AI-enabled activities and AI-proof activities
AI-enabled exercise: Putting text to music
Rationale
This exercise encourages thinking about how the play's scene would be presented, and how it could fit in a production of the entire play. Students can also be encouraged to create their own music and sung versions using tools such as suno.ai or ChatGPT. A team activity of an AI production of the entire play can encourage students to understand the play from start to finish, and create a permanent online asset they can be proud of.
For each scene, do you prefer option A, B, C or D ?
3 experiential questions on Shakespeare
To help put yourself into the situation Othello was in with Desdemona:
Describe a situation you have personally experienced in which you misunderstood someone, especially someone close to you. It could be an assumption they did something wrong or nasty which ultimately you found out they didn’t do. It could be a belief you assumed they held which you judged poorly for, and later found either they never held that belief at all or they did hold that belief and you learned the reasons and empathized with their reasons. Or something similar. Avoid inventing the situation but take the time to find a recall a real situation from your experience. Describe the situation, use pseudonyms for real people, and how you changed your understanding and learned how you had been wrong or mistaken.
Now re-write the situation taking into account what you learned from the play Othello.
To help put you into the situation of Lady Macbeth and her subconscious feeling of guilt:
Recall a situation in which you felt guilt for something you did or said, or some influence you had which in retrospect you regret. Avoid inventing the situation but take the time to find a recall a real situation from your experience. Describe the situation, use pseudonyms for real people, and how you changed your understanding and learned how you had been wrong or mistaken.
To help put you into the situation of Hamlet’s procrastination, hesitation and endless weighing of pro and cons with himself:
Recall a situation in which you avoided what you knew deep down you should do. Perhaps at the time you did not face up to what it was you had to do, but only had a subconscious inkling of it, and in retrospect you understand what you were avoiding.
Avoid inventing the situation but take the time to find a recall a real situation from your experience. Describe the situation, use pseudonyms for real people, and how you changed your understanding and learned how you had been wrong or mistaken.
With what you have learned from Hamlet, how would you have approach the situation differently if you were in that situation now?
3 experiential questions on contemporary literature
From Harry Potter
Hagrid’s mascot Buckbeak the Hippogriff in Harry Potter book 3 found guilty of a crime it didn’t commit and was condemned.
How would you have felt, reacted and behaved? Pick one of Harry, Ron, Hermione or Malfoy and write a dialogue you may have had with the other 3 in your own words and voice.
From Space Jam 2
If you were Dom James, how would you respond to your father’s pressure?
What similar pressure are you experiencing from your mother, father or guardian now? If none, what is the dynamic you are experiencing and how does it differ from Dom James’ experience in Space Jam 2?
From Better than the movies
Where do you have a choice between a Michael and a Wes? It could be a boyfriend or girlfriend, it could be a career choice a sport choice, a mindset or approach to school or life.
Describe each path. Have you made your choice yet? If not, what are you struggling with that’s holding you up?
If you have chosen, what did you choose? Was it a conscious or more automatic choice? What drove your decision?
Rationale for these experiential questions
Responses to these questions may become diary journal-like, and could be deeply personal depending on the approach each student takes. This is how literature is meant to be, it’s a personal lived experience that accelerates your learning by living through the writer, and you come out the other side with better understanding of your own life, and insight by observing yourself through the lens of someone else’s experience. Notice it’s you observing and understanding – internally and viscerally – not a commentator telling you how it relates to your life.
These questions – or good questions in general – should make you want to read the novel, give you a hunger to know how did Liz make her choice? How did Dom handle it? What did Harry / Ron / Hermione / Malfoy feel and say? How would I have felt?
It’s no longer an intellectual exercise but a lived experience, and it becomes a precious treature to the student to carry with them through life, or at least for the next 10-20 years.
I don’t want ChatGPT’s opinion, I want to know what I would feel and do.
So it’s quite beautiful and us back to why we study literature and even why literature exists at all.
Click here for: AI in English Teaching Google Discussion Group
