Shakespeare

Practical approaches to teaching KS3 Shakespeare

By Hannah Appleton Reframing or reimagining how we tackle Shakespeare in schools begins with our perception of it being boring, irrelevant or too difficult, especially if we teach in schools with high numbers of SEND, EAL or FSM. It is, however, precisely those complexities and layers Shakespearean texts provide, which… Read More

Forging creative connections in King Lear

Any teacher introducing King Lear in the classroom, whether for the first, or even the 20th time, can’t but help feel daunted by the sheer philosophical and emotional heft of Shakespeare’s most-studied tragedy. How do we convey the significance and complexity of its over-arching themes, such as power, loyalty and… Read More

Designing Shakespeare: teaching ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’

One of the core difficulties when teaching Shakespeare is taking it off the printed page – turning it from a flat, some might say dead text into a living, breathing work of drama.  To do this, we need to make the language physical in some way. Most obviously, exploring the… Read More

Top tips for exploring Hamlet’s key themes

Year 12 students returning to school to begin their AS and A-level courses are probably feeling rather like Hamlet at this moment, their heads ‘a distracted globe’ filled with conflicting thoughts. And Hamlet can be a daunting play at the best of times. But it doesn’t have to be –… Read More

Shakespeare Teaching Ideas for Key Stage 2

The result at Collins are five plays: The Tempest, Midsummer’s Night Dream, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth and Twelfth Night, rewritten in story form for younger readers. These are a great introduction to the world of Shakespeare but how can we use them effectively to help pupils immerse themselves in the rich language of Shakespeare’s world? Read More

Collins GCSE English Festival – Pop Sonnets: A Lesson Plan

Here's a thought experiment: what current books will be read in the future? What movies and TV shows will they watch a century from now? What songs from 2015 will they listen to in 2215? I don’t mean this in an academic or archival sense; I'm talking about the works people pick up and enjoy on their own — the way Pride and Prejudice and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes still grip us despite being over a century old. Read More

Writing creatively

We all know that the burden of marking and assessment is particularly heavy if you’re an English teacher. And yet one of the things that keeps us going can be those little moments of frisson when we read something that one of our students has written that is just fantastic. Read More

Shakespeare’s made-up words – years 5-6

How many of these words did Shakespeare make up himself? Read More

Shakespeare’s Sonnets – for years 4-6

Learning Focus: Be able to recognise and say the metre of a rhyming piece of writing Be able to write a rhyming poem using a recognised structure Shakespeare is mainly known for his plays but he wrote many poems too. The most famous poems are a particular kind of… Read More

Shakespeare Activity Sheet – years 4-6

Learning Focus: To recognise that our language has many origins and is constantly growing, changing and adapting. To identify common words and phrases that were coined by Shakespeare In the following passage there are TWENTY phrases or sayings that have been attributed to Shakespeare. Can you sort out the… Read More