Lesson Plan

November 12, 1998

Period 1

The Pardoner's Tale

By Kristen Romano

1. Objectives: To have students think reflective about the text. Students should be able to relate the story to the characterization of the Pardoner given in the General Prologue, come up with their own assertions about the story, to relate elements of the story to things that they already know.
2. Behavioral Objectives: Given a few minutes before and after the reading, students will discuss the material in a creative and reflective fashion.

   From memory, students will complete a short comprehension test with 90% (or better) accuracy.

3. Content:

• Description of the Pardoner: The Pardoner was a church official who had authority from Rome to sell pardons to those who had sinned. Before leaving for the pilgrimage, he had just returned from Rome with a bag filled with pardons, which he planned to sell to gullible pilgrims at a high price. He has a loud, high-pitched (goat-like) voice, yellow, waxy hair, is beardless, and will never have a beard (therefore, he is a bit feminine). He knows how to preach and to frighten people into buying his pardons.
• The Pardonerís Tale: The tale fits into the short story genre, and since most short stories have morals, this one has a moral as well. The moral of this story is basically "money is the root of all evil". The pardoner tell this story to preach and perhaps to frighten the pilgrims into buying pardons for their sins, especially now at a time when death, in the form of the Black Plague, is lurking around every corner. The role of the old man is to illustrate deception and perhaps the idea that with age comes wisdom (the wisdom of deception). Discussion on whether or not students think the old man is death.

1. Instructional Procedures:

1. Pre-planning questions
2. What do I want students to learn

   I wanted students to see the connection between the Pardoner and his tale, I wanted them to draw connections between the story and their lives, and I wanted students to see that even though it is in poetic form, that it is a short story. Like most short stories this one has a moral. I wanted students to se the moral of the story (something along the lines of "money or greed is the root of all evil"). I wanted students to think about promises and what it means to keep a promise.

3. What should I have the students do?

   I wanted to try to utilize the KWL theory in the classroom. I wanted to start with a discussion of what the students knew about the pardoner. Then I wanted to move on to some role playing to get the students interested in story and to think about certain issues listed above. I wanted then to read the story and have a free discussion of the issues raised through the role playing, and then I gave them a short quiz based on the things that I wanted them to learn. (This was a suggestion of my cooperating teacher to motivate the students to pay attention.)

4. How much time do I need to plan for?

   I only had 50 minutes so I had to be careful, but I felt that this could work. (Overall, I didnít have many problems with time, although they only had 5 minutes. To complete to quiz.)

5. What materials will I need?

   Basically, all I need is my lesson plan and a copy of the text.

6. What content should I cover?

   I should cover The Pardonerís tale and certain moralistic issues that go along with it.

7. What will they do and what will I do?

   I hoped they would participate in discussion with prompts from me. I would facilitate discussion by taking on the part of the Pardoner and raising their curiosity through my actions.

8. What procedures, responses, reactions, and results do I want to be the consequence of the lesson?

   When I wrote this lesson, I thought it was the most fantastic thing I had ever thought of. After I acted out the part of the Pardoner, I expected the students to ask questions like, "What was the promise they broke?" "Why did they break their promise?" "Who is the old man?" and many other questions. After we read the text, I hoped for questions like, "They all deserved to die because they broke a promise, I would never break a promise", or "that goes to show what comes around goes around", "I think the old man was death", or "I think Chaucer wanted the old man to be the Pardoner because they both trick people". I thought the students would be interested and would be able to draw conclusions based on their knowledge of the Pardoner and their own experiences with promises.

9. What do the learners already know? First of all, they know themselves. I expected them to give their opinions on greed and promises. Second, they knew about the Pardoner from the GP. (And they proved this when we reviewed the Pardoner at the beginning of the lesson.)

    

So did any of these things go as planned? To answer in one word, no. As I stated above, they did well with listing the characteristics of the Pardoner. I was actually pretty excited at this point. Then I did the role playing, which also went well. Students were all paying attention and laughing. I felt that I really had them at that point. Then I asked them to think about what just happened and think of a few things they wanted to know about the text. At this point they all died. I tried to prompt them by saying "what about what I said to the rioters?" "What did I say?" Dead silence. (Although I would never say it out loud, the first thing that went through my head was, "oh f*ck, what do I do nowÖ do I cry, do I run out of the class room, do I change my major to something safe like nuclear physics?") I took a deep breath, sat down on the stool at the front of the class and said, "I know you are all tired and I know you all want to be at the assembly, (there was a pseudo wedding in the auditorium that the class wanted to attend but I told them that this was more important) but lets try to think about this. Can anyone tell me what I said to the rioters?" Finally someone answered my question (probably out of pity). The another student raised her hand and asked, "what was the promise they broke?" With a regained excitement, I sprang to the board and wrote down her question after offering her about two minutes of praise. I squeeze 4 or 5 more questions out of the class and we read the story, stopping periodically to point out important ideas and to ask students to recap what was happening. By the middle of the story they were dead again, and at this point, so was I. No one wanted to read and no one wanted to answer questions. I decided to assign students to read, which would have been a good idea, but I did it all wrong (as I discovered later from my co-op). I told students to read 10 lines each starting with the first student in the first row and continuing down and back up the rows. I should have randomly called on students to read because this would have motivated all students to pay attention to the reading. The way I did it, the students knew they were going to read, would follow to that point, and then stop paying attention. Also, some students on the opposite side of the room knew they would not have to read and therefore did not need to follow at all. There was also the possibility the students who were next in line to read looked a head and read over their parts without paying attention to what was being said at the time.

We struggled through the text and I proceeded to restate the questions on the board. By the time the bell rang, I obtained sufficient answers to the questions and although I was not completely satisfied with the manner in which the lesson proceeded, I felt that this lesson, with more careful planning, could be successful.