Literature - Shakespeare

Right before (or on the actual day of) doing the shoebox staging for Macbeth (where you have people bring in shoeboxes and little toys to represent the characters so that students understand the idea of movement), I have 2 people come up and act out two scenarios non-verbally. One is a boss and employee walking to a meeting, have them walk across the room then ask them to stop and ask why they're standing where they're standing. Then do it again as two employees. You can then have two new volunteers come up, and have one act as though they're flirting with the other. Run through it once as though they're uninteresteed, once, as though they are.

At the end of my Hamlet unit, rather than give a standard test I have students create Hamlet Gameboards. I find this is a wonderful way to assess the students overall knowledge about Hamlet. I got the idea to create games as a way of assessing from a technical writing Website. I have received games that range for Hamlet Trivial Pursuit to Twister. I also like this idea because it can be adapted to any piece of literature and used at any grade level.

Students are to create a gameboard out of Hamlet that will help students review Hamlet in a fun and interesting way. To do this they will:

Common Core Standards-Based Activity for ANY Novel, Short Story, Play, Epic Poem...any piece of Literature or Non-Fiction  Use technology students are familiar with to assess their comprehension of literature! My students love this "exercise" - which is essentially a chapter summary check quiz, but when I call it a Character "Twitter Tweet," it sounds fun, exciting, and definitely not as intimidating as a quiz.

Students read the balcony scene from "Romeo & Juliet" and analyze the text to find representation of "light." Students will watch the balcony scene from the 1996 film version and participate in a group discussion comparing the text with the film. The balcony scene from “Romeo and Juliet” is one of the more famous scenes from the play, and it needs to be analyzed more in-depth for meaning – the comparisons of light versus dark are significant themes in the play.