Unit of Work: Macbeth

Shakespeare’s play about madness and ambition is an established favourite for senior students. This 48-page unit of work has been tested successfully with a mixed-ability class and provides material for a full 10-week school term.

This unit focuses on close textual analysis. There is a mixture of tasks which gets students writing analytically, personally, and creatively, helping them to build up their own unique interpretation of the work, and eventually to express this in a formal essay.

There is a brief, student-friendly explanation of what a close reading actually is and how to perform it, followed by a sample close reading of the opening passage.

Each scene has a single-page task sheet comprising three higher-order tasks: a close reading of a nominated passage, an extended response to develop interpretative thinking, and a choice of creative writing tasks which springboard from the language and ideas in the chapter.

Ten senior-level essay questions offer a choice of arguments about character, theme, language, and context, and a sample essay discusses the following question:

I dare do all that may become a man. Who dares do more is none.

How are ideas of manly behaviour presented in the play?