Random Thoughts about Teaching Shakespeare

2. Random Thoughts about Teaching Shakespeare

3. It is more important to get kids to like Shakespeare than it is to get them to understand every word.

4. The best way to get kids to like Shakespeare is by getting them to perform Shakespeare.

5. Performing Shakespeare does not mean having students sit at their desks reading out loud, or having students stand in front of the room reading out loud, or the teacher acting out scenes for the class.

6. Acting out a scene is a form of close reading on your feet.

7. Sometimes it is better to do just part of a play rather than the whole play.

8. There are wonderful plays to teach other than the Big 4

9. The best way to use video may not always be showing the DVD from the beginning to the end.

10. A few tricks and gimmicks are not enough to make a Shakespeare learning experience significant.

11. If you’re using a “modern” version of a Shakespeare play, you’re not teaching Shakespeare.

12. When students properly use Web 2.0 technology to learn Shakespeare, they are usually using performance and doing a close reading of the text.

13. Studying Shakespeare’s life doesn’t really help students understand the plays.

14. Designing Globe Theaters out of sugar cubes and Popsicle sticks, making Elizabethan newspapers, designing costumes, doing a scavenger hunt on the Internet, or doing a report on Elizabethan sanitary conditions has nothing to do with a student’s appreciation of Shakespeare’s language.

17. Tone O

18. Definition of Tone int. Expressing (according to intonation) surprise, frustration, discomfort, longing, disappointment, sorrow, relief, hesitation, etc. Used mainly in imperative, optative, or exclamatory sentences or phrases, as in O take me back again!, O for another glimpse of it!, O the pity of it!, O dear!; often also emphatically in O yes, O no, O indeed, etc The Oxford English Dictionary

19. Your Turn O

20. surprised

21. Angry

22. afraid

23. exhausted

24. sad

25. suspicious

26. excited

27. awe

28. lusty

29. contempt

30. Definition of Stress Relative loudness or force of vocal utterance; a greater degree of vocal force characterizing one syllable as compared with other syllables of the word, or one part of a syllable as compared with the rest; stress-accent. Also, superior loudness of voice as a means of emphasizing one or more of the words of a sentence more than the rest. Oxford English Dictionary

31. I didn’t say he killed our King

32. I didn’t say he killed our King

33. I didn’t say he killed our King

34. I didn’t say he killed our King

35. I didn’t say he killed our King

36. I didn’t say he killed our King

37. I didn’t say he killed our King

38. I shall, in all my best, obey you, Madam. Hamlet 1.2

39. Some lines from Shakespeare

40. O, how I love thee! how I dote on thee!(lusty)

41. O, for a stone-bow, to hit him in the eye! (angry)

42. O, I am out of breath in this fond chase!(exhausted)

43. O, I am fortune’s fool!(regret)

44. O, speak again, bright angel!(lusty)

45. O lamentable day!(misery)

46. O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright! (excited)

47. O me, O me! My child, my only life. (distraught)

48. O, wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied? (disappointed)

49. O God! did Romeo's hand shed Tybalt's blood? (fear)

50. O God! did Romeo's hand shed Tybalt's blood? (horror)