Shakespeare: To Teach or Not to Teach

Very good start for every teacher of Shakespeare that wants to use performance as an approach to bring the bard closer to his students. For the experienced drama teacher not much new, but still some nice ideas.

Very little content for teaching Shakespeare. The activities aren’t anything spectacular. Includes numerous icebreaker-like activities to get students moving, rather than focusing on what we’re really looking to learn about from this book — teaching Shakespeare. There are so many more appropriate and effective resources available, including those found online. I recommend the books “How to Teach Children Shakespeare” by Ken Ludwig, “Will’s Words” by Jane Sutcliffe, and “William Shakespeare and the Globe” by Aliki — all available on Amazon. As a middle and high school teacher, I’ve adapted these resources to meet my students’ needs. Also, check out the multitude of inexpensive lesson plans and other resources available on Teachers Pay Teachers.

Shakespeare To Teach Or Not To Teach: A Teacher's Manual, can be used with elementary to high school students, and is suitable for use in classroom, drama club and homeschool settings. Teachers and parents need not be anxious over teaching Shakespeare anymore. Shakespeare To Teach Or Not To Teach, can be used in conjunction with any Shakespeare play, but works very well with Shakespeare For Children: The Story of Romeo and Juliet or one of the six productions in the Sixty-Minute Shakespeare series. Beginning with basic information of Shakespeare, the time period (both his plays and when they were performed), what took place on and backstage in The Globe theater, To Teach Or Not To Teach puts the teacher at ease with the material and builds confidence to present Shakespeare to his or her students. To Teach Or Not To Teach provides excellent instructional ideas to make the plots and characters come alive for the students. From just reading through play, or acting it out to activities reaching past the typical Language Arts or English class assignments and crossing the core curriculum subjects.

As our Education Outreach department at Colorado Shakespeare Festival is dedicated to enlightening teachers and students (and the community at large) about Shakespeare's works--using a "hands-on" philosophy--I have found the Five Star Shakespeare Collection an incredible resource. Whenever teachers are looking for a truncated script, or help with "opening up Shakespeare" to their students, I refer them to you...(Five Star Publications - Arizona) Melinda J. Scott, Education Director Colorado Shakespeare Festival

I found this book rather simplistic. I bought it to teach Drama and I think it is probably more appropriate to English. It gave me one or two ideas but the rest of the activities were ones I use already or ones that weren't really appropriate. I would recommend this book to a beginning teacher of Drama or English.