Beowulf and Reading Journals

Now that I’ve finished my round of teaching Beowulf, I’m really quite pleased that we added it to our curriculum this year, and especially that we chose the wonderful translation done by Seamus Heaney: Beowulf: A New Verse Translation (Bilingual Edition). Heaney’s poetic touch is essential here, and I found much of value in the supplemental materials too. Here’s how I used this edition with my students:

• I read Heaney’s introduction to help me provide context for my students
• We read Alfred David’s “Note on Names” together in class and talked about the associations and patterns we would find in the characters’ names in the narrative
• I photocopied the Family Tree, provided in the back of the book, and we examined it together in class, again looking at patterns (like how few female characters actually get named!) and which names are in all-caps, to provide a “Cast of characters” before beginning the narrative. I also passed out paperclips so students could keep the copied tree clipped to the covers of their books as an easy reference tool, and prompted them often to use it during discussions to remember how the characters connected to each other
• For each night’s homework, they completed reading journals tied to the “glosses” Heaney provides in the margins, brief italicized phrases that summed up plot points. I asked the girls to record the glosses, add a quote that seemed connected to that gloss, and then to make some notes on why this was an important event. Then several times during the unit, I did “surprise” homework checks (10 pts each) that asked them to consult these journals. My only revision for next year is that sometimes there were up to 15 glosses in one night’s reading, so next year, I believe I’ll have the students choose the five most important glosses from each reading to record in their journals. I’m a big believer in using adapted dialectical notebooks and reading journals in my teaching, and I think they are invaluable in scaffolding critical/close reading skills, especially in dense texts like Beowulf.

In deciding to teach a major canonical text like Beowulf, choosing the edition is a critical next step, and I’ve been really pleased with Heaney’s work here.  Word to the wise: the high-tech animated film version from 2007 does terrible things to the poem and is only worth showing if you want to scare your students a little on a dull afternoon!