Happy 455th Birthday, Will!
April 23rd is the day many celebrate the birth of William Shakespeare, one of the more widely read dramatists of all times.This year is his 455th!
Prepare your students to understand Elizabethan society a little better.
Have a go with your students and have them take a Humours Quiz to determine their own basic personality traits, then see how they’d rate characters in the plays you have them study. Teens in the US will have fun with this quiz written in British English by our colleagues at TeachIt in the UK.
I also include one my students’ favorite pictures of Shakespeare – with the earring which suggests how “hip” William Shakespeare still is today. See Words and Phrases from Shakespeare.
Also see SHAKESPEARE OUT LOUD AND IN COLOR. Students get a kick out of trying the Lazy Sonnets. Invite them to write a lazy sonnet about whatever text you happen to be studying now. See samples written about “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner“!
For the Bards’ birthday, you may want to create your own birthday sonnet, or invite your students to write an record one like this:
What a laugh! The Humours Quiz website will be a blast with my students. Thanks for sharing. 🙂
My pleasure. Glad they enjoyed the quiz. Hope the recall the details as they continue to explore other Elizabethan writing.
I am in the middle of trying many of your Romeo and Juliet activities (see SHAKESPEARE OUT LOUD AND IN COLOR) with my honors ninth graders. They are loving them. We are using these assessments instead of writing a big essay because we just completed one. These activities cause students to think critically, investigate, evaluate, analyze, explore, reflect, and be creative, so they are perfect. We completed the character masks and lazy sonnets. The masks are on my back wall! Next week, we work on Geometric Character Analysis. Thank you so much for presenting at CATE; my students and I appreciate it.
Divona, Thanks for taking time to comment with specific details of how you’re using the assignments and ways your students are responding to them in ways to that help them learn and show what they know. The fact that they’re enjoying them also is gratifying.
Keep up your good work.