RESOURCES: The Bards B-Day + Great NCTE Resources!

[Ryan Goble]

Great resource collection from the NCTE eNewslettter...

..blog

Everything I Know about Differentiation I Learned from William Shakespeare In honor of William Shakespeare's birthday, Scott Filkins takes inspiration from the bard to consider the value of involving students in the process of differentiating instruction by learning style in this week's INBOX blog. While you're thinking about William Shakespeare, see NCTE's new Teaching Julius Caesar: A Differentiated Approach. Through differentiated instruction, Lyn Fairchild Hawks offers solutions for bringing the play to life for all students -- those with various interests, readiness levels, and learning styles. The book offers practical, engaging, and rigorous lessons for teaching reading, writing, speaking, performance, and research that can be used as-is or adapted to suit the needs of your students and classroom environment. Read a sample chapter.

...ideas

Free access to journal articles mentioned in this INBOX is provided for 21 days. After this free access period expires, articles are available to journal subscribers only. Articles are intended for personal use only and may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission in writing from NCTE. Initials in annotations indicate academic level of the resource (E=Elementary, M=Middle, S=Secondary, C=College, TE=Teacher Education, G=General).

Happy Birthday to William Shakespeare! On April 23, 1564, William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-on-Avon. Celebrate the bard with the strategies outlined in these resources from NCTE and ReadWriteThink.org. "Voices from Shakespeare's Day" (E) After a number of rich experiences with the world of storytelling, third-grade students study William Shakespeare and learn from the timeless master and teller of stories in this Primary Voices article. "Creative Drama through Scaffolded Plays in the Language Arts Classroom" (E) The author of this Primary Voices article chronicles how she first used creative drama in a summer reading program and then over the years developed a much broader understanding of drama as an important teaching tool. "Where There's a Will, There's a Play" (M) This article from Voices from the Middle describes a popular yearly activity at one middle school in which production of a Shakespearean comedy becomes the centerpiece of an interdisciplinary unit on the Elizabethan Period. Analyzing Advice as an Introduction to Shakespeare (M) Popular culture provides an introduction to Shakespeare's poetic devices in this ReadWriteThink.org lesson, which asks students to explore an excerpt from Shakespeare's Hamlet. Teaching Romeo and Juliet: A Differentiated Approach (M-S) A sample chapter from this book provides an overview of an approach to Romeo and Juliet that takes student interests and learning styles into account, maximizing engagement and success with the play. Learn more from these authors about teaching Shakespeare through their on demand Web seminars: Reading Shakespeare with All Our Students Reading Shakespeare: A Focus on Student-Centered Learning and Production Constructing New Understanding through Choral Readings of Shakespeare (S) After reading The Tempest or another play by William Shakespeare, students in this lesson fromReadWriteThink.org work in small groups to plan, compose, and perform a choral reading based on a character or theme. A video student sample is included. Shakespeare through the Lens of a New Age (S) This English Journal article discusses two approaches -- teaching Shakespeare through picture books and through music -- that engage both students and teachers as they come to share an understanding of Shakespeare's relevance to all ages. Performance Approaches to Teaching Shakespeare (S-C) The online excerpt from this book provides a sampling of a wide array of concepts and practices to encourage students to explore specific performances, as well as the performance potentials, of a Shakespearean text. To see all of NCTE's books about Shakespeare, visit the Shakespeare page in the online store.

[Susan Stephenson, the Book Chook]

When I was pulling resources together for a blog post, Happy Birthday, Mr Shakespeare I found some wonderful vids from the BBC, eg Shakespeare Animated Tales - The Taming of the Shrew. Find more via this Squidoo page.

[Ryan Goble]

Cool Susan - do consider cross-posting your blog post here - I can highlight it on a Tuesday then!