Trying to Find the Love

I begin student teaching on March 22nd! While I am very excited, I am also a little terrified. One source of anxiety is Shakespeare. I am not sure about the rest of you, but I rely heavily (or completely) on SparkNotes to understand his plays. I took an entire class on his plays and spent countless hours in the library reading the side by side translations to get through it. While I love the concepts and ideas of some of his plays, I can't understand his language. But as an English teacher, I will inevitable have to find some Shakespearean love before I can teach it. Well, the time has come to find my love. I will have two 9th grade classes at Liberty, and I have to teach them Romeo and Juliet. While I don't think I will fall in love with Shakespeare or his language, I hope I can inspire myself to find the love within interesting, exciting, and creative lessons. In an effort to let my freshly painted fingernails dry, I set off to do some low-key research. My efforts were rewarded with some great websites!

The Fogler Shakespeare Library
This site is dedicated to advancing knowledge and the arts, and they have entire sections dedicated to teaching various Shakespeare plays. The above link is to their Romeo and Juliet section, and it includes two standards-based lesson plans, an audio recording of the play, some video clips, and a short blip about the language of the play. These aren't stellar ideas, but they are something to build on! There are also teaching ideas for the other plays, and most ideas can be adapted to work with many plays.

Romeo and Juliet on Web English Teacher
This website is a new discovery, and I have fallen in love. It is an entire site dedicated to making the job of the English teacher easier. It has multiple sections on everything from young adult literature to grammar and journalism. It is essentially a collection of links that lead you to resources. Their Romeo and Juliet section has TONS of great ideas, many of which are creative and a little outside the box, which is right up my teaching alley!

How to READ Shakespeare!
Apparently, it is possible. This is a guide on how to effectively read Shakespeare play. Great tool for teachers and students, so I might make copies and spend a day explaining how to read him. Everyone needs to be reminded how to be an effective reader, especially with such confusing stuff!

 How to Make the Magic Happen
This is a document designed for a drama class, but it has objectives aligned with interesting activities! I don't want to just read and discuss, and this resource provides a more varied plan. And it is FREE! Nothing with objectives is ever free. Also within this 24 page document are vocab words, and an examination of verse and prose in Romeo and Juliet.

Teaching Shakespeare
This is a PowerPoint presentation that looks like it was assembled by a pre-service teacher. But boy, does it have some good stuff in it! It asks me, the teacher, to examine why I am teaching this play and how I am teaching it before it gives some great activities! Very insightful, and it is even research based!

Teaching Romeo and Juliet
This site has some really great discussion questions and a few teaching ideas.


There they are: Some helpful resources for teaching Romeo and Juliet that are now archived forever. You will probably see quite a few of these posts concerning this play and The Importance of Being Earnest (which I am WAY excited to teach to my AP Juniors!) over the next few weeks. This blog is a great way for me to keep track of my resources so when I am frantically planning over spring break I don't have to do as much searching. Happy hump day!

Beg, Borrow, and Steal

As every teacher knows, the motto "beg, borrow, and steal" is one to live by. More and more I have felt frustrated with all of the sites that claim to have great teaching resources but don't. More than once have I found the seemingly perfect lesson plan only to have my excitement squelched by a request for $29.99 and a credit card number. The motto is "beg, borrow, and steal", not "spend fun money on a maybe great resource." So when I come across a GREAT website that actually has FREE stuff, it is like finding a real gold nugget in a sea of pyrite. One reason I started this blog is to archive my resources. A fringe benefit is that any of you who also happen to be of the nerdy-English-teacher variety will benefit as well. 

So....Gold Nugget Number One. 

http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/lesson-plans/

Read Write Think. The good people who give us thousands of free rubrics also give us hundreds of free lesson plans! You can search by grade level, lesson plan type, theme, or learning objective. Possibly the coolest thing about this site is that they have resources for grades 9-12. I don't know about you, but I think elementary teachers have an easier time finding resources online. It seems that most sites are geared toward grade k-6 and maybe, if we are lucky, have a few 9-12 plans that sneaked in under the cloak of darkness. Thanks, Read Write Think for recognizing that we need some help too! 

Gold Nugget Number Two:

http://thinkfinity.org/in-the-classroom

That's right, ladies and gentleman, two gold nuggets in ONE day. It feels like Christmas. Now, I have to point out that this site does a lot of redirecting to Read Write Think, but some of their links guide you other places too. I haven't done a lot of exploring here, but it does have a great search tool and lessons for grades 9-12. It also has a Professional Development tab which may be helpful down the road.

One unique element of this site is their "Today in History" section. It contains a calender with things that happened on each day in history throughout the year. Want to know why it is really cool? Click on the event and it takes you to a collection of lessons and activities relating to that event.

There they are. Two helpful resources with FREE stuff! If you have gotten this far, you are probably of the nerdy-English-teacher variety too, and I am glad we can share in this excitement together.