Groups craft a pitch, in the form of a PowerPoint presentation, for a film version of William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. The proposal includes names and images of actors and actresses they would cast in the major roles, costumes...

"Friends, class members, Americans. Listen up!" Readers of Julius Caesar are instructed to be ambitious and rewrite, in modern language, and then perform a scene from Shakespeare's famous play. Detailed instructions for the project and a...

True, I talk of projects, projects which are the children of engaged brains, begot of fantasy, full of substance, wonder, and imagination. Conclude a study of Romeo and Juliet with projects 'twill serve to synthesize and demonstrate...

Since brevity is the soul of wit, your class is sure to enjoy the humor in this brief, student-produced introduction to the Scottish play. The presentation includes a few background notes, a plot summary, information on the major...

"Do you believe that fate is inescapable, or that people forge their own lives?" This is the essential question at the heart of Romeo and Juliet, according to the narrator of a series on Shakespeare's tragedy. Short but dense, the video...

In Part Two of a video course in Hamlet, narrator John Green looks at the gender dynamics in the play. He presents Ophelia and Gertrude as powerful characters and argues that these women do have options that affect the course of the...

"And Brutus is an honourable man." Or is he? Readers of Shakespeare’s tragic Julius Caesar are asked to identify the rhetorical devices Mark Antony uses in his funeral oration and to explain how these devices influence the audience to...

Stanzas, quatrains, couplets. Rhyme scheme, iambic pentameter, volta. Class members conclude their study of Shakespearian sonnets with a project designed to demonstrate their understanding of the key elements of this fixed form of...

"I don't know how to begin!" How often we hear this lament from young writers. Show them that crafting an introduction is actually near the end of the writing process. A series of seven videos uses Shakespeare's Hamlet to model all the...

"Timid, scared, terrified." High school scholars examine words, their denotations and connotations, in a series of exercises that use lines from Shakespeare to explore figurative language and word relationships. Participants then...

“Is this a dagger which I see before me . . .” As part of a study of Macbeth, class members engage in a series of activities that get them up and moving. Individuals practice, then deliver, a line from the Scottish play. The entire class...

Blank verse, stichomythia, soliloquy, allusion, oxymoron, malaprop? Readers of A Midsummer Night’s Dream will need to know these terms to successfully complete a study guide designed for the first two acts of Shakespeare’s comedy. The...

“Where gott’st thou that goose look? (Macbeth V, iii). Help readers keep track of and consider the significance of events in the final act of Shakespeare’s Scottish play. The scene-by-scene prompts ask readers to recall, evaluate, and...

“Compared to war all other forms of human endeavor shrink to insignificance.” “War is not healthy for children and other living things.” These two views of war, embodied in George Patton’s statement and Lorraine Schneider‘s famous 1966...

“. . . one man in his time plays many parts,/His acts being seven ages.” Jaques famous speech from Act II, scene vii of As you Like It sets the stage for an examination of the roles people play. Class members not only consider the roles...

“There is nothing that becommeth a maid better than soberness, silence, shamefastness, and chastity, both of body & mind.” This line, from Thomas Bentley ‘s The Monument of Matrons published in 1582, typifies the way women were...

“Yea, there thou mak’st me sad and mak’st me sin/In envy that my Lord Northumberland/Should be the father to so blest a son--.” Henry IV, Part I, provides the text for a series of exercises that ask class members to examine the...

“Thou know’st ‘tis common; all that lives must die/Passing through nature to eternity.” Grief, and the response to grief and loss, is the focus of a series of activities that uses Hamlet as a launchpad. Groups examine Act I, scene ii to...

Readers of Macbeth can use these study questions to keep track of key events in Act IV of Shakespeare’s tragedy. Consider adding interpretative and evaluative questions to encourage analysis and critical thinking skills.

"Foul deeds" do "rise" in Act I of Hamlet. Readers track the action by completing a fill-in-the-blanks summary and then respond to a series of questions concerning Clausius' and Gertrude's motives.

O, that these too, too obscure words would resolve themselves into modern English! High school scholars are asked to do a close reading of Hamlet’s first soliloquy (I, ii) and recast these famous lines into contemporary speech, identify...

What is poetry? Does hip-hop qualify as poetry? Do Shakespeare's monologues qualify as poetry? Class members grapple with these questions as they examine the poetic elements and themes presented in different texts. Groups of four study...

Introduce Romeo and Juliet with a KWHL strategy that asks learners to record what they know, what they want to learn, and how they will find this information on a large chart posted in the classroom. During the reading of Shakespeare’s...

Do your class members’ questions lack depth? “Sigh no more . . .sigh no more.” Use a questioning strategy based on Bloom’s taxonomy to encourage readers to create questions that probe the themes of any text. The model discussion...