The Canterbury Tales Lesson Plan | Introduction
This unit has been designed to develop students' reading, writing, thinking, and language skills through exercises and activities related to The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. It includes twenty-seven lessons, supported by extra resource materials.
It is based on the Coghill modern translation of Chaucer's tales which stays very close to the old text, mostly substituting modern spellings for the Old English words, but also occasionally substituting modern words for archaic ones. The poetry remains intact, though not always exactly word-for-word the same as Chaucer's. This author thinks the Coghill translation is a good one for most high school students who want to enjoy the stories, learn about Chaucer and his times, and consider the main ideas presented by Chaucer rather than studying Old English and the exact text created by Chaucer's poetic genius.
This unit can be used for either the Old English version or the modern translation. If you use the Old English version, the vocabulary words chosen won't match, making the vocabulary sections of the unit nonapplicable. However, you will still be able to use the study guides, tests, writing assignments and other portions of the unit.
The materials in this literature unit plan are based on the Prologue and thirteen of the tales--tales by the Knight, the Miller, the Reeve, the Shipman, the Prioress, the Nun's Priest, the Pardoner, the Wife of Bath, the Friar, the Summoner, the Clerk, the Merchant, and the Franklin. For each of these tales there are short answer study questions, multiple choice study/quiz questions, vocabulary worksheets, vocabulary and text word search puzzles, vocabulary and text crossword puzzles, and extra worksheets.
The introductory lesson introduces students to The Canterbury Tales. Students are given the materials they will be using during the unit including the group project through which most of the background and reading of the tales will take place. Students are grouped into pairs. Each pair of students is assigned a tale. One student of the pair is responsible for getting background information about the character type. For example, he/she would find out what Reeves were in the 1300s--where they fit in the social classes, what their jobs were, what function they served in society, what their daily lives were like, etc. The other student will be responsible for reading the story (or a summary of the story if you choose) to the class. In the text there are often references to various gods or historical figures. Both students in the group will create a little reference sheet to go along with their tale on which these names will be listed with a short explanation of who they were. During the reading of the tales, the reader will pause when he/she comes upon one of these key names, and the background person will give a brief explanation of the person named.
This takes care of 26 of your students. What about the others? If you have more students, divide them into two groups. One group will be responsible for creating a presentation lasting 1/2 class period giving background information about life in England in the 1300's. The other group will be responsible for creating a presentation lasting 1/2 class period giving background information about Chaucer's life. If you have too many students for just these two groups, consider adding a third person to a few of the tale pairs, especially for long tales like the Knight's. Have two Knights do the reading--split the tale in half.
The idea behind the pattern for this unit is to simulate the experience of the group traveling to Canterbury and yet still get meaning and an education from the stories told. After being given time to prepare their presentations, different pairs of students will tell their tales each day, dressed in appropriate costumes of the day. Most of the people who tell tales are described in the Prologue to the tales. Students should transform themselves into their characters as much as possible. The person giving background information should dress appropriately also. For example the person giving background information for the Knight might dress as a squire. The person giving background information for the Prioress might dress as a nun or a monk, friar or priest, and so on. Ideally, students in your class should just listen to the presentation being made as the other travelers listened to the tale-tellers. However, if you have a class of students who will not pay attention, you might have them follow along in the text in their books.
During the time scheduled for students to make and listen to the presentations of the tales, students will do the vocabulary worksheet, preview the study questions and read the prologue of the tale to be done in the next class period on the night before. That way, they will have some familiarity with the tale and the more difficult words that will be used, and you won't have to take class time reading the prologue to each tale. After each tale is read or presented, discuss the study questions so you are sure students understand what they just heard. After all the tales have been presented, there is time for a short review of all the tales.
The study guide questions are fact-based questions; students can find the answers to these questions right in the text. These questions come in two formats: short answer or multiple choice. The best use of these materials is probably to use the short answer version of the questions as study guides for students (since answers will be more complete), and to use the multiple choice version for occasional quizzes. It might be a good idea to make transparencies of your answer keys for the overhead projector.
The vocabulary work is intended to enrich students' vocabularies as well as to aid in the students' understanding of the text. Prior to each tale, students will complete a two-part worksheet for approximately 10 vocabulary words in the upcoming tale. Part I focuses on students' use of general knowledge and contextual clues by giving the sentence in which the word appears in the text. Students are then to write down what they think the words mean based on the words' usage. Part II nails down the definitions of the words by giving students dictionary definitions of the words and having students match the words to the correct definitions based on the words' contextual usage. Students should then have an understanding of the words when they meet them in the text.
After each tale, students will go back and formulate answers for the study guide questions. Discussion of these questions serves as a review of the most important events and ideas presented in the reading assignments.
After students complete reading the work, there is a vocabulary review lesson which pulls together all of the fragmented vocabulary lists for the reading assignments and gives students a review of all of the words they have studied.
Following the vocabulary review, a lesson is devoted to the extra discussion questions/writing assignments. These questions focus on interpretation, critical analysis and personal response, employing a variety of thinking skills and adding to the students' understanding of the text.
There are three writing assignments in this unit, each with the purpose of informing, persuading, or having students express personal opinions. The first assignment is to inform: students take the information gathered through research and organize it into a composition. The second assignment is to express personal opinions: students choose one tale as the "winner" of the free meal offered by the Host. The third assignment is to persuade: students choose one composition from a list related to the tales.
In addition, there is a nonfiction reading assignment. Students are required to read a piece of nonfiction related in some way to The Canterbury Tales. This assignment may be fulfilled through the background research students will do relating to their characters. After reading their nonfiction pieces, students will fill out a worksheet on which they answer questions regarding facts, interpretation, criticism, and personal opinions. Before and during the tale presentations, students make oral presentations about the nonfiction pieces they have read, giving background information and additional information to the text. This not only exposes all students to a wealth of information, it also gives students the opportunity to practice public speaking.
The review lesson pulls together all of the aspects of the unit. The teacher is given four or five choices of activities or games to use which all serve the same basic function of reviewing all of the information presented in the unit.
The unit test comes in two formats: all multiple choice-matching-true/false or with a mixture of matching, short answer, multiple choice, and composition. As a convenience, two different tests for each format have been included. There is also an advanced short answer version of the unit test.
There are additional support materials included with this unit. The resource sections include suggestions for an in-class library, crossword and word search puzzles related to the play, and extra vocabulary worksheets. There is a list of bulletin board ideas which gives the teacher suggestions for bulletin boards to go along with this unit. In addition, there is a list of extra class activities the teacher could choose from to enhance the unit or as a substitution for an exercise the teacher might feel is inappropriate for his/her class. Answer keys are located directly after the reproducible student materials throughout the unit. The student materials may be reproduced for use in the teacher's classroom without infringement of copyrights. No other portion of this unit may be reproduced without the written consent of Teacher's Pet Publications, Inc.
The level of this unit can be varied depending upon the criteria on which the individual assignments are graded, the teacher's expectations of his/her students in class discussions, and the formats chosen for the study guides, quizzes and test. If teachers have other ideas/activities they wish to use, they can usually easily be inserted prior to the review lesson.
