Response #14 Shakespeare

Knowing the high probability of teaching Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (R&J) in my future classroom, I have been gleaning as many brilliant ideas involving that future unit as possible. What I aim to avoid is making every student read every word of the play in old English and dissecting every line. One particular introductory activity involves Shakespearean insults, providing a fun way for students to familiarize with the language and culture. I don’t think R&J can be taught without studying the elements of tragedy and iambic pentameter, but even those literary devices can be fun, engaging, and meaningful. Presenting the play as a tragedy, some teachers have the students decide which character is the most at fault for the tragic ending and do a final essay or project supporting their opinion. When teaching students about iambic pentameter, a parallel should be made to rap music. Students should also be shown at least two different interpretations of the same scene, to illustrate how much work Shakespeare did as the director. Trying to produce a Shakespeare play from the written text involves a lot of interpretation because there are so few directional notations outside of “Tybalt draws his sword” or “enter the Capulets”.

Because Shakespeare’s plays were meant to be performed, a visual element should always be included as part of the student’s final project/assessment. I think a jigsaw would work for the entire play. Let the students watch a 5-minute summary video of the basic plot (spoiler alert!), then assign groups to different acts from the play to study more in depth and present to each other. Each group would be required to provide a minimum amount of vocabulary words, character analysis on two assigned characters, connections to how their act aligns with the tragic plot line, key lines, quotes, or sonnets, and a visual representation of the plot. These visuals could be acted out live or on a video, presented as a comic, puppet show, or whatever else they can think of that would be appropriate.