Much Ado About Nothing - Shakespeare's Language Choices

This engaging, in-depth lesson enables students to understand how Shakespeare uses a range of colourful and varied language choices to develop the theme of social grace in ‘Much Ado about Nothing.’ Much Ado About Nothing contains some of Shakespeare's most vibrant and interesting language, as characters such as Benedick and Claudio use words to jostle for respect around the noble Don Pedro and Leonato. This lesson explores the devices that they use in order to gain favour with their social superiors.

The lesson follows a step-by-step learning journey, in which students learn through:
- Defining and exemplifying different language devices, such as similes, metaphors, alliteration, and puns.
- Taking part in a fun team quiz to identity the language devices used by the main characters in Much Ado About Nothing.
- Understanding the idea of social grace, and learning how it relates to the social hierarchy within the text.
- Completing an essay style response in which they consider how Shakespeare uses language to develop the theme of social grace.
- Peer assessing each other's learning attempts.

Included is:
- Whole lesson PowerPoint - colourful and detailed - just download and teach from it!
- Cards for card-sorting activity;
- Social grace worksheet;
- Analysis template with success criteria for creating well-structured responses;
- Comprehensive lesson plan.

There are also opportunities for group learning, peer assessment, and whole class discussion. This was originally taught to higher ability year 9 and 10 groups, but can easily be differentiated for groups of different ages and abilities.