Julius Caesar

So much has happened in the last few days as far as thinking about teaching, but since I ought to be getting some homework done before I return to the Twin Cities (I was in Winona on Thursday, Ryan and I went to Green Bay for Friday and Saturday, then returned to Winona on Sunday in a bit of a snowstorm), so this will be brief. I am just doing a little internet hunting right now, and thought it would be smart to put up some of the links while I am at it.

I have been putting together a Julius Caesar binder in the last few days. Ms Doherty let me go through her binders and photocopy anything she had in them, so I already had a solid start to planning my JC unit (which won't come until May, I don't think). My former teacher Mrs Kraszewski (the same teacher who graciously let me teach my first class on Longfellow's poem) gave me a stack of her materials--from study guides to introductory notes; another former Preble teacher passed along another giant stack to my mother to give to me of her own JC handouts and such. I jokingly told Ryan last night, "I don't think I even have to read the book again with all of these great materials!"

Of course, just to be sure, I've printed out a few other things from the internet:

Julius Caesar (Class Zone)
Julius Caesar (HS Webguide)
Shakespeare and You! (scroll down to the middle JC listing--it's a pdf file)
Shakespeare in Education
The Plays of William Shakespeare
Some fun ideas for JC and Romeo and Juliet
Julius Caesar e-notes

Some fun ideas for teaching Julius Caesar:

~ create a Julius Caesar "theme park"
~ create a horoscope for the main characters in Julius Caesar
~ write a campaign speech for both Brutus and Antony
~ make a Julius Caesar alphabet book ("A is for Antony", etc.)
~ comic strip/movie poster/storyboard
~ What if Brutus... ?
~ create/find song lyrics for each of the main characters
~ rewrite parts of JC with modern political figures (Clinton and Gore were the examples, but I suppose Bush would work too)

OK, I promised myself I would explore for half an hour, then get to work on my homework (I have three abstract-type assignments due for tonight's class--for project proposal). I had an interesting last Thursday and will try to write about that in my next entry!