Shakespeare in the Classroom

As a former actress and a lifelong lover of literature, I’ve always had a special place in my heart for Shakespeare. However, when I’ve tried to share him with students in the past, I’ve found it difficult. For the most part, I’ve shied away from it.

I’m not sure what made me change my mind this year, but I’m glad I did. My students as young as 4th grade are now giddy over Shakespeare. So, I thought I would share some Shakespearean moments from class with you.

4th Grade

In 4th grade literature, I decided to do a Shakespeare unit this year. We read a children’s version of The Comedy of Errors which maintains much of the original language, and then we went on to read a selection of Charles and Mary Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare. We mostly stuck to the comedies, but I also read the Lamb version of Romeo and Juliet with my students.

And oh boy, they fell in love.

I gave them a choice on what they’d like to do for our end-of-unit project. I told the students they could choose any of the comedies we’d read, and we would make our own stage version of it. But, when they were all writing down their preferences, 14 (out of 17) of them independently wrote down that they wanted to do that with Romeo and Juliet.

And so, at this year’s recital, we will be performing a 10-minute version of Romeo and Juliet that we have created ourselves. The students are beyond excited and we are having so much fun rehearsing every day.

Happily, this means I can also share my passion for theater and performance with them. I’m sure I’ll write more on this topic later, but for now I will include what I’ve recently taken to saying to explain the value of what we are doing:

“Performance : Literature :: Lab : Science”

A little still life has been accumulating on my desk as we gather our props for our performance…

5th Grade

In 5th grade literature, we read the entirety of Much Ado About Nothing.

In the past, I have had the students read first the No Fear Shakespeare version of each scene before we read the original language. But, goodness gracious, they found that so boring and it was part of the reason I haven’t tried teaching Shakespeare for so long… to say nothing of how much I actually hate No Fear Shakespeare (a topic for another time).

This year, I took a different approach. I summarized the entire play for them before we even began reading Much Ado About Nothing, which got them excited about the hilarious storyline. Then, before each scene, I gave them a brief summary of what was about to happen. I would then assign parts to students randomly and let them just dive right in. I stopped occasionally to explain, but not so much as to make the stop-and-go pacing frustrating or boring.

In this case, the real key to getting them to enjoy the experience was getting them on their feet. As soon as I had them stand up with their books to perform scenes, their enthusiasm increased. It increased still further when I had the class perform scenes multiple times. I would swap students/actors out and perform the same scene sometimes up to six times. You would think the students would find this repetition boring, but on the contrary, their enjoyment of the words increased exponentially with each repetition.

The students fell in love with Beatrice and Benedick, just like everyone does. But even more than that witty duo, my students laughed hysterically over the antics of the idiotic Dogberry. They delighted in translating his stupidity into their own words, acting out his idiocy, and explaining in their writing just how he makes everything worse.

6th Grade

In sixth grade, I have introduced Macbeth. I have experience with “The Scottish Play” as an actress, but this year has been my first time bringing it into the classroom.

It’s… bloody. I don’t know how I managed to forget that.

They love it.

Just today, my students eagerly leaped to the front of the classroom to act out the scene where Macbeth sees the ghost of his friend Banquo, whom he has just ordered assassinated, occupying his seat at the dinner table. Our Banquo was incredibly dedicated to his ghostliness, and not in the irreverent way you might expect from a teenager.

My students’ fear of Lady Macbeth, their frustrated moans at Macbeth, and their flabbergasting appreciation for the poetic phrases such as, ‘Stars, hide your fires, Let not light see my deep and black desires’ … All of it has me in awe of what these kids are capable of when armed with the words of a genius.

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I love Shakespeare, and I am so happy to share that love with my students.