Macbeth: the scheme in five minutes

Transcript

Introduction0:00

This is Between the Lines, and this is the walkthrough of our Macbeth scheme of learning. I'm Hannah.

The scheme at a glance0:07

Macbeth is written for Literature Paper 1, Section A, the Shakespeare question. It's 33 lessons of sixty minutes, which is about seven to nine weeks, with three levels of support throughout. The lessons run in five sequences: Context and Act 1, lessons 1 to 7; The murder of Duncan, lessons 8 to 13; Act 2 Scene 3 to Act 3, lessons 14 to 20; Acts 4 and 5, lessons 21 to 28; Themes and the exam, lessons 29 to 33. There are five assessment points. Four of them are Feedback Loop kits, in lessons 6, 12, 19 and 27, each followed by a feedback lesson, and the fifth is the end-of-unit essay in Lesson 32, with its own feedback lesson after it.

One lesson0:52

Let me show you with Lesson 4, Brave Macbeth. The big question is: How does Shakespeare present Macbeth before we meet him? Apply is about fifteen minutes, and it has two parts. First you explode one quotation together. In this lesson it's "Like Valour's minion, carv'd out his passage". Before you reveal anything, students try the four empty boxes on the first explode slide: method, zoom in, effect, purpose. Then you think aloud through the full version. The method is personification, with courage made into a master and Macbeth its favourite servant. The word to zoom in on is "carv'd", a word for cutting meat, so Macbeth cuts his way through living men as if they were a joint on a table. The effect: the audience admires his courage and is a little shocked by the ease of the killing, both at once. The purpose: Shakespeare makes Macbeth a hero before he appears so that his fall will hurt. That is the whole analytical move the exam rewards, done out loud, once a lesson, for the whole scheme. Then the hinge question, on mini-whiteboards. The Captain says Macbeth "unseam'd him from the nave to the chops". How does Duncan respond? The right answer is C: he praises Macbeth as a valiant and worthy gentleman. And this is the bit I'd ask every teacher to use. The handbook tells you what each wrong answer means. A student who picks A has judged the violence by modern standards and missed Duncan's line, so you re-read it together and they start on Securing. A student who picks B has lost track of who is speaking, so you recap the speakers before they write. The hinge question is how you decide, in thirty seconds, who starts on which level of support. That's what it's for.

Three levels of support2:37

Master is the last twenty-five minutes, and it's where the three levels do their work. Everyone in the room answers the same task. In Lesson 4 it's: How does Shakespeare present Macbeth before he appears on stage? Securing, aiming for a 4, gives a choice of exact quotations, here "brave Macbeth", "unseam'd him from the nave to the chops", and Duncan's "O valiant cousin! worthy gentleman!", a worked example on a different quotation, and sentence starters for What, How and Why. Strengthening, aiming for grades 5 to 6, gives prompts instead of starters: a clear point for What, a quotation with a method named and one word zoomed in on for How, and a Why prompt asking why Shakespeare wants the audience to admire Macbeth before they meet him, and what a tragedy needs its hero to be at the start, with a checklist. Soaring, aiming for grades 7 to 9, gives a debatable statement to argue with: In Act 1 Scene 2 Shakespeare shows us a killer, and only the king calls him a hero. How far do you agree? Two paragraphs, the second beginning with an alternative reading. Same extract, same question, same standard. Only the scaffolding changes.

Feedback Loop kits3:48

Four times in the scheme, the Master phase is a Feedback Loop kit: a twenty-five minute progress check that fits inside the lesson. You place the paragraph in one of the six AQA levels, using our indicative content for this task. There is no raw mark, and that's deliberate. A six out of thirty tells a student one thing, that they got six. A level, in AQA's own words, tells them what the paragraph does now and what the next one asks for.

Every scheme, the same shape4:14

That's the Macbeth scheme. The same structure runs through every Between the Lines scheme, so a teacher who has taught one has taught the shape of all of them, and a student who moves classes mid-year lands in a lesson they recognise. Lesson 3 of every scheme is free at btl.education if you want to show a colleague what a lesson looks like before they open the folders. Thank you for watching, and I hope your classes enjoy Macbeth as much as mine have.