Overview: Students read and analyze medieval English ballads and discuss them in class and then use their kinesthetic abilities to act out a ballad of their choice. Using the Venn diagram tool, students next compare medieval ballads with modern ones. After familiarizing themselves with ballad themes and forms, students write their own original ballads. Finally, students engage in self-reflection on their group performances and on the literary characteristics of their ballads.
Students are often asked to study literature from distant time periods. This lesson uses a variety of activities that allow students to use multiple intelligences to relate literature from long ago to their modern experiences.
1. Ask students to list some favorite nursery rhymes (those that include both music and verse) from their childhood.
2. Use students’ responses to introduce ballads as a form of entertainment and folk literature in the Middle Ages. Point out that ballads are a narrative form of poetry, but unlike epic narratives, they deal with a different subject matter. Ballads are not the same as modern ballads, which are the music you slow dance to at junior high dances.
3. Read aloud and listen to Barbara Allen, Sir Patrick Spens, and Mary of the wild Moor on page 193 in the purple literature book.
4. Informally assess student learning by having students list some characteristics of the ballads that they have read and discuss examples from the ballads they have read.
5. Write the significant characteristics (those that correspond with the Ballad Checklist) on the board or overhead to reinforce them.
6. Have students investigate more characteristics of ballads on the Early Child Ballad and The Ballad Web sites. Link these from my UEN website.
7. After research time, ask students to share some of the characteristics they discovered and discuss their examples.
8. If I have extra time, let students group up and start on tomorrow’s assignment.
Homework Collected: None
Homework Given:
Ballad Reenactment Assignment
Handouts given out: None
To Read:
Barbara Allen, Sir Patrick Spens, p. 193, and Mary of the Wild Moor
