How To Read Shakespeare: Shakespeare's Language

Reading Shakespeare can be intimidating and frustrating for students. Help your students feel more confident in their ability to read Shakespeare by helping them understand what some of the “quirks” of Shakespeare’s language are and why he writes this way. With more confidence and understanding, students can read Shakespeare’s plays more independently.

I use the eight lessons included in this product before I teach any play in any secondary grade to scaffold students’ skills and to give them guided practice with short excerpts of text before they move on to reading an entire play. The lessons are accessible but still challenging for ninth through twelfth graders (or beyond). Teachers can differentiate instruction by choosing which of the lessons are most appropriate for the grade level they teach and for their students’ skills. It is not necessary for all lessons to be used or to be given in the order they appear in this product.

Everything is fully editable so that teachers can adjust lessons to their students’ skill levels.

This 35-page file contains:

1. Four mini-lessons on word order and how Shakespeare often mixes it up in order to rhyme or stay in iambic pentameter.
2. One mini-lesson on separations of various kinds, such as separating the parts of a verb phrase, separating a subject from its verb, separating a word or phrase from what it modifies, etc.
3. One mini-lesson on letter omissions and all of Shakespeare’s weird contractions.
4. One student handout on archaic words or words whose meanings have changed since Shakespeare’s day.
5. One mini-lesson on his use of imagery and figurative language.
6. One mixed practice OR optional mixed practice quiz that puts all of this together.
7. One fill-in-the-blank, 15-point quiz on iambic pentameter, word order, separations, omissions, and archaic words/meanings.

All concept explanations and answer keys are included, which means NO PREP for you!