intros for teachers

These workshops and in-services can help any group of teachers gain confidence in the teaching of Shakespeare and bringing engagement with the Bard to the classroom (oh, and there's a just-for-fun presentation as well!)

 

No More Shakes-FEAR!

10-50 teachers -- 2 hours: $200

Provides teachers with tools for confidently introducing Shakespeare to students. The centerpiece is a scansion workshop and sample lesson on Shakespearean language and blank verse; special attention is paid to how character and action are revealed within the rhythm of the poetic line.

Attendees receive resources, reproducible handouts, and a lesson plan.

Previously delivered to Ventura County Reading Association in an abbreviated form, under the title “What’s the Matter with Shakespeare: words, words, words.”

[note: requires space enough for at least 10 attendees to be used as examples for the audience]

 

They’re Plays, NOT Works: Teaching Shakespeare

20-50 teachers -- 6 hours:  $600

Provides teachers with tools for confidently introducing Shakespeare to students. The centerpieces of this presentation are:

• the scansion workshop and sample lesson on Shakespearean language and blank verse from “No More Shakes-FEAR”
• a student activity and sample lesson called “Shakespeare in a loop”
• a student activity and sample lesson called “Shakespearean statues come to life”
• a student activity and sample lesson called “Cue Me!”
• a rhetoric workshop and sample lesson on “chunking” Shakespeare speeches called “Speak the speech I pray you… ALL OF YOU!”

The presentation uses the same framing device as “No More Shakes-FEAR.”

Attendees receive resources, reproducible handouts, and lesson plans.

Attendees should expect to get up, moving, and doing Shakespeare!

[note: requires space enough for participants to form a large circle and move throughout the space]

 

Chopping Down the Tree, One Cut at a Time

(or “Family Ties in Shakespeare’s History Tetralogies [abridged]”)

10-50 teachers -- 90 minutes:  $150

Join Bill for an interactive discussion of the family relationships in Shakespeare’s English history tetralogies. Setting up the context for the beginning of the Bard’s cycle, Richard II, then moving through the “Henriad” (both Parts of Henry IV, and Henry V) and the depiction of both the close of the Hundred Years’ War and the War of the Roses (the three Parts of Henry VI), and culminating in the rise of the Tudor house in Richard III, this fun and fast-paced 90-minute look is based on attendee interaction.

Determined by participant selections, Bill will present not only the history in the plays, but Shakespeare’s contemporary events that shaped the plays’ composition.

[note: a small table, a few chairs, and a large whiteboard]