By Mike Klein Year after year kids in my classroom have strikingly similar reactions to my announcement, “Tomorrow, we’ll be starting Shakespeare.” That reaction is usually a series of “Ughs,” or “Oh nos!” or “Whys?” The most dreaded by English teachers everywhere is, of course, “I hate Shakespeare!” Perhaps I am different, perhaps I’m a… Continue Reading »
Posts Tagged: Hamlet
By Sara Lehn “Stand, who is that?” “Tis I.” “Who’s there?” “Nay, answer me. Stand and unfold yourself.” What’s the difference between the two exchanges above? Either not much or quite a lot, depending on your perspective. Both indicate two people looking to identify each other. Therefore, both imply a certain level of curiosity or… Continue Reading »
[getty src=”171586213?et=B-HX_EumSmNjmVfKl78yyw&sig=mn8UoAuj4ZE8K8xAiNN1Vj6BVQlGhGtDTsqgoWOmXoE=” width=”509″ height=”337″] By Dana Huff In order to help students develop close reading skills, we teach them how to annotate. Annotation has traditionally been thought of as a pencil-and-paper activity, but e-readers, such as Kindle and iBooks, have great annotation tools. However, website annotation has been more of a challenge for students since… Continue Reading »
[getty src=”180411778?et=j3s2_HtjSaNrmUuAXet4LA&sig=Xs7p-t5Xflh0J8lHEU_TFKqck0xQ7RLMdFglLyKp9T0=” width=”501″ height=”342″] Yes, it’s that time again for teachers all across the country. So here are some things Shakespeare says about school and learning and teachers. Learning: O Lord, I could have stay’d here all the night To hear good counsel: O, what learning is! Romeo and Juliet: 3.3 O this learning, what a… Continue Reading »
The Shakespeare’s Globe production of Hamlet is on tour–heading to every country in the world–and it’s stopping at the Folger Shakespeare Library later this month. Therefore, we thought this would be an opportune time to revisit an invaluable teaching resource created by the Folger, the Insider’s Guide to Hamlet. The Insider’s Guide is a multimedia experience… Continue Reading »
By Kevin Costa Whenever I begin a Shakespeare play with my students in my two-year course, The Institute for Shakespeare and Renaissance Studies at McDonogh School, I get the class working on text from just about Day One. I don’t spend a lot of time setting up with talk about Shakespeare’s life or with the… Continue Reading »
By Jill Burdick-Zupancic In English 10, I chose to study Macbeth with the students this year. However, because we were also looking at how imagery supports characterization, I decided to get them back into the world of Shakespeare with a look at Gertrude’s recount of Ophelia’s drowning in Hamlet. I’ve recently been really into taking… Continue Reading »
Novels can help engage students not only with Shakespeare’s language (as we discussed in Tuesday’s blog post about That Shakespeare Kid) but also with his characters and stories. With spring break coming up, maybe your students will be interested in a little light reading that also keeps them thinking about the Bard. Drawing on some suggestions that… Continue Reading »
Last week, we took a reader poll to ask which Shakespeare plays were being taught this semester. Top of the list (as of this writing): Romeo and Juliet, with more than 25 percent of the vote. Macbeth took second place with 22 percent, and Hamlet third with 10 percent. Our write-in option was also quite… Continue Reading »
A picture is worth a thousand words… on Tuesday, I wrote about the wealth of possibilities that lie in students working on illumination projects using Shakespeare’s text. But better to show than tell! Below are a few examples of some of the work that students have done in Folger’s High School Fellowship Program. And to… Continue Reading »
