This lesson was designed for my GCSE English Lit students who were about to embark on their study of Othello. The lesson isn’t Othello specific though, it is more a brief overview of the cultural and social changes that were going on during Shakespeare’s own times - and prompting students through a variety of tasks to think about how this changing society ended up influencing Shakespeare’s writing and being reflected in his plays. E.g. Renaissance themes, Golden Age of Elizabethan England, increased prosperity including a video (embedded) looking at the emergence of the new merchant class - and the effect this had on what kind of audience Shakespeare came to write for. Also the number of theatres springing up in Elizabethan London is also looked at - along with prompt questions which students can answer in written form or verbally regarding the effect that increasing demand had on the number of plays Shakespeare wrote. At the beginning and the end of the lesson is a short quickfire quiz which is designed to get students thinking about the lesson content. The lesson was really designed with the idea of ‘world-building’ in mind i.e. getting the students to develop a really vivid picture of what Elizabethan England was like and the changes it was undergoing, in order to have excellent grounding to refer back to studying any Shakespeare play, enabling them to place much of Shakespeare’s idoms etc into context. Thanks for taking a look :)

This lesson was designed for my Year 10 students to study just before they started to read Othello for their GCSE. Before diving into the play proper with its difficult-to-access language I felt it would be really beneficial for them to study a summary of the plot of Act 1, so that they know who the main characters are and what their role in the play’s exposition and rising action might be. I found that my students were definitely more ready to tackle reading Act 1 of the play having done this lesson. The main thrust of the lesson revolves around reading the summary that is included as a hidden slide for printing, and using this to create an 8 part storyboard. The point of this is to both solidify the storyline of Act 1 in their minds, along with the characters that feature, along with providing them with something they can refer back to throughout their study of Act 1. For students who finish their storyboard quicker than others, there are extension questions designed to extend students thinking. It was really successful and students definitely appreciated the ‘why’ behind this lesson. The lesson has been designed with dual coding purposes in mind in order to reduce cognitive load, and in addition there are removable coloured overlays on each slide to aid those students with Irlen Sydrome or dyslexia. The lesson ends with an introduction to how typically Shakespeare structured his tragedies and they are encouraged to ‘spot’ features from Act 1 that are in line with this tragedic arc. Thanks for taking a look :)

This lesson was designed for my Year 10 class and was designed to set the scene for their study of Shakespeare’s Othello. Before embarking upon reading the play itself, this lesson can ground their understanding of who Othello, Iago and Desdemona are, and cement an understanding of the role of each character in students’ minds. This lesson provides students with all the contextual knowledge about the storyline of the play, which coupled with prior knowledge of Elizabethan England, provides a powerful introduction to the Tragedy of Othello. The main lesson task, done after a low stakes quiz starter and a look at the relative locations of Venice and Cyprus (and why they are important to the play), centres around students using their knowledge of the characters, which the teacher talks through one by one (info on slides) and adds exposition to, to fill in an info sheet (included as a hidden slide for printing) - but crucially and more importantly, begin to engage in the debate around which characters are tragic villains and which are victims, with Othello deliberately left until last in this debate, given the ambiguous nature of his role in the play. The lesson is made with the principles of dual coding in mind to reduce students’ cognitive load (which my students genuinely seem to appreciate) and there is a removable and editable coloured overlay to each slide to help those students with dyslexia or Irlen syndrome who feel they benefit from it. Thanks for taking a look :)

This lesson can be used as a stand alone lesson at the beginning of a unit of study on any of Shakespeare’s plays. It is designed to engage students with the ‘why’ of studying Shakespeare, in the hope that this increases engagement and knowledge retention when studying his plays themselves. It begins by running through some main reasons why Shakespeare’s plays have stood the test of time, e.g. his use of language, his characterisation and plot etc. After discussion of each of these, students are prompted to summarise what they have just discussed and learned with sentence starters. A comprehension, included within the PowerPoint file to be printed off, can then be tackled with KS4 students, and if teaching KS3 I just used the second half of this comprehension which is easier to understand. Questions designed to extend students thinking and develop their explanations as to why Shakespeare is still important to us today are then posed which students can write answers to in their books. The lesson is designed to fit neatly into an hour and coloured overlays are included on each slide to aid students with Irlen Syndrome or Dyslexia who might benefit from them. The colour of these can be easily changed or they can be deleted if not needed. The lesson slides are also done in a way that is designed to reduce cognitive load and proves popular with our students as a way of presenting information with clarity. Thanks for taking a look :)