Customer Reviews

Shakespeare: To Teach or Not to Teach : Teaching Shakespeare Made Fun : From Elementary to High School

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As our Education Outreach department at Colorado Shakespeare Festival is dedicated to enlightening teachers and students (and the community at large) about Shakespeare's works--using a "hands-on" philosophy--I have found the Five Star Shakespeare Collection an incredible resource. Whenever teachers are looking for a truncated script, or help with "opening up Shakespeare" to their students, I refer them to you...(Five Star Publications - Arizona)

Melinda J. Scott, Education Director
Colorado Shakespeare Festival

Shakespeare To Teach Or Not To Teach: A Teacher's Manual, can be used with elementary to high school students, and is suitable for use in classroom, drama club and homeschool settings. Teachers and parents need not be anxious over teaching Shakespeare anymore.

Shakespeare To Teach Or Not To Teach, can be used in conjunction with any Shakespeare play, but works very well with Shakespeare For Children: The Story of Romeo and Juliet or one of the six productions in the Sixty-Minute Shakespeare series.

Beginning with basic information of Shakespeare, the time period (both his plays and when they were performed), what took place on and backstage in The Globe theater, To Teach Or Not To Teach puts the teacher at ease with the material and builds confidence to present Shakespeare to his or her students.

To Teach Or Not To Teach provides excellent instructional ideas to make the plots and characters come alive for the students. From just reading through play, or acting it out to activities reaching past the typical Language Arts or English class assignments and crossing the core curriculum subjects.

I found this book rather simplistic. I bought it to teach Drama and I think it is probably more appropriate to English. It gave me one or two ideas but the rest of the activities were ones I use already or ones that weren't really appropriate.
I would recommend this book to a beginning teacher of Drama or English.

"The book is an amazing introduction to the Bard, his works and environment...a way to overcome literacy and dramatic stage fright that can open many doors..."

R. Thad Taylor, President Shakespeare Society of America, Inc.