Teaching Shakespeare by Jeffrey Billard

Hi Everyone,
I hope you are all well and moving to the conclusion of your school
year with many successes in teaching through the arts under your
belts. I thought it would be nice to share some successes here. Here's
a recent one of mine.

After reading Act One of Romeo and Juliet, I asked students to choose
a song that best sums up Romeo's feelings of love for Rosaline. Since
music is so important to students, they were very excited to jump into
this assignment. One student came in with seventeen songs! They
brought in songs on their IPod, which we played excerpts from, song
lyrics and a paragraph on how their song related to the topic along
with some analysis. It was a great success with the best song being "I
Want You to Want Me" by Cheap Trick! Remember that one?

I also asked the students to summarize the balcony scene as if Romeo
and Juliet were texting each other and write it that way. They had a
great time doing it and couldn't wait to share them with the class.
They agreed that both of these assignments forced them to read the
play more carefully and helped them to understand it better.

As a classwork assignment, I asked them to write a prologue for Act
IV. In pairs they had to summarize the events of the act and then put
it into sonnet form. It took about twenty minutes and got all of the
students involved; it was much better than just discussing the events
or answering questions about them. Plus it was fun, and you can't
discount that.

Ok, so let's hear some of yours.
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