As most English teachers will probably tell any one who asks, or does not, when opening a lesson with ''today we will be looking at Shakespeare'', reactions will (on most occasions include) groans, sighs of distress and a look of fear and loathing in the eyes of a group of teenage pupils. Now, of course this is not for all children, and of course there are students who relish the challenge of sifting through The Bard's words and coming up with their own inferences, however in my school there is a real lack of enthusiasm for one of the greatest writer's of all time and I have found this is because they feel it is out-dated and old fashioned, words from their own mouths.
I have spent the last term, from January and March, teaching Shakespeare to both a lower ability year 10 and a higher ability year 9. This blog post will include ideas around how I managed to tackle student's prior objectives and hostile reactions, as well as notions on how to make the story come to life for our students to love both the characters and the themes created by William Shakespeare.
First Things First....
Before even reading the text, or getting stuck into the story, bring your own passion to your classroom. This is the best tip I can give, students will not respond to anything you give them with Shakespeare unless you make it sound as exciting as humanly possible! I have taught Macbeth for a term now as to a low ability group, as soon as I begun telling them this is a story of murder, betrayal and power; a man seeking to become King and crushing any one who stands in his way, you have them hooked. Their eyes open slightly wider and you can hear the groaning come to a halt. The same with Romeo and Juliet, which is the other play I taught, as soon as you put the story into something they themselves can understand 'how would you feel if your dad told you that you had to marry someone you did not know' an immediate up roar of chatter comes across and the lesson goes from zero to a hundred with one question. This idea of contextualization I gained from the wonderful book by Trevor Wright called How To Be A Brilliant English Teacher, which you can find here.
The idea is simple, but really effective and can bring a sense of curiosity and intrigue from students who once considered the words of the bard so far removed from their own lives, when really they are embedded within them.
Stage, Not Page!
I found myself constantly mentioning this sentence to my students, who I believed helped them in their understanding of the play:
''Shakespeare is meant to be performed, not read! They are plays to be seen on stage, you have to imagine actors performing these words on a stage''.
I noticed as soon as I mentioned this, it was like a light bulb appeared above thirty heads at the same time. For students, as soon as they see language which is unfamiliar it will create a lack of self-esteem, and a block, as they will think automatically I can not read this and therefore I am stupid. It is very important you stress to them this mantra, stage not page. It makes them realise in a way that of course it is inaccessible, it is a performance: let us make it a performance! There is no better way to learn a story then to immerse yourself in it. Get your students in a drama studio, make them feel the passion of the words; show them actors performances; even better take them to see one! Continue with this mantra and you are sure to win them over!
Finally,
Before, this blog post turns into a full blown essay (which I am sure you are all sick of reading), the last nugget of advice I can offer from my experience is summarise before you read- for lower ability this is a necessity. As soon as they hear the lines from Shakespeare begin to flow, without a given context, they will switch off. If you prefer, instead of summaries, give them key words which link to the scene. They can then find these words in the text, or write their own summaries as to how the words on the board relate to the text they are reading. The later is more successful with higher ability students, but can be used with lower if scaffolded properly. I found that providing students with a break down of ''thee, thy, thine'' also helped, and a common words glossary to have next to them when reading was useful too.
I will continue this blog post in part 2, but for now thank you for reading! More to come soon!
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