The North Face of Shakespeare Activities for Teaching the Plays [Paperback]

A wealth of expert advice and practical ideas for teaching the plays.A wealth of expert advice and practical ideas for teaching the plays.A wealth of expert advice and practical ideas for teaching the plays.The North Face of Shakespeare argues that successful active work arises directly from the extraordinary dramatic power of Shakespeare's writing - from its language and poetry and its use of narrative and character. The book invites teachers and drama practitioners to think of their classroom as a stage, with their students as both actors and audience. It proposes that the text can be presented as drama - whether in quite simple ways sitting at desks or in open space in the classroom or workshop, the text can be spoken and performed by every learner in the room. The aim is for students to take away an engaged and secure understanding of that text to use in their own reading and study.Introduction; Using this book; The organisation and content of the eight chapters; Developing the use of drama to teach Shakespeare; The teacher's autonomy; Section 1. Active Teaching: 1. Why use active methods to teach the plays? The North Face of Shakespeare; The problem of monumentalism; The teacher repositioned: 'Shakespeare shared'; Starting active work; Drama workshops; The learner and the text at the centre; Active Shakespeare and independent learning; Back to the art of teaching - and student achievement; 2. Practical work and drama workshops; The classroom as stage: activities in conventional teaching sessions; Safety: physical and emotional; Different needs and abilities; Workshop practices; Workshop objectives and the use of warm-ups and preparation exercises; Workshop planning: an example of a language workshop - 'Macbeth's soliloquies'; The origins of the workshop activities in the following chapters; Section 2. Activities for Teaching Shakespeare's Plays: 3. Group formation activities; Group formation; Getting started; 4. Drama games: using games in the ShakespearlCs