Teach Romeo & Juliet with Concepts Over Content

We Need Change

If you don't already know the purpose of this blog, you can read about it here. However, the short of it is the English classroom needs a revolution. The heart of the uprising should be accepting we need to teach concepts instead of covering content. This idea isn't completely radical. I mean, the Chinese have been saying it for centuries: "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." 

I know we aren't dealing in fish, but learning works the same way. Covering content is doing all the fishing for our students. We need to start teaching them how to fish for themselves. 

The First Step

Weaning ourselves off of reading every word of all the great literature available to us will be hard, I know. But, we can start small. I got started by skipping a chapter in Animal Farm in order to free up some time to practice more writing. And you know what? No kids were harmed in the process, no lighting bolts were thrown, my colleagues didn't pick up pitchforks and run me out of town. Somehow, it just worked. 

That experience gave me confidence to start chopping away at Romeo and Juliet. The first year, it began with small pieces. The scenes with the servants went first. Then a section from the Nurse babbling away endlessly, then parts of Queen Mab. And now, after four years of chipping away, I'm left with the best parts to teach symbolism, theme, expository structure, inference and so much more. These are skills the students can use on other Shakespeare plays or even sonnets. 

The Best Part

When you are ready, or if you already have made the leap to teaching concepts over content, you can find my one month long unit here or if you just want to try it out, here is the lesson just for the Prologue. I understand if you aren't ready to give up on every word of Shakespeare's beautiful language, but after going through this unit, my student's developed an appreciation instead of an aversion to Shakespeare. His name was no longer a curse word that incurred hissing when spoken aloud. You can find other lessons I did with Romeo and Juliet here.

Happy teaching!