Shakespeare Started!

Who is this fine fellow?!

Having finally gotten over a nasty virus, I am back in the classroom and we are now starting our Romeo & Juliet unit!

To start, we discovered a few things about the writer of R&J, William Shakespeare. As a class, we read the introductory paragraph on wikipedia on the Smartboard and as I read it, students practised taking jot notes (a very important skill!). Taking jot notes  means you have to focus in on the MOST IMPORTANT and relevant facts. You can't write down all the words I say/you read. You have to be selective and pick the ones that really matter.

Once they had collected some data, students had to choose their top 5.

I then condensed everyone's list into a main list. From that, students again narrowed it down to the top 5, top 3, and then the numero uno, number one main fact one should know about William Shakespeare.

For instance, if I had no idea who he was, what would you want to tell me? What is MOST IMPORTANT? What sums him up?

Most students were able to pull a main idea from all of the other data about who he married, how long he lived, where he lived, what plays he wrote, etc and selected this fact: that he is a POET AND PLAYWRIGHT. But only a few were able to select the even better option...which is that Shakespeare is considered ONE OF THE BEST PLAYWRIGHTS IN THE WORLD. He isn't just any ol' playwright, but one of THE BEST!  

As we read the play (we started the prologue today using Shakespeare in Bits on the smartboard) we will also be doing more research reading...that is, using our research skills, our ability to pull out main details, summarize key points, etc, by looking more closely at aspects of Shakespeares world...such as, The Globe Theater, Queen Elizabeth I, and the Elizabethan Age.