SPRING-BREAK TALES: A MODERN ADAPTATION OF CHAUCER’S

THE CANTERBURY TALES

MICHELE HEINTZ (MHEINTZ2@SYRDIOCESE.ORG)

NOTRE DAME JR/SR HIGH SCHOOL

INTRODUCTION:

What do a knight, a nun, a cook, and a skipper have in common? They all have cabin fever come April, and so decide to make a pilgrimage from London to Canterbury, England. Unfortunately, there are no cars to get them to their destination, nor any I-pods or DVD players to help pass the time. It is therefore decided that they will have a story-telling contest. The winner will even get a free dinner! What is interesting to us are the social issues of fifteenth-century England that each pilgrim raises in his/her tale: murder, bribery, dishonesty, prostitution, cheating…the list goes on!

Go to the following website and make a list of the pilgrims (you should find 30) who ventured to Canterbury: http://www.librarius.com/canttran/gptrfs.htm

TASK:

Each student in your English class will write his/her own Juggler Spring Break Tale. It will be two to three typed pages in length. The setting is a cruise ship full of Notre Dame students that is at sea for two days straight, with a broken closed-circuit television system and no Wi-Fi! To pass the time, each person must write and tell a story from the perspective of one of the passengers. The story must raise a social issue that is evident in the halls of our school.

PROCESS/RESOURCES:

1. As a class we will brainstorm about the categories of students that we find in the halls of Notre Dame. You must then pick one of these passengers to tell your tale.

2. You will choose a social issue that your “type” of student would most likely be familiar with and be able to craft a story around.

3. Address a social issue in your story that really matters to you, that speaks to you personally. It will make this project more enjoyable and easier! Read the documents below to help you generate ideas about social issues in high schools today. You may come up with your own after having read the information in the links below.

Document 1 Document 2 Document 3 Document 4

4. Choose the social issue that will be the thematic focus of your fictional tale. The issue should be weaved into the story without blatantly mentioning the issue. The conflict and/or the original situation will help reveal the issue. If you need help defining a social problem, click here.

5. With the eyes of a public policy analyst, complete this social problem worksheet .

6. Prove that this is a social issue at Notre Dame by completing this gathering evidence worksheet.

7. Why does this social issue exist in our halls? Answer by filling in this worksheet.

8. What existing policies at our school strive to rectify or help the issue? Use this worksheet.

9. What could we do better to eliminate your social issue? This worksheet will help you.

10 Write your tale. Be sure to begin the tale with an introduction of your student narrator.

EVALUATION:

Here is the grading rubric that will be used to assess your tale. Total possible points will be 30. Content, conventions of the English language, and grammar are the three areas of my focus.

CONCLUSION:

This webquest will allow you to creatively integrate modern social issues within the structure of a fifteenth century literary leviathan. We hope that this project will engender a discussion about how we can improve our mini-society here at Notre Dame.

STANDARDS:

Standard 1: English Language Arts

Language for Information and Understanding Students will listen, speak, read, and write for information and understanding. As listeners and readers, students will collect data, facts, and ideas; discover relationships, concepts, and generalizations; and use knowledge generated from oral, written, and electronically produced texts. As speakers and writers, they will use oral and written language that follows the accepted conventions of the English language to acquire, interpret, and apply information.

Standard 5: Technology

Students will apply technological knowledge and skills to design, construct, use, and evaluate products and systems to satisfy human and environmental needs.