Sonnet Sort
You will need two sonnets, paper and scissors.
Stage One
1. Choose one of Shakespeare's sonnets - 'Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?' is a good starting point.
2. Print it out in a clear font with plenty of space between the lines.
3. Cut each sonnet up into seven pairs of lines.
4. Shuffle the seven strips of card or paper and place each set in an envelope. You will need enough envelopes for your class to work in small groups (3-4 people).
5. Divide the class into groups. Ask them to rearrange the sonnet into the right order.
6. When students have completed the card sort, give them with a copy of the complete sonnet. Ask them to see how well they did.
7. During feedback discuss the kind of cues that they used to rearrange their sonnets into the correct order. Students should mention content, rhyme and punctuation. Have a large copy of the sonnet available so that you can model their answers.
Stage Two
Follow up with a second sonnet. This time, provide a cloze exercise and a word bank. Remove the rhyming end words for the cloze. Leave one of each rhyme in place as a cue. E.g. if you were to use the summer's day sonnet you could remove day or May but not both. Students complete the exercise by applying what they have learned about sonnets in stage one of the activity.
Differentiation/extension: offer students a wider choice of words in the word bank- some that fit and some that don't. Alternatively, don't provide them with a word bank and ask them to suggest words that they could fit into the sonnet (this is best done in pairs). Ask students as a class during feedback to say whose alternatives they like best and why.
Tip: If you like this activity, laminate the first sonnet before you chop it into strips so that you can use the activity again.
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