Pictures in the mind.

This is a warm up activity.

Choose a quote.

Ask students to identify pictures that this quote suggests to them.

Ask them why they suppose Shakespeare used these words in this particular context.

Or highlight a single word in a quote and ask students what they think Shakespeare means by that word.

Cloze

Cloze activities require students to fill in the missing word or idea.  There is often a word bank that students can use to select the correct words.

Cloze can be used to check understanding but be warned - students with dyslexia struggle with this type of exercise.

For greater freedom why not give the students the word bank as cues/ prompts for the piece that they are writing about.

All that shines

Ask students to look for imagery that glitters- jewels, mirrors, stars and moons etc.

What is Shakespeare describing?

Are there contrasts?
How do you feel about the way Shakespeare describes characters/events using glistening things?
How effective is the imagery?

Bring in a shiny object - Ask students to describe it- create an adjective ball on the whiteboard.

Now give them a series of other objects, emotions, people- ask students to choose three of the adjectives that would also describe the thing the new object/emotion/person effectively.  Write a brief description using those images. 

Diaries and letters

Diaries and other personal writing types such as letters are a useful technique to help student to think from character point of view.  Be careful that less able students don't just outline the plot.

Students should be encouraged to use quotes effectively.

Write a series of letters from the different characters in the play reflecting on key moments in the play. e.g. Juliet's first meeting with Romeo.

Storms

Shakespeare often uses storms in his plays.  These storms can be literal and/or an image.

Ask students to discuss how they feel about storms- some clips of disasters could be quite useful for debate.

Explain that we understand storms in scientific terms but that the Elizabethans saw natural events as God given or inspired by supernatural forces.

Ask students to find references to the storm that create a mood/atmosphere.

Ask students to describe a storm- this could be a good thesaurus/adjective exercise.

How does storm best display character turmoil?

Soliloquy performance.

Ask students to work on a performance for different soliloquies. Get them to think about different ways of dividing the lines/individual words between one or more voices.

Think about tempo and where volume is required.  How can a group make the soliloquy dramatic and carry effective meaning?

Reading around the class.

Enough said.

Rather than just reading ask students to be thinking about three questions which you will discuss at the end of the particular scene.

What is happening?
What makes the language interesting?
What have you learned about the character for whom you read?

Who do you think you are?

This can be done to trace Shakespeare's family history e.g. Miss Shakespeare is tracing her family history and Shakespeare is her 4x great grandfather.  This is a biographical type of activity.

Alternatively do a who do you think you are style presentation for one or more of the characters in the play that is being studied.  What sort of records might exist?  How might history see events and how much of the events would actually be interpreted correctly?  Again this is for the younger students.

Setting the scene.

Ask students to identify the details in the characters' speeches that help to set the scene.

Provide students with terms used to place actors on the stage - this could be in diagram format.

Ask them to decide how the scene they are studying could be most effectively staged.  Identify also tone that the actors should use.

An inspector calls.

Many of Shakespeare's plays include a crime of some description - in some cases murder but in others missing people, theft, impersonation etc.

What is the crime in the play that your students are studying?

Ask students (again this is for younger ones) to imagine that they are police officers investigating the crime.  Their task is to record the crime and to identify the different suspects as well as the evidence that they have - ideally they should not know the outcome of the play- where does the evidence point.  What do they think that the resolution will be.

Story boards and cartoon strips

For younger students a story board or cartoon strip is a useful way of identifying main plot points and key quotes.

Alternatively try creating cartoons from different characters viewpoint for different tellings of the story and points of view.

Follow up with a discussion as to why there are different view points and what Shakespeare does to sway the audience's opinion one way or another.

Positives and negatives

Role of women.

Ask students to identify 10 positive things about the way in which Shakespeare's characters perceive women and 10 negative things about the way in which Shakespeare's characters perceive women.

This is a useful warm up exercise to check understanding and as a preliminary activity activating prior knowledge for an essay writing assignment e.g. Is Lady Macbeth a role model?  Or the female characters in Macbeth are all monsters or mothers. Discuss.

Mind mapping

tragedy, history, comedy and romance.

Mind mapping activity and discussion.  Mind mapping is a good way of activating prior knowledge and giving students thinking time. It also links to Vygotsky and the concept that students learn more if they work in groups.  Mind mapping is a preliminary activity.

Students should then identify how their particular play fits into one of the different categories and justify their answer.

You may then wish to set an essay question on the topic.

Who's who

Allocate a different character to pairs of students.  The students should write a summary of the character and identify key quotes associated with that character.  They should be prepared to explain why they have selected that particular quote.

These should then be typed up and then cut and pasted into a single document.

Matching activities

Matching activities are useful to check learning and to provide cues and prompts.  They are also kinaesthetic so are good for learning styles.

Match the character to the quote.  Explain how the quote sums up that particular character.

Hot seating

Question and answers where one of the students takes on the role of a character.

Interview

A useful strategy to enable students to ask questions of characters and to find out more about the characters through the answers generated.  Interview style questions can be set up for Shakespeare, members of the audience, actors laying a part.

Set design

Ask students to design the set for the play that they are studying.

Ask them also to provide a list of props that actors would need in order to perform the play.

The set could be for an authentic production or for a modern adaptation.

Debate

There is no need to teach Shakespeare in English classes in the twenty-first century.

Ask students to think of arguments for and against.

This is best done after they have studied Shakespeare and found out more about the way in which his language still influences modern English.

Set up a debate using the correct procedures for a debate and set a limit on the time of speaking.

Draw lots as to who will speak for and against.

Take a class vote.

Now you may wish to provide students with a writing frame for writing an argument.  Student should now write an essay arguing for the statement or against it.

Shakespeare said it first.

Provide students with other Shakespearean sayings. 

They could then:

Find out what it means, which play it comes from and the context in which it was first used.

or

Explain  what it means.  Create a class dictionary of Shakespeare's language in modern English.

or

Use the quote to write a story.  Mind mapping first for ideas.  Then work on exposition, complication, climax and resolution.

What does it mean?

Some of the best known sayings that we use every day are Shakespearean in origin.

Hamlet says "I will speak daggers to her, but use none." From this comes the phrase 'looking daggers'

Ask students to explain what it means and why they think it has lasted so long as part of the language.

Shakespeare trail 4

Provide students with a map of Stratford upon Avon.  Ask them, in small groups, to design a walk around the town  - "a  Shakespeare Trail." They should design a leaflet to go with the trail using information previously gathered.  Each group should use IT skills to create their leaflet.

When the leaflet has been produced students should produce an analysis of what they included to make it both informative and persuasive (primary and secondary purposes).  They should also identify what they could have done to improve their leaflet.

Shakespeare trail 3

Using the informative writing pieces from part 2 ask students to identify informative writing and persuasive writing techniques in their peer group's writing.  You can photocopy the summaries onto A3 paper or attach them to flip chart paper.  Ask the students to write their comments on post it notes.  Remind students of ground rules about positive feedback and helpful criticism.

Shakespeare trail 2

Provide students with a map of Stratford-Upon-Avon.

Ask them to list the locations that might be of interest to people who want to find out more about Shakespeare.  Ask them also to list the kind of things that people visiting these locations might be interested in knowing before they visit.

Send them in pairs to find out about one or more of these different locations.  This is an opportunity for younger students to rehearse skimming, scanning and using key words in a search engine.

In pairs students should then produce a short summary of their identified location and the key facts that visitors would find useful.  Ask them to include persuasive techniques to tempt visitors to the different attractions and be prepared to talk about what they have included and why.

The Shakespeare Trail 1

This set of activities is designed for younger students.

Prepare a comprehension exercise using a tourist brochure on one of the Stratford tourist attractions.

Explain that it is an information leaflet.  Discuss what makes it informative.


Then ask what sort of people would be attracted by the brochure and what makes it persuasive.  Introduce students to the primary and secondary purposes of a text.

Who was Shakespeare

Various people have been put forward as writing Shakespeare's plays.  Provide case note cards on each of the different people who could have been Shakespeare.  In twos asks students to find out more and then argue their case in presentation form as to why the character they represent was really Shakespeare.

Shakespeare missing years

While Shakespeare was a young man he disappeared for a time - it's thought to the north of the country.  What did he do while he was missing?  Was he, like fellow playwright, Christopher Marlow a spy; was he on the run for some crime or other...it's given writers and historians lots to think about over the years.

Provide students with some basic information and ask them to come up with their own ideas - if they can link it to the play that they will study so much the better.  Write it up as a story.

Remember stories have an exposition where the scene is set and characters introduced; a complication which does exactly what it says; the climax where things are at their most difficult, dangerous or threatening and a resolution which need not be a happy one.

Shakespeare obituary

Bring in obituaries from the papers.  Ask students to read an obituary and explain what job an obituary does and what the tone is.

Write Shakespeare's obituary.  The style will depend on the paper that it is being written for.

Shakespeare interview

Shakespeare is being interviewed on a tv magazine programme about his forthcoming new play - the one the students are studying.

Decide what kind of questions the interviewers ask.  A clip from The One Show or something similar may be useful here.  Generate the list of questions that the interviewers would ask.

Students then decide how they would answer the questions.

This can be extended to be a role play with interviewers, guests and Shakespeare or it could be an opportunity to learn more about script writing.

Humans and nature

Shakespeare believed that everything had its natural place in society.  When characters disobey their natural place then nature reacts and is unsettled.  This is particularly noticeable in King Lear.

Ask students to collect nature imagery and categorise it.  Use the quotes to deduct what Shakespeare is using nature to say in your play.

You could provide quote sort cards or get students to create their own quote cards.

Ask them to create a hypothesis rather like the opening three sentences of this entry and then to prove their hypothesis by using their quotes.

audio

Ask students to prepare a short scene and then to record the audio.

Here work is required on tone and pace.  Draw on work on iambic pentameter, punctuation and the meaning of the passage for tone.

Once they have recorded it they should write about how they can express meaning through tone, pace and intonation and pauses.  They should also discuss how they create character just through voice.

Listen back to the audio and discuss what they would change about it and how different the play is when listened to rather than read.

Flower imagery 2: their play

Ask students to find flower images in the play they are studying and to find out their significance.

Discuss the other images that occur in the play and the way that Shakespeare's audiences would have known what the references meant.

Now ask students to form groups and decide what topics and themes Shakespeare might have used in his imagery today.  This could be presented as a poster or a mind map. For younger learners and a discussion.  For older learners this opening activity could lead on to the following question.

How do shared cultural references help us to relate to drama and the themes and issues explored?  Discuss.

More able learners may want to tackle whether having a shared cultural understanding is even necessary to understanding the play.

Flower imagery 1: finding out more

Shakespeare was a countryman.  Herbal lore was an important part of a Tudor medicine chest.  As well as remedies for various aliments flowers could also ward off various supernatural evils.  In Hamlet, Ophelia talks about rosemary, pansies, fennel, columbines, daisies and violets.

Ask students to guess what the significance of these plants might have been.  It could be a matching exercise or supposition based on a brief presentation (you may have to do your own research here or there again I may get to grips with a blog entry at a later date).

Then ask them to go and research what these flowers signified.

Younger students may enjoy a session on the language of flowers.  This then has potential as a topic for a short story or a poem.

An obvious way to teach Shakespeare.

Go and see the play that your students are studying or invite a group of actors into the class room.  Shakespeare is meant to be watched - not read.

Animal imagery 4

Warm up activity for animal imagery.

"If I was an animal I'd be a ... because..."

e.g. If I was an animal I'd be a lion because they're brave and the king of the beasts.

All the students take it in turns.  Discuss the way we perceive different animals in different ways and the characteristics that we associate with them.

You may also wish to look at cliches and stereotypes e.g. as mad as a March hare.  This could be done as a list generation activity.  Students could then research where the saying comes from.  A surprising number of sayings do originate with Shakespeare.

Animal imagery 3

Dog imagery is often used to describe the fact that people are all different-

Provide students with copies of Macbeth's speech Act III, i beginning "Aye, in the catalogue ye go for men;" and  also Edgar's speech from King Lear III,vi beginning "Avaunt, you curs."  The second seems to be literal but in the light of reading Macbeth's speech how does it alter the meaning of Edgar's speech?

Ask students to explain what the two characters are saying and to discuss how using the animal imagery helps to add colour to their words.

Animal imagery 2

Find a quote relating a character to an animal.  Ask students to identify what they learn about the character and what assumptions they make from this portrayal.  Depending on the play that your students are studying there may be several quotes to choose from.  If this is the case provide several examples, ask students to find others and use a plot line to see whether the theme is developed and how it affects the way that we view the characters in question.

Animal imagery 1

Shakespeare makes more than 4,000 allusions to animals in his plays.  Aesop's Fables would have been familiar to Elizabethan audiences and there was a rich folk lore relating to mythical animals.  Some animals such as the snake were associated with villainy, others such as bees with industry and good government.

Create a list of animals and ask students to select one animal - this can be done randomly.

Ask students to identify the qualities that they associate with that animal.

Share responses.

Now ask students to create a character, describing the character in terms of the animal that they have previously described.  Remind them about metaphors and similes.

Mind maps

You can use mind maps to help students to assemble all the information they know about a character, theme or topic.  Once they have created their mind map they should use it for another purpose - perhaps to plan the content of an essay or to create a presentation.

Pictures.

Find pictures of famous actors playing a particular role or artistic interpretations - the Pre-Raphelites are a good source.  Ask students to identify the different characters.  Ask students to find quotes about the different characters to annotate the pictures.

Update.

If the play was updated for a film which period could the play be updated to and why?  Ask students to make suggestions, again backing up their suggestions with reasons.

cast list

Compose a cast list.  Ask students to identify actors who could take on the different roles in a film.  They must identify the qualities that the actors would bring to the characters.