Teaching Shakespeare in Primary Schools
Teaching Shakespeare in Primary Schools offers guidance and practical ideas for teaching Shakespeare’s plays across Key Stage 1 and 2. It demonstrates how the plays can engage young readers in exciting, immersive and fun literacy lessons and illustrates how the powerful themes, iconic characters and rich language remain relevant today.
Part 1 explores the place of classic texts in modern classrooms – how teachers can invite children to make meaning from Shakespeare’s words – and considers key issues such as gender and race, and embraces modern technology and digital storytelling. Part 2 presents Shakespeare’s plays: The Tempest, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, Macbeth and The Winter’s Tale. For each play, there is a suggested sequence of activities that will guide teachers through the process of inspiring children, incubating ideas and making connections all before responding to it through drama, writing and other subjects.
You don’t need to be an actor, a scholar or even an extrovert to get the best out of Shakespeare! Written by experienced teachers, this book is an essential resource for teachers of all levels of experience who want to teach creative, engaging and memorable lessons.
Stefan Kucharczyk is the founder of ARTiculate Education, an independent creative consultancy for schools. He is an experienced primary school teacher, and his research interests include creativity in education, digital literacy, Star Wars in the classroom and filmmaking. He is an associate lecturer at the Open University.
Maureen Kucharczyk is a highly experienced primary school teacher from Wolverhampton. Over three decades as senior teacher and literacy leader, she has specialised in creative approaches to children’s literacy and writing. Her teaching interests include engaging boys with writing, Shakespeare, drama and poetry.