This 30 part animated film noir detective story is an exciting and suspenseful lesson starter designed to reinforce the prior teaching of capital letters, apostrophes, and the 16 most common spelling errors. Each part requires approximately 10 minutes of class time, and this includes both watching the episode and correcting the transcript. As students improve their competency with regard to these areas, they are also challenged to consider whether or not Mike Thunder’s latest client is actually an accomplice in her husband’s disappearance. The answer is only revealed at the end of the series. As well as a YouTube link to the series, I have also included the transcripts + the rules for the correct usage of apostrophes, capital letters and the 16 most common spelling errors, e.g. to/too, where/were and affect/effect.

The Teen-Shakespeare Macbeth has been designed as a gateway into the original Shakespeare text. By reincarnating the tragedy of this major Shakespearean character in a realistic contemporary teenage context, and by using language that teenagers can readily understand, this drama aims to help them better understand Shakespeare, themselves and each other. It will also provide High Schools with an age-appropriate drama for an area of the curriculum where there is currently a shortage of titles. In order to maximise dramatic interest, the Teen-Shakespeare Macbeth incorporates the same mix of suspense and tension, and light and dark humour which Shakespeare so effectively uses. The drama script also seeks to replicate other dramatic techniques which strongly feature in Shakespeare’s plays: e.g. soliloquy; caricature versus fully realised characters; educated versus uneducated characters; an extensive list of dramatic personae so as to enable full class participation; a judicious use of evocative imagery to convey powerful feeling; and the five act structure conforming to exposition, complication, climax, falling action and catastrophe. With respect to structure, the play is approximately 90 minutes in performance length and, therefore, is a major piece of theatre in its own right rather than just a slimmed down imitation of the Shakespeare original. The Teen-Shakespeare Macbeth is an ideal way of introducing students to the original Shakespeare text. Teaching and learning tasks featured in the free on- line supplementary resources for the Teen-Shakespeare Macbeth incorporate written and oral, as well as analytical and creative responses and have been deliberately varied so as to elicit maximum engagement.