'Macbeth' - Teach-along Task Booklet

A task booklet for Shakespeare’s ‘Macbeth’, designed to be used chronologically as students read the text. Aimed at Grades 4-9. Includes:

Context: King James (life, relationship with witchcraft, and shipwreck), Freytag’s Pyramid, Greek tragedies, The Great Chain of Being & The Divine Right of Kings, female gender roles in Shakespearean England, A Treatise of Equivocation.

Scenes: Active learning tasks; core & stretch vocabulary for:

• Act 1: Scene 1 (witches), Scene 2 (Captain’s account), Scene 3 (reaction to the witches’ prophecies), Scene 4 (characterisation of kingship), Scene 5 (Lady Macbeth), Scene 7 (vaulting ambition soliloquy & the Macbeths’ argument)
• Act 2: Scene 1 (disrupted nature & “Is this a dagger”), Scene 2 (omens, the Macbeths’ reactions to Duncan’s murder), Scene 3 (the porter, reactions to Duncan’s murder, Macbeth’s diminished humanity), Scene 4 (omens)
• Act 3: Scene 1 (fruitless crown soliloquy), Scene 2 (the Macbeths’ changing dynamic), Scene 4 (banquet scene)
• Act 4: Scene 1 (apparitions), Scene 2 (Macduff’s castle), Scene 3 (true vs false kingship & masculinity)
• Act 5: Scene 1 (sleepwalking & comparison to Act 1, Scene 5), Scene 3 (“flesh be hack’d” scene), Scene 5 (“tommorow & tomorrow”), Scene 8 (confirmed prophecies), Scene 9 (return to order)

Character pages: The witches, Macbeth, Duncan, Lady Macbeth, Banquo, Macduff, Malcom.

Theme pages: Masculinity & Violence, Guilt & Madness, Fate vs Free Will, Ambition, The Supernatural.