Why do we still study William Shakespeare?

This lesson can be used as a stand alone lesson at the beginning of a unit of study on any of Shakespeare’s plays. It is designed to engage students with the ‘why’ of studying Shakespeare, in the hope that this increases engagement and knowledge retention when studying his plays themselves.

It begins by running through some main reasons why Shakespeare’s plays have stood the test of time, e.g. his use of language, his characterisation and plot etc.

After discussion of each of these, students are prompted to summarise what they have just discussed and learned with sentence starters.

A comprehension, included within the PowerPoint file to be printed off, can then be tackled with KS4 students, and if teaching KS3 I just used the second half of this comprehension which is easier to understand. Questions designed to extend students thinking and develop their explanations as to why Shakespeare is still important to us today are then posed which students can write answers to in their books.

The lesson is designed to fit neatly into an hour and coloured overlays are included on each slide to aid students with Irlen Syndrome or Dyslexia who might benefit from them. The colour of these can be easily changed or they can be deleted if not needed. The lesson slides are also done in a way that is designed to reduce cognitive load and proves popular with our students as a way of presenting information with clarity.

Thanks for taking a look :)