Lesson Plan : Modernizing Romeo and Juliet

Teacher Name:
 Miss Anderson
Grade:
 Grade 9-10
Subject:
 Literature Activities

Topic:
 
Content:
 
Goals:
 The goal of this lesson is to help students better understand important speeches that occur in Romeo and Juliet.
Objectives:
 By understanding separate speeches that occur in the play, the students will be able to gain a better understanding of Romeo and Juliet as a whole. Also, the students will be able to gain a better understanding of Shakespearean language, and how Shakespeare's work can apply to today's world.
Materials:
 In order to execute this lesson, the students will need a copy of Romeo and Juliet as well as access to a computer.
Introduction:
 I will introduce this lesson by talking to students about how they feel in regards to reading Shakespeare. We will talk about how intimidating it can often be, and why.
Development:
 I will move into a discussion of important, "turning point" speeches in Romeo and Juliet. We will have an open discussion as to why these speeches are important. Next we will move on to discuss the way in which these important speeches can relate to real life events, or events that take place in modern television or movies.
Practice:
 As a class, we will take one of the important speeches that we discussed earlier in the class, and informally "modernize" it. We will translate the speech into modern day English, as well as attempt to give the speech a contemporary twist. For example, by using the informal language teenagers of today tend to use.
Accommodations:
 In addition to the typed assignment, the students must include an additional component, which they themselves can choose. They could either draw the modernized scene they created, or they could choose to read the speech out loud to the class.
Checking For Understanding:
 The students will be graded on accuracy of translation, and on the quality of the additional component they chose to create. This assignment will count as a project grade.
Closure:
 As a class, we will have a supplementary discussion about how and why students can relate to Shakespeare, even though he wrote hundreds of years ago. We will talk about how teenagers have changed over time, and how they have not.
Evaluation:
 
Teacher Reflections:
 

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