What teenager can't relate to the drama of a love triangle? Scholars put their literary skills to use in a gripping role-play drama. William Shakespeare's Two Gentlemen of Verona unfolds as the classroom becomes a stage of...

Learners, after reading one-act plays or scenes from plays, compose a short, one-act play which involves two characters.

Shakespeare's Macbeth has something for everyone. Scholars complete a mid-unit assessment. They craft multi-paragraph essays to analyze how the author's structural choices create tension and suspense in the play's first two acts.

In this online interactive reading comprehension worksheet, students respond to 15 multiple choice questions based on Two Gentlemen of Verona. Students may submit their answers to be scored.

Scholars explore Act 5.2 of Shakespeare's Hamlet, in which Hamlet and Laertes injure each other with a poisoned blade. To finish the lesson plan, pupils also write about two central ideas from the play.

Just as the title says, this quiz covers the second half of William Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, specifically Acts IV and V. Multiple-choice questions focus on the events and characters.

This 4-question handout addresses key elements of Act 4.4 of Taming of the Shrew. It is intended for small group discussion, followed by individual written reponses. The prompts require critical thinking and analysis.

Blank verse, stichomythia, soliloquy, allusion, oxymoron, malaprop? Readers of A Midsummer Night’s Dream will need to know these terms to successfully complete a study guide designed for the first two acts of Shakespeare’s comedy. The...

Madness, violence, despair—the titular character of Shakespeare's Macbeth is spiraling out of control. Pupils first explore the topic with a collaborative jigsaw discussion. At the end of the instructional activity, they write about how...

Save the Lofty Trees, by Leslie Mills, provides the text for a study of the roles of animals and humans in the forest. Richly detailed, the plan offers two approaches to the play: as a scenario for children to imagine what actions would...

Examine two works of art and use these pieces as inspiration for dialogues. The whole class discusses Renoir's Lunch at the Restaurant Fournaise and Toulouse-Lautrec's At the Moulin Rouge. Then, in groups of either three or ten, pupils...

Take a journey to India with a read aloud of The Drum: A Folktale from India by Rob Cleveland. Make connections to the story's theme by building and practicing drums, role playing story characters, and practicing skills in phonics, math,...

In this verb form instructional activity, students read 18 examples of possible two-word verb forms with "get." Examples: get around, get ahead, get in. There are no questions on the page.

Do figures of speech enhance a play or story? In small groups, learners locate and describe figures of speech they find while reading a reader's theater play. After making predictions, they describe how the figures of speech make the...

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,...

Develop a world-wide, email chain on which class members can showcase their acts of kindness. After defining the meaning of random acts of kindness through discussion and through a reading of Random Acts of Kindness,...

One sentence, so much meaning. Scholars analyze a quote from Act 2.3 of Shakespeare's Macbeth and explore the plot in a jigsaw discussion.

Provided here is a script called A Very Big Family! Use it for two things. First, get your English language learners up and speaking English. Providing them with a script and plenty of practice time will ensure reading fluency....

How does Hamlet's state of mind change over the course of Shakespeare's most famous revenge tragedy? After a close reading of Hamlet's soliloquies in Act III, scene 1 and Act IV, scene iv, class members engage in a Paideia/Socratic...

Learning about literature can be so much fun; it can also be made more accessible through projects and dramatic play. As they explore theme, character, and setting, the class gets creative and makes a dramatic recreation of a classic...

A set of explorations for the two scenes of Act 2 of Hamlet. The inquires cover the essentials of the plot. The answers could be found by reading a detailed summary or Cliffsnotes. It is useful for checking reading...

Bring history to life through literature. The first in a series of three challenge activities designed to accompany Theme 5: One Land, Many Trails does just that through unique projects connected to historical fiction and nonfiction...

Students explore melodram as a form of theatre. They write about lucid and factual news accounts and about sensationalism. Students gain experience in relating one time period with another and with doing historical research.

Students explore expressive reading. In this literature lesson, students read the book The True Story of the Three Little Pigs and interpret key themes. Students perform a different version of the text.