually to go over their questions to
discuss whether they are appropriate enough or along the basic line of the tale.
Activity – The students will perform their show for the class period. Their show will be
recorded for the next day of class. Students are encouraged to have fun with this activity.
They should gain knowledge from the tale from the answers from the characters on stage,
being that they are relatively “correct” answers.
Day 5
Activity – students will watch their performance from the previous class period.
Individually, they will write a short paper on the activity discussing how the activity
affected them. The paper should include whether or not they enjoyed the week’s activity.
Evaluation – The papers that the students wrote will be graded, and they will also take a
test over everything covered. This test will be somewhat like the first quiz they took, but
only with more questions to see if they paid attention in class, and read the material that
was assigned.