The Next Day: How teachers used ideas from Jeffrey Wilhelm's workshop in their classrooms

~ Mary Freng-Gunderson and Dan Lerberg (student teacher), Champlin Park High School
During Henry V, we dramatized a scene in class. We were at the scene where Henry is deliberating whether or not to have his old friend Bardolph hanged. We anointed one student King Hank (he wore a crown) and students were asked to give Henry some advice as if they were Henry's conscience. Then other students took the roles of characters such as the Dauphin, Duke of Exeter, Pistol, Bardolph, etc. Each character had a prop to identify who they were. They gave Henry advice and in some cases, Henry responded. By the time we watched the scene in the film, students were very anxious to know what Henry would decide to do.

~ Rachel Malchow Lloyd, Champlin Park High School
We'd been discussing the possible causes of Hamlet's indecision. Students were given a role to play (Evil Hamlet, Oedipal complex Hamlet, victim of fate Hamlet, over-intellectual Hamlet, and pathologically depressed Hamlet). Groups first thought of questions they wanted to ask Hamlet and then identified scenes where they found evidence to support this interpretation. From there, students from any group could ask a particular Hamlet their questions. This activity took them to a very high level of interpretation.

~ Georgia Schoenknect, Champlin Park High School
Good angel - bad angel. One student was in the front of the room playing Hamlet. Each student wrote out a good piece of advice and a bad piece of advice. Volunteers came up and gave Hamlet advice and the Hamlet student (who already had his own opinion) reacted. Of course, these were all in Hamlet's head, so then students took the parts of other characters (i.e., Horatio, Gertrude, Ophelia-who-was-already-dead, etc.) and came up as that character and gave Hamlet their opinions. This activity took place right at the point where Horatio tells Hamlet not to go to the duel. In the end, Hamlet was asked what he was going to do, and then, of course, we finished the play. They were all totally involved for the final scene.

~ Sandy Nesvig, Annunciation School
Wilhelm's take on drama was different from anything I had done. In one of the activities he demonstrated, students number off and according to their number become a character from the story (or from a portion of the story) and engage another character in the story in a brief conversation. My 7th grade literature class was scheduled to discuss "Raymond's Run" a few days after I attended the workshop -- a perfect opportunity to try out the activity. Well, it was amazing how quickly students jumped into their roles and how animated their discussion was. There are several scenes in this particular story that have typically confused my students. I read the scene, then assigned roles. Each "discussion" took just minutes, but everyone was involved and eager to continue the activity. Judging by what I heard as I walked around the room, the activity was a success.

~ JeanMarie Burtness, Champlin Park High School
In Humanities, we are studying Hildegard von Bingen, a medieval nun mystic visionary. After reading one of her visions, which is highly symbolic, I had the students draw a picture with images contained in her writings. This strategy certainly helped them visualize some very complex ideas.

~ Jean Borax, St. Paul Schools
I am reading Four Miles to Pinecone with my ninth grade class, so I returned from the workshop geared up about doing the hotseat activity. The kids got into it right away. It's a great way to get kids into character. They don't need to have memorized any lines; they simply have to respond as the character would. Then later in the week, I enlisted the help of my colleague and we invented a conversation between one of the characters and his father, who is recovering from a suicide attempt. Nothing was scripted and each hour the performance was different, but the kids applauded us and dove into the silent reading with stunning alacrity. I think we, the adults, were surprised at how deeply we got into the characters we were representing.

~ Joan Thompson, Augsburg College
Though Jeff Wilhelm focuses his reading ideas on grades seven through twelve, they also work in a college classroom, especially one in which students seem to have the midterm (and daylight savings time) blues.
My Women in Fiction class responded well to drama in the form of a talk radio show. I played the announcer and had them call in to talk about the way Aunt Georgiana acted after returning to Nebraska in Willa Cather's "The Wagner Matinee." The drama helped them to understand the possible implications of Aunt Georgiana's reaction to the concert she attends with her nephew Clark.
My freshmen writing students who had read Susan Glaspell's "Trifles" as an introduction to a writing about literature unit tried a variation of Wilhelm's pictorial activity. I had them draw objects and details the men and women in the play notice. Doing so helped them to understand the significance of the characters' lines. They also had fun discussing the way in which classmates represented the objects they drew, which provided a wonderful lesson on interpretation.

~ Sandy Hayes, Becker Middle School
One of the components of Wilhelm's Symbolic Story Representation activity is having students identify their point of view as a reader in relation to the story. I used this as a quick round-the-class response as students doing recreational reading did their weekly sharing. I thought most of my 8th graders would read from the point of view of the main character, but I was wrong. The range of their responses was surprising. A few were the main character, but most were a minor character or an unidentified character (a "sidekick" as one boy said) or they were a TV camera or were watching from someplace up in the clouds. One even said he was an animal watching the story. I was very surprised about the visual and physical sensation they gave to the act of reading.