Shakespeare Richard III Whoosh Text

Whoosh! text for Shakespeare’s history play, Richard III. A Whoosh is an activity based on Royal Shakespeare Company training and it’s an extremely useful tool to help engage students with the story of a play through drama-based pedagogy (find out more here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ANp0cbRasU). It’s super useful for introducing the main events of plays and can be used whether the class are ultimately going to read the whole play or not. Acting out the scenes helps cement the events in pupils minds.

Richard III, in particular, can be quite confusing so a Whoosh is a great way to introduce important characters which can then be tracked through the whole story. This text includes a summary of the important events of the play, with characters in bold for Whoosh purposes. The teacher can choose students to act out each part or students can jump up and choose themselves. There are also quotations embedded at strategic points. For reference, this Whoosh took about 40 minutes with a group of Year 8 students.