Disguises, deceptions, destruction. Thankless children, wise fools, aging rulers, and knaves. The Royal Shakespeare Company's 2016 King Lear Teacher Pack provides instructors with a wealth of resources for a study of Shakespeare's famous...

Are you frustrated by searching for activities to engage readers in their study of Much Ado About Nothing? Sigh no more. Young thespians will find much to do in this Royal Shakespeare Company 23-page Toolkit. Included in the sections are...

High school learners examine primary source materials on history and the supernatural which relate to Julius Caesar. They then act out a scene based on different historical understandings and identify facts, theories, and similarities in...

Here is an authentic assessment task for Shakespeare's Macbeth. Young literature scholars prepare, perform, and record a news broadcast about the major events in the play. For example, groups may choose to report on the death of Lady...

  Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and caldron bubble. Macbeth’s witches provide young actors an opportunity to try their hand at small ensemble acting. Using Act I, scene I of Shakespeare’s play, groups of three take...

Should Romeo and Juliet have revealed their engagement to their parents? After reading Acts I and II of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, your class discusses this question with a SMARTboard presentation (though the lesson still works...

Shakespeare can be a challenge to the most skilled high school readers. This selection of short answer questions helps increase understanding of the character, Katherine, by addressing dialogue, tone of voice, making inferences, and...

Five questions help you assess readers' understanding of Act 5 of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew. Several of the questions go beyond basic understanding and require higher level thinking and analysis.

Help young researchers find credible sources online. Modeling with a Google search for information about Shakespeare’s Macbeth, use a computer projector or Smart Board to show class members how weak the top three search results are....

What was Shakespeare's intent? That is the question at the heart of a summer assignment designed for AP English Literature. Class members focus on five scenes from The Tempest and compare the interactions of Prospero, Caliban,...

How does Shakespeare use dialogue to develop the idea that the star-crossed lovers are more concerned with their relationship as individuals than they are with their roles as children of warring families? That is the question facing...

To demonstrate their understanding of characterization in The Winter's Tale, groups create a Facebook profile for one of the characters in Shakespeare's play.

Introduce class members to the conventions of the romance genre and the theme of familial relationships with Mahlon F. Craft's illustrated Sleeping Beauty. The themes are a focus of their study of The Winter's Tale.

How important are sound effects in films? In stage plays? In radio programs? To gain an understanding of the impact of these special effects, class members watch a short video spoof of the sound in a scene from Star...

Even those experienced teachers of Hamlet can find much to like in a guide that offers many fresh ideas for activities. Class members may take on the role of FBI profilers that investigate Claudius and Hamlet as murderers, or...

Words carry weight. And some words carry baggage. Scholars learn the difference in a study of connotation and denotation. Individuals sort the cards into three groupings using words from Shakespeare's play. After sharing within groups,...

The success of any lesson based on a complex text relies heavily on what instructors do before beginning the reading. Before reading Othello, scholars engage in a series of pre-reading activities, including completing an anticipation...

Two sonnets provide seventh graders with examples of Shakespearean sonnets. After discussing the story of the poems and analyzing their rhyme scheme and rhythm, young poets craft a Shakespearian sonnet and share their work with two...

After reading Julius Caesar 1.2 and 1.3, break your class into pairs for this role-play. Each pair will receive one of four prompts (or more, if you create additional examples), in which one person tries to persuade the other to do...

Connect a scene from a class play to events in your middle and high schoolers' own lives. First, they act out a scene from A Midsummer Night's Dream in pairs. They work to role play a scene as an extension of the one they have read,...

Shakespeare was such a talented writer, but why? It must be his use of figurative language, blended with his clever, twisting plots. This worksheet focuses on his use of metaphor, simile, personification, oxymoron, and hyperbole within...

Readers of Twelfth Night use a KWHL chart to record information about what they know about Shakespeare's play, what they want to find out, how they plan on finding this information, and what they have learned or still want to learn about...

Class members begin their study of Romeo and Juliet by examining the words Shakespeare chooses in the Prologue to Act I to create the tragic tone of his famous play about star-crossed lovers.

Class members watch the clip of Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet in which Benvolio persuades Romeo to go with him to the Capulet ball to see Rosaline. Pairs then examine Act 1, scene 3, lines 64–100, and consider how Shakespeare develops...