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Shakespeare Folger's Shakespeare Bill's Allusive Nature: An Introduction to Shakespeare --As teachers, we often begin a unit on Shakespeare by explaining why we put so much emphasis on a single author. I simply state that Shakespeare is everywhere. Teaching Shakespeare: Lesson PlanShakespeare Wall --This activity is designed to enable students to see a Shakespeare play both as a whole and as a series of scenes. It will get students who won't read or perform out of their seats, and it gets the play out of the "book." Teaching Shakespeare: Lesson PlanFun with Sonnets --Because of their structure and brevity, sonnets are a good way to introduce Shakespeare, his language, and iambic pentameter. Teaching Shakespeare: Lesson PlanIt's Elementary!: Stomping and Romping with Shakespeare -- In introducing Shakespeare to elementary students, the best place to start is with the rhythm of the language in Shakespeare's songs. Children respond to the sound and beat of Shakespeare as much as they respond to his wonderful stories and characters.Teaching Shakespeare: Lesson Plan"Change slander to remorse": Unscripted Scenes -- Many of Shakespeare's plays offer tantalizing tidbits of information that allude to scenes, moments, and responses that are not included within the specific text of the play.Teaching Shakespeare: Lesson Plan"I Will Hear That Play": Using Sound to Enhance the Text -- In Shakespeare's culture, people went to hear plays. Our culture is increasingly concerned with visual media - we go to see movies, plays, and concerts. Our fast-paced world is filled with quickly changing images and often we do not hear all of the sounds that complement these images. This exercise seeks to open students' ears and help them hear what is happening in A Midsummer Night's Dream.Teaching Shakespeare: Lesson Plan"Speak What We Feel, Not What We Ought to Say" -- A playwright—by frequently limiting character description to dialogue—leaves a large portion of the process of interpreting the character to the actor and director. This vagueness can cause stress in students who prefer to "know the answers" right away, but it also offers teachers a wonderful way to engage students in creating their own interpretations.Teaching Shakespeare: Lesson PlanA Boxful of Character -- In this lesson students will create life boxes based on the text of any Shakespeare play and present these boxes to the class. A life box is a container with everyday items that relate to a character. Choosing items to represent elements of a character will necessitate careful reading of the text. Using details from the text to explain their choices will require students to use critical thinking. Sharing their creations will expand all of the students' understanding of the characters. Teaching Shakespeare: Lesson PlanA Picture is Worth a Thousand Words -- Students design and create photo albums that tell the story of the play. This involves some extra work, resources, and lots of class time, but the end result is worth it!Teaching Shakespeare: Lesson PlanFolded Paper Brainstorming -- Once you and your students have read and discussed Romeo and Juliet, take the students back into the text to further analyze individual characters. This activity can be used to demonstrate knowledge of the characters or it can serve as preparation for a character analysis essay.Teaching Shakespeare: Lesson PlanMapping Shakespeare -- Each student will focus closely on one character in the play and create a visual representation of that character's language, personality, motivation, and relationships. He or she will then use that visual piece as a jumping-off point for performance.Teaching Shakespeare: Lesson PlanMetaphors in Shakespeare -- Although students have probably been taught metaphors since grade school, they often have a difficult time grasping non-literal language. This lesson will enable students to identify metaphors in Shakespeare's plays, understand the metaphorical relationships expressed and place those metaphors in the context of the play as a whole.Teaching Shakespeare: Lesson PlanNot Much Unlike Stageplayers -- This lesson makes use of a primary source, students' imaginations, and performance. It should be used at least halfway through the play when students are somewhat familiar with the characters and their personalities.Teaching Shakespeare: Lesson PlanPage to Stage -- Actors need to work to understand the texts they are preparing for performance. This exercise will lead students through a series of steps to help them understand the way the language works and prepare them to perform it.Teaching Shakespeare: Lesson PlanParenting 101-- Students will examine Romeo and Juliet in the context of three excerpts from The Office of Christian Parents: Shewing How Children Are To Be Gouerned throughout All Ages and Times of Their Life. These excerpts deal with instructions for the following: raising a daughter, raising a son, and marriage. Printed in 1616, the anonymous author of the text was codifying these mandates during Shakespeare's lifetime.Teaching Shakespeare: Lesson PlanPerforming Modernized Shakespeare -- Students will use video clips to help them reflect on the issues surrounding updating and modernizing Shakespeare. Then they will prepare their own text for modernizing or updating. Their performances will spark a discussion on the various ways to present effective Shakespeare today.Teaching Shakespeare: Lesson PlanThe Art of Poetry: The Lunatic, The Lover, and the Poet -- This lesson plan asks students to reflect on their attitudes toward creative inspiration and poetry. They will compare these contemporary attitudes with those of George Puttenham, an author from Shakespeare's day who wrote The Arte of English Poesie in 1589. Finally, using images from the 1623 First Folio, they will compare both these views with Shakespeare's attitudes towards poetry as expressed in Theseus' famous lines from the fifth act of A Midsummer Night's Dream.Teaching Shakespeare: Lesson PlanThe Secret life of Minor Characters -- Students performing the major roles in a Shakespeare scene have lines to speak and business to do and are usually more content, even with more lines to memorize, than the silent or minor participants in a scene. Students playing soldiers, lords, and attendants often agonize about what to do with their hands, or aimlessly rock back and forth in place. Getting students to participate actively in a scene as a minor character without stealing focus is a challenge. Using the assassination of Julius Caesar as a case-in-point, this 30-40 minute activity is designed to give each minor character a clear inner life and something to focus and inform their silent presence on stage. Having students think about and flesh out the motivations of minor characters provides them with critical thinking and analytical skills that can be applied to other works of literature—not just Shakespeare.Teaching Shakespeare: Lesson PlanThe Tragedy of
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