Teaching Shakespeare in Primary Schools offers guidance and practical ideas for teaching Shakespeare’s plays across Key Stage 1 and 2. It demonstrates how the plays can engage young readers in exciting, immersive and fun literacy lessons and illustrates how the powerful themes, iconic characters and rich language remain relevant today. Part 1 explores the place of classic texts in modern classrooms – how teachers can invite children to make meaning from Shakespeare’s words – and considers key issues such as gender and race, and embraces modern technology and digital storytelling. Part 2 presents Shakespeare’s plays: The Tempest, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, Macbeth and The Winter’s Tale. For each play, there is a suggested sequence of activities that will guide teachers through the process of inspiring children, incubating ideas and making connections all before responding to it through drama, writing and other subjects. You don’t need to be an actor, a scholar or even an extrovert to get the best out of Shakespeare! Written by experienced teachers, this book is an essential resource for teachers of all levels of experience who want to teach creative, engaging and memorable lessons.

An improved, larger-format edition of the Cambridge School Shakespeare plays, extensively rewritten, expanded and produced in an attractive new design.

Outlines an engaging way to instill an understanding and appreciation of Shakespeare's classic works in children, outlining a family-friendly method that incorporates the history of Shakespearean theater and society.

Developed by one of the world's leading theatre companies, this fantastic resource offers teachers a practical, drama-based approach to teaching and appreciating three of Shakespeare's most popular plays: Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, and A Midsummer Night's Dream. The toolkit brings the plays alive as performance pieces, with Primary pupils undertaking drama-based explorations of the text that take them through much of the play. Teachers' notes and accompanying photocopiable worksheets offer a lesson-by-lesson teaching route through each of the three plays in turn. The schemes of work offer teachers a route through each play that has been designed to be flexible and to bolt on to what they already teach. The schemes comprise a series of lessons that can either be followed in their entirety as a stand-alone scheme of work or which can be dipped into by teachers wanting to augment their existing schemes of work.

Shakespeare is one of our key historical figures but so often he remains locked behind glass and hard to reach. The purpose of this book is to unlock Shakespeare, to remove the tag of ‘high art’ that has surrounded his work and return him to the heart of popular culture where his plays began in the first place. In his foreword, playwright Edward Bond says of A Practical Guide to Shakespeare for the Primary School, ‘It is written with knowledge and experience of its subject – but also with the knowledge of the young people with whom that experience was shared‘. John Doona will inspire and motivate pupils and teachers alike to engage with Shakespeare in a fresh and accessible manner and provide clear, tried and tested schemes of work which demonstrate how engagement with the plays and their language can have a dramatic impact on children’s literacy and writing. As well as providing practical guidance to classroom delivery and performance, techniques, approaches and attitudes, this handbook also promotes learning outcomes linked to literacy targets and cross-curricular units of learning. The central chapters of the book form a comprehensive cross-curricular unit of work on four specific plays – The Tempest, Macbeth, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Romeo and Juliet – providing background notes and historical facts linked to the plays, along with comprehensive schemes of work for immediate implementation and ideas for generating performance. Features unique to this resource include:- Free electronic ‘info-blasts’ to all book buyers containing electronic versions of key elements of the book as well as additional resources and lesson plans Drama for the Petrified - A crash course for teachers in the techniques, approaches and attitudes required to bring Shakespeare to life A chapter on Shakespeare and his life, including ‘Five minute Will’ a short comic scripted account of his life Comprehensive schemes of work, each including a Teachers’ Crib Sheet, Story Whoosh!, Story Jigsaw, Scheme Structure Map, edited scenes and additional classroom resources A Practical Guide to Shakespeare for the Primary School is an essential resource for all primary teachers, trainee teachers and drama practitioners, offering guidance, insight and compelling schemes of work for the study of Shakespeare through drama in the primary classroom.