CURRICULUM
Knowing where these points of misunderstanding may arise before I begin to teach also allows me to pre-teach, preparing the ground of what is to follow. For example, by paying close attention to the Prologue of Romeo and Juliet or making use of a modern retelling of the story, students can hit the ground running when they encounter the full text. I used the Frankenstein play script by Phillip Pullman for this with real success for some SEN students, who read the play as part of their supported tutor reading, before arriving at the English lesson. Making use of graphic novel versions of the plays and short animations can also be a useful gateway into the greater complexity to come. Pre-teaching vocabulary can also be another useful way to support students once they arrive to the text as a whole. Simple translations of things like the ‘thee’ and ‘thou’, an area that a range of students often struggle with, or key vocabulary which allows them to explore a text in more depth, such as villain, or hierarchy, can again mean they are able to approach the lesson with more confidence.
3) As I have considered the steps and stages through the plot and character, it gives me the perfect opportunity to check that all students are really accessing the learning. Low-stakes quizzes on mini-whiteboards help me to see what everyone has understood and what is being retained. If there are key points missed, I can either reteach then and there, or make a note to revisit this later. Reteaching and revisiting could be with the whole class, a small group or an individual. But by checking understanding regularly it means that I can see exactly where students are and whether I need to guide them back on track. 4) Performance is obviously an important element of Shakespeare’s work, although these plays were not just written for performance. Allowing students to see a good quality performance though, scaffolded by pre-teaching and summary as suggested above, will help them to interact with the text as an audience. A good production will also model the reading of complex lines and support students to hear the links between the individual words and overall meaning conveyed in the action.
Giving students the opportunity to explore the text as performance themselves can also be a good way to ensure they have a greater understanding of the plot, themes, and character. This doesn’t necessarily mean them performing whole scenes, but focusing instead on key phrases or moments. A ‘yes/ no’ argument between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth as she tries to convince him to kill the king, can be just as interesting as students performing the whole of that dialogue, as they consider what she does with each line: what might the tone be when she says, ‘had I so sworn’? Which way would she face? Where would she stand in relation to him? Does this change when she delivers the next part of her speech? Line by line and moment by moment performance, including using tableaux and collaborative storytelling, can really bring a text alive for some students. 5) To create links between what we are discussing about the play and the performance, I use visual, images taken from the performance I selected, to allow students to associate particular characters, with key moments
“A good production will also model the reading of complex lines and support students to hear the links between the individual words and overall meaning conveyed in the action.”
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