Sixth graders examine the changes occuring during adolescents using children's literature. As a class, they brainstorm a list of the various roles they play in their family. In groups, they use excerpts of plays from Shakespeare to...

Students analyze Macbeth through the lens of a pop song. In this Macbeth lesson plan, students read Act I, Scene 7 of Macbeth and determine Lady Macbeth's viewpoint. Students read the lyrics to Alanis Morrissette's song 'Wake Up' and...

Students discuss words that represent the big ideas in Othello and that recur throughout the play. They are assigned words to track throughout the text, recording which character says the word and in what context.

Young scholars read Romeo and Juliet and then write an essay from the point of either Lord Capulet or Friar Lawrence persuading someone to adopt their views concerning marriage.

Young scholars, in groups, reflect on their attitudes towards poets and poetry. They read excerpts from George Puttenham's The Arte of English Poesie, which was written during Shakespeare's day. They compare their attitudes toward...

Young scholars read and discuss Romeo and Juliet Act IV, Scenes 1 and 2. They compare the unfolding action with yesterday's predictions. They consider the concepts of trust, fate, and self-determination.

Students read and discuss Act V, Scene 1. They define foreshadowing and identify examples of it from the text. They edit a partner's diary entry. They identify key ideas from the scene.

Students connect a scene from a play they are reading to events in their own lives. Working in male/female pairs, students act out a scene from "Hamlet." Pairs work to role play a scene as an extension of the one they have read, using...

In this arts worksheet, students find the words that are related to the play of Romeo and Juliet. The answers are found at the bottom of the page.

In this arts worksheet, students find the words that are used to describe the play of Romeo and Juliet. The answers are found at the bottom of the page.

Students explore the book A Midsummer Night's Dream. In this literature instructional activity, students identify main characters and vocabulary words from the text. Students participate in a book discussion group.

Students have to look at the text of the play Othello and cut the text in half. Each group then moves to the computer to their right and continues on with what that group wrote. They then have to stage the final script and perform in...

Pupils choose a creative medium for expressing personalization of one of the themes from the play. They share their projects orally. Instructions, rubric, and suggested theme choices are included.

High schoolers focus on Ariel's character and use online research and close reading in small groups and examine more understanding of the tricks spirit. Each group is assigned a scene and they make notes of Ariel's action, behavior, and...

Students use the website "Hamlet on the Ramparts" to investigate different ways of producing the ghost scenes 1.4 and 1.5 of Hamlet. They use this information to help them develop their own ideas on staging these important scenes.

High schoolers complete exercises examining the use of status and class in selected portions of Hamlet. Working in pairs of small groups, students act out the mannerisms encountered in the selected text. They compare and contrast these...

Students are introduced to Act II, scene 1, lines 188-244 of "A Midsummer Night's Dream." They explore and analyze how dramatic lines can have varied interpretations by playing a game of sound ball utilizing a list of vocabulary words...

“What is the theme of this story?” Now there’s a question all pupils dread. Rather than encountering a sea of faces that look like they were painted by Edward Munch, face a classroom filled with smiles and confidence. Show your readers...

Draw back the curtain, add a spot of joy to your class, and let learners be instructional activityed by a close reading exercise that models how to develop an interpretation based on evidence drawn from a text. Robert Browning’s dramatic...

Drama is ever-present in our daily lives and eloquently depicted on stage. Middle schoolers practice writing scenes based on different prompts and frameworks, and then perform those creative scenes for their classmates. The...

Cross-comparison, the technique of focusing on two different texts with the same themes, motifs, events, etc., is employed in an exercise that asks groups to examine two different translations of “The Ruin,” a poem, written in Old...

Students, utilizing video clips and Web sites, compare specific passages from original texts to moments in Broadway musicals on which they were based, analyzing similarities and differences between them. They adapt literature into a...

Put young grammarians to the test with an activity about adverbs. A five-paragraph passage prompts kids to find the adverbs and circle them, noting their purpose in context.

Young grammarians identify the appositives in a series of sentences and then rewrite each sentence omitting the word or phrase.