Earlier this week, we invited you to share our sonnet-writing contest with your students. And we hope you do!
Why teach Shakespeare’s sonnets?
- Exploring Shakespeare’s sonnets can be a good way to introduce students to his language.
- Many ideas and themes in the sonnets also appear in Shakespeare’s plays and can be useful lead-ins. For instance, looking at individual sonnets in Romeo and Juliet can be a door into the play.
- The strictures of the sonnet form can inspire creativity in students.
You can find a unit plan for sonnets on our website that includes these lessons:
- Easing into Shakespeare with a modern sonnet
- Petrarch: Father of the sonnet
- Juliet vs. Laura
- Close reading
- Writing a group sonnet
- Sonnet performance festival
- And more…
Students who are interested in science may be intrigued to learn that reading Shakespeare’s Sonnets stimulates the brain–
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/9797617/Shakespeare-and-Wordsworth-boost-the-brain-new-research-reveals.html
Some students find a Shakespearean sonnet so daunting that they need to step back a bit and focus just on iambic pentameter. (Some teachers could use a refresher as well.) We’ve got free worksheets on iambic pentameter that students and teachers alike may use to brush up on their prosody. For younger students, we also have sonnet puzzles. Everything is free (for now); we’d love to hear feedback from classroom teachers (and students) on these tools to teach pentameter to kids!
http://www.bicycle-comics.com/blog/heres-how-to-teach-pentameter-in-schools
Note 1: The answer keys are also free, but we only send them to verified teachers’ E-mail addresses. We don’t want students using Google to do their poetry homework!
Note 2: All of the exercises presume an American accent (sorry, Mr. Shakespeare!) The answer key also allows for Southern accents.
Thank you so much for the very useful resources. At the end of every school year, my students write sonnets about their eighth grade experience. Here are my instructions to them:
Teaching a Sonnet with SMART Notebook in the Flipped Class
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxGg6q49bjM
I have found that this method of providing a video provides them with guidance as they are writing. The students are able to pause, rewind, and review using the video as a helpful tool.
Sure teaching Sonnets helps students understand language, but the ROI of reading modern works like New York Times or The Great Gatsby is much greater than that of Shakespeare. Great post though! Here is my most recent blog post: http://cafemocha.org/the-big-questions-in-life-why-do-we-force-our-students-to-read-shakespeare/
Here’s a tip on teaching Shakespeare: I came up with an intriguing teaching aid to make Shakespeare fun, Check out the book “Shakespeare Sonnet Word Search Fun!” and your students will learn the sonnets, their vocabulary and have loads of fun as they search for the words in his sonnets.