Customer Reviews

Teaching A Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo and Juliet, and Macbeth

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Do you have HS students who just don't get Shakespeare? Don't even bother because of the language? Here's the book to break the Shakespeare language barrier. I bought this book for a "secondary English class" at college, since then I have bought one for a friend who teaches drama and I have suggested it to all the 9th and 10th grade English teachers at my high school. The three Shapespeare plays this lesson book covers: Midsummer's Night Dream, MacBeth, and Romeo and Juliette. The authors set it up nicely with a calendar for each selection and approximately 22 lessons in each selection. They provided the objective, the materials list, the lesson, any handouts, homework ideas and questions for reflection. All lessons are formated to include some form of kinesiology, i.e. the students wll have to get out of their seats and move around. Some of my favorites...tossing lines, yelling insults, building a shoebox set and stressing the subtext. There are also many essays in the beginning to help the teacher discover more about the connection to main themes and ideas within the Shakespeare experience.

And the best thing was...I am now using some of the ideas for other text which are difficlt for the HS student!

I have used this book to teach Macbeth to 7th graders, and I know several high school teachers who swear by it for grades 9 - 12. It contains helpful critical articles to keep teachers up to date on the latest research in the field, as well as day by day lesson plans. Each unit plan is for about 30 days and contains a variety of performance, film analysis, and close reading lessons as well as quizzes, project topics, and final assignments. Lessons can be easily adapted to fit any grade level, required lesson plan structure, or set of state standards. This is the only book you need to buy.

This book saved my life! I am currently student teaching a 12th grade English class. I had not read "Macbeth" as a student and I was terrified to teach it an an educator. After doing loads of research, this book was the cherry on top of the cake. The Unit Plan it provides is incredibly well put together. Though I did not follow it exactly I used a wealth of information and activities from it. The plan focuses largely on the performance of the play. Students are introduced to such concepts as stress, inflection, subtext, etc. I am very grateful I had this as a resource!

This book came in great condition. I use it a lot when teaching Romeo and Juliet to 9th graders. Even though I don't use the EXACT lessons, I still pull a lot of ideas from it and create my own lessons. It's nice having your own copy to mark pages and such.

This book, along with Nancie Atwell's books and Harvey Daniels' _Literature Circles_, has become one of the few commercial sources from which I have directly lifted lessons. The "From Page to Performance" activity alone was worth the purchase of the book.

I adapted the Midsummer unit to suit my 8th graders and the time I had left in the school year--and it was terrific. I just graded the essays on their final exams and it's clear that they understood and appreciated the play. It was even more clear from their scene performances. And their scene performances showed that they also *enjoyed* it.

I highly recommend this resource for teachers who would prefer that their students enjoy and look forward to studying Shakespeare. If you are hoping to suck every possible drop of enjoyment out of the study, then do continue with the boring question packets and miserable round-robin reading.

The best Shakespeare suggestions I've ever found. I wish they had an edition for each of Shakespeare's plays.

Excellent teaching tool. I used two activities a few days after the book arrived.The students were engaged and I was thrilled. I am planning to use this book to plan future lessons, and I am hoping to order others that deal with different plays.

This is a wonderful resource for the teacher who has trouble with Shakespeare. I have used it several times with students. The Midsummer Night's Dream section is great.

Purchased this upon the reccomendation of a co worker to teach Romeo and Juliet, and I am so glad I did. My freshmen are really into reading the play and they love the performance aspect. Even students who would rarely answer questions in class are competeing for parts on performance days. The studetns are also finding that their understainding of the language has greatly inmproved.

I love this series so much.

The underlying idea is very simple: take the plays off the page and they make sense to all students -- the high flyers and the ones with reading difficulties. Within these books are activities and projects that are bite-sized. They allow the script to be performed and/or analyzed and/or experienced WITHOUT the students having to undertake a full-blown performance.

AND there is no dumbing down of the text.

AND you can use a little from these books or every page.

BUT your students need to have the skills to work in groups.