The Shakespeare Process

It occurred to me that I was teaching Shakespeare all wrong. I did the typical reading together, calling on students to read, and frequently stopping to paraphrase for them. The problem, though, was that I was giving them the information, and they weren’t equipped to find it on their own. Essentially, they were first graders, struggling to read each word, leaving very little brain power to comprehend the text.


My solution was to help give students a big picture first and then expecting them to make connections. Here are a number of steps I use every two acts at a time and then repeat. A simple comprehension test at the end showed huge improvement from previous times.


Each year I will connect with different teachers for projects. This year it is Mrs. Dawn Scianna, a 7th grade language arts teacher from Westchester Middle School in Illinois. I teach 9th grade language arts at Northeast Magnet High School in Bel Aire, Kansas.