Happily, many lessons plans and creative ideas for teaching Shakespeare already exist and are available online. Often when the Royal Shakespeare Company or Shakespeare’s Globe perform a play, they also release teaching packets about that play. Here are some of the best sites to go to when you are looking for lesson plans.
Royal Shakespeare Theatre Teaching Resources
Shakespeare Birthplace Teaching Resources
Folger Shakespeare Library Teaching Resources
Please note that the Folger Library, the Royal Shakespeare Company, and Shakespeare’s Globe all offer a Teacher’s Membership for a fee. While there are free resources online, the paid membership will undoubtedly open up many more resources. However, most teachers will not have the funds available to become a member of all three. I recommend using the free lesson plans available from these organizations and deciding which ideas you find most useful. You will likely develop a preference and then it will be worth it to pay for that particular organization’s Teacher’s Membership.
There are also several books that I have found extraordinarily useful in building lesson plans for Shakespeare Club.
How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare by Ken Ludwig. This book is a fabulous resource for students of any age. The first few chapters set the foundation for why Shakespeare matters and the basics of Shakespeare’s language. Ludwig comes from an impeccable theater background and his approach gives you a sense of how an actor or director might approach the language.
For more formal lesson plans, the Folger Shakespeare Library’s Shakespeare Set Free books are incredibly useful. We used Shakespeare Set Free: Teaching A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo & Juliet, and Macbeth while studying Macbeth. The lesson plans offer activities scene by scene and I simply chose which parts of the lesson would work successfully with our group. There is another book in the series entitled Shakespeare Set Free: Teaching Twelfth Night and Othello.
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