Help students understand key elements in Shakespeare’s tragedies, comedies, and histories with this 8.5" x 14" classroom poster. The PDF can be printed in the original size, a smaller size to use as a handout or a bigger size for a larger poster.

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: Four mini-lessons on word order and how Shakespeare often mixes it up in order to rhyme or stay in iambic pentameter. 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. One mini-lesson on letter omissions and all of Shakespeare’s weird contractions. One student handout on archaic words or words whose meanings have changed since Shakespeare’s day. One mini-lesson on his use of imagery and figurative language. One mixed practice OR optional mixed practice quiz that puts all of this together. 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!

This fun and versatile digital escape room lesson is designed to use with high school students as an introduction to important Elizabethan ideas that appear in Shakespeare’s plays and that affect language, characterization, symbolism, and themes. It can be used with any play. I use it before reading as an introduction, but it can be used at any time during the reading. This is meant to be a low-stakes introduction to the Renaissance concepts of the Wheel of Fortune (Rota Fortunae), the four humors, the Great Chain of Being, and Renaissance superstitions in regards to supernatural beings—ghosts, witches, and fairies. Each task introduces the concept and links to a short article or video explaining it; provides a related game based on common game shows or board games, which are meant to reinforce the concept and have students interact with Shakespearean texts in some way (see below for details); and asks students to solve one to five related locks using the information from the articles and clues in the game. This zip file also contains four fully animated PowerPoint games that can be used as templates for other lessons. There is a Wheel of Fortune-type game, a Family Feud-type game, an Operation-type game, and a Clue/D&D hybrid game. This zip file contains: Teacher notes with all links to the Google Forms, directions for digital and in-person use, and an answer key to the escape room locks. Four PowerPoint game files that are fully automated for game play when in presentation mode. In addition, all four of these PowerPoint files can be used for templates for the teacher to repurpose for other units. Two Google Form links for the digital escape room—one with the PowerPoint links, one without the PowerPoint links (see below) A paper handout version of the Google Form, if the teacher prefers to have students do the lesson in class on paper. NOTE: Using the PowerPoint games on Macs or with older versions of the software may result in animations glitches that interfere with the playing of the games.