Lady+of+Shalott

**Learning language with the Lady of Shalott**
__Abstract__ This session will outline a unit of work for the junior secondary English classroom based on Tennyson’s poem “The Lady of Shalott”. Written in 1843, the poem conjures up the legendary world of King Arthur and “many towered Camelot” as the setting for the tragic tale of the beautiful but doomed lady of the title. The end of the poem finds her dead but Sir Lancelot thought that she had “a lovely face”.

The unit could run for several weeks or for a whole term. The longer version is envisaged as employing writing workshop procedures adapted from Nancy Atwell’s 1987 book “In the Middle: Writing, Reading and Learning with Adolescents.” These procedures stress student choice and are aimed at ensuring that the time and effort that teachers invest in marking make a real contribution to student learning. Imaginative re-creation is the basis for a collection of writing tasks covering a range of narrative and non narrative text types and often there is potential for a smidgen of playful anachronism.

A consideration of functional grammar is a key element in the analysis and discussion of the textual features of a series of teacher-written genre models.

Garry Collins gazco48@bigpond.net.au

Some resources are provided below.
 * The text of the poem can be accessed here: [[file:poem The Lady of Shalott.doc]]
 * session handout cover sheet: [[file:Shalott handouts cover sheet IFTE.doc]]
 * list of writing & speaking task suggestions: [[file:task suggestions Shalott writing & speaking.doc]]
 * a pdf summary of the Powerpoint file used: [[file:Lady of Shalott summary IFTE 2011.pdf]]

The following are genre samples generated from the poem:
 * news report: [[file:Shalott sample news report.doc]]
 * editorial: [[file:Shalott sample editorial.doc]]
 * business letter: [[file:Shalott sample business letter pitch.doc]]
 * job application: [[file:Shalott job application letter.doc]]
 * minutes of a meeting: [[file:Shalott sample minutes of a meeting.doc]]
 * letter to the editor: [[file:Shalott sample letter to editor.doc]]
 * real estate ad: [[file:Shalott sample real estate ad.doc]]
 * short story start: [[file:Shalott sample short story start.doc]]
 * <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt;">[|Saskatoon Real Estate]