Tag Archives: shakespeare

Flipping your Classroom

I have been hearing a lot lately about the “flipped” classroom.  If you haven’t heard about it yet, Holly Epstein Ojalvo and Shannon Doyne of the New York Times provide a succinct definition: “an ‘inverted’ teaching structure in which instructional content is delivered outside class, and engagement with the content – skill development and practice, projects and the like – is done in class, under teacher guidance and in collaboration with peers.” It all started when a couple of teachers started recording their lectures and posting them as Power Points on the net for students who were absent.   And that is the essence of it really.  You provide content for the students to access outside the classroom and structured exploratory activities and lessons based on that content in the classroom.  This “flips” the teacher’s role from class lecturer (information provider) to class guide through activities based on the pre-assigned content. … Continue reading

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Bring Shakespeare to Old Time Radio–Common Core Standard 9

Most students are probably not aware that copyright protection laws are relatively new, so they might be surprised to learn just how many famous authors like Shakespeare borrowed and adapted others’ ideas. They should already know (I hope) that Stephanie Meyer’s books aren’t entirely original vampire stories, but they probably don’t know how many earlier “versions” of Romeo and Juliet you can find. Common Core Standard 9.  Analyze how an author draws on and transforms source material in a specific work (e.g., how Shakespeare treats a theme or topic from Ovid or the Bible or how a later author draws on a play by Shakespeare). Although there are many authors who treat themes and topics from earlier works in their own, Shakespeare is one of the easiest to approach with students simply because one can find more information online about him than nearly any other author.  If you are lucky … Continue reading

Posted in Audio, Classical Literature, Common Core Standards, Drama, Lesson Plans, Shakespeare, Technology Integration, World Literature | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Add Some Spirit to your “Boorish” Shakespeare Plans

If you are looking for engaging, easy-to-adopt (or adapt) Shakespeare lesson plans, one of the best resources online for anything Shakespeare is the Folger library.  I’m deep in the first act of Romeo and Juliet with my students right now, so I’ve been spending a lot of time browsing the net for new stuff.  One of the problems with Shakespeare online is that there is just so much out there.  I recently searched “Shakespeare Lesson Plans” on Google and got 693,000 results.  And so much of it is the same old material.  Where do you start?  I get a headache thinking about it.  But at the same time, I can’t help but feel after ten years that some of my Shakespeare stuff is getting, well, “weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable” (sorry, couldn’t help quoting Hamlet there).  If you haven’t bookmarked the Folger Library site yet, you should.  Liven up your … Continue reading

Posted in Audio, Drama, Lesson Plans, Poetry, Reading, Shakespeare, Video | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

The Shakespeare Pages

In my last post I mentioned a project I have been working on.  It’s more-or-less done now so I thought I would write briefly about it here.  I hope to develop it more, but as they say, it’s never done, just due.  I developed this project for a Visual Literacies class I just finished at Northern Arizona University (online).  The Shakespeare Pages Project is a website designed for high school or middle school English students.  Its purpose is first to convince students that Shakespeare is not as boring or as hard to understand as they might think.  The pages of the site are designed to not only persuade but also to engage teenagers’ curiosity.  The project’s purpose is also to teach students about Shakespeare’s time, Elizabethan culture, the Globe Theater, and about the social class differences that divided citizens of 17th Century England.  The site is designed to integrate technology … Continue reading

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Interactive Shakespeare: A Really Cool, Totally Free Digital Textbook

November 23, 2010 It’s not hard to find Shakespeare resources on the internet.  In fact, in a way it’s too easy, so teachers are often left to sift through thousands of bland websites in search of a unique and useful one.  When I searched “Shakespeare Lesson Plans” on Google today, it garnered me more than 400,000 results.  It’s hard to know where to start.  But then I came across one that I think is especially remarkable, one that exemplifies everything I think of when I consider the term “interactive” in language arts.  The Canadian Adaptations of Shakespeare Project (CASP) Interactive Folio and Study Guide: Romeo and Juliet is one of the finest interactive resources I’ve come across in my search for truly interactive language arts resources.   This is how CASP describes it on their site: “The Interactive Folio and Study Guide is the result of two years of research and … Continue reading

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