Shakespeare was not something I enjoyed in school, how do you intend to teach Shakespeare in the classroom that will interest students?

     I can't even begin to express the concerns I had with teaching this subject prior to several different workshops that were attended over the semester. I knew as a teacher I would need to face my fears of teaching your children Shakespeare and somehow, one way or another using the material to teach them and engage them in the reading to develop understanding on the text. Prior to these workshops, the thought was placed on a back burning and I assumed "I'll just cross that bridge when the time comes."

    However between a Teaching Shakespeare workshop on campus at Montana State University and a small Workshop at the Globe Theater with a professional actor in London, Great Britain I have found several different activities that will not only engage students, but allow them to learn the material at the same time in smaller sections.

     Introducing students to the text of Shakespeare does not need to be dreaded. On the first day of the unit where Shakespeare will be read, students will do a fun activity where they will read around and do close readings of a very brief section of the play that I provide after cropping it to the important parts. This section of the play is maybe only three to four pages long. Throughout two days students will be working with this close section in multiple read arounds with different methods for each read around. There will be a period when students must only listen to those that are reading, no reading at the same time, a time when they will read and listen, and a time where they will actually enact the scene in their interpretations as well. Through every reading students will gather the information and provide details (who, what, when, where, and why) but they must provide evidence that supports their reading from the text.

     Another fun activity that I would love to have students participate in is a "hook" activity. Again students would be reading a short part of the play, two or three pages, of only dialogue. Students would first do a warm up of releasing stress- as actors tend to do, The destress includes gathering in a circle around the classroom and shaking out the stress while making funny noises that also release stress from vocals. This should get students up, comfortable, and laughing with their peers at which point they will break off into groups of two people. Each group will read through the scene provided just once as a character to create the dialogue. After the first round, a new concept is introduced where students will be allowed to move one step (right, left, forward, back, etc.) to make the scene come to life slowly. The purpose is for students to see how different steps can change the meaning of the text without any background knowledge of the entire play or scene. Then, students will continue with the step and then one character will avoid eye contact the entire time while the other character does whatever possible to continue eye contact. The roles of avoiding eye contact are reversed and acted out before class comes back to the circle to discuss how they made their decisions to move a certain way or how creating/avoiding eye contact changes the meaning and their interpretations. While in the circle students are introduced to the final "hooks" that are connected to the first one step movement. There's hook, block, or deflect. Finally students will do their last reading of the scene using the hooks and then coming back to discss the activity. From my experience, I can see students really engaging and really enjoying the ability to put actions and their own interpretations into small scenes and using close reading (without complete knowledge of doing so) to support their reasons for why they chose such movements.

    We cannot do activities like this everyday in class, thee would be no time to actually read and do other assignments, but trying to do these once or twice during the entire reading of the play really seems to be a key importance at this point in time as an aspiring teacher. Simply reading the text with no engagement will not benefit students and allow them to become interested and understand the text. Providing activities like these, even for other texts not simply Shakespeare, allows them to get up, move around, and have fun with their classmates while still learning the required material-if not more!

    I will not lie, I can only hope to reach your child when it comes to Shakespeare, I still have fears, but through experience we will learn what students will or will not enjoy and even hopefully create our own activities as a class together that can be used in future years.