Expecting students to jump right into a rigorous literature discussion is not always realistic. Students need scaffolding so that they will be more engaged and motivated to read the text and think about it on a deeper level. This book shows English language arts teachers a very effective way to scaffold-by tapping into students' interest in pop culture. You'll learn how to use your students' ability to analyze pop culture and transfer that into helping them analyze and connect to a text. Special Features: Tools you can use immediately, such as discussion prompts, rubrics, and planning sheets Examples of real student literature discussions using pop culture Reflection questions to help you apply the book's ideas to your own classroom Connections to the Common Core State Standards for reading, speaking, and listening Throughout the book, you'll discover practical ways that pop culture and classic texts can indeed coexist in your classroom. As your students bridge their academic and social lives, they'll become more insightful about great literature--and the world around them.

Teaching Challenging Texts shows how to increase reading comprehension and enhance student engagement, even with the most challenging texts. Every chapter features ready-to-use, research-based lessons, replete with explicit instructions, handouts, Common Core correlations, and assessments. "Exploring the Future" features fiction by George Orwell, Suzanne Collins, and William Golding; nonfiction by Philip Zimbardo, Stephen Pinker, Abraham Lincoln, Jared Diamond, Dan Ariely, and Ray Kurzweil; images from several films, an old television commercial; and classical and contemporary music. "Understanding the Power of One" features fiction by Victor Hugo and Lori Halse Anderson; nonfiction by Phillis Wheatley, Sojourner Truth, and Edith Hamilton; a young adult book on archaeology, an animated film from Walt Disney, and an episode from Saturday Night Live. An extensive list of free resources and correlations to the Common Core allow teachers to "teach on the cheap." Teaching Difficult Texts brims with "relevant and robust" lessons for a new generation.

In their lively and engaging edition of this sometimes neglected early play, Cox and Rasmussen make a strong claim for it as a remarkable work, revealing a confidence and sureness that very few earlier plays can rival. They show how the young Shakespeare, working closely from his chronicle sources, nevertheless freely shaped his complex material to make it both theatrically effective and poetically innovative. The resulting work creates, in Queen Margaret, one of Shakespeareas strongest female roles and is the source of the popular view of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick as akingmakera. Focusing on the history of the play both in terms of both performance and criticism, the editors open it to a wide and challenging variety of interpretative and editorial paradigms.

Teaching Caribbean Poetry will inform and inspire readers with a love for, and understanding of, the dynamic world of Caribbean poetry. This unique volume sets out to enable secondary English teachers and their students to engage with a wide range of poetry, past and present; to understand how histories of the Caribbean underpin the poetry and relate to its interpretation; and to explore how Caribbean poetry connects with environmental issues. Written by literary experts with extensive classroom experience, this lively and accessible book is immersed in classroom practice, and examines: * popular aspects of Caribbean poetry, such as performance poetry; * different forms of Caribbean language; * the relationship between music and poetry; * new voices, as well as well-known and distinguished poets, including John Agard (winner of the Queen's Medal for Poetry, 2012), Kamau Brathwaite, Lorna Goodison, Olive Senior and Derek Walcott; * the crucial themes within Caribbean poetry such as inequality, injustice, racism, 'othering', hybridity, diaspora and migration; * the place of Caribbean poetry on the GCSE/CSEC and CAPE syllabi, covering appropriate themes, poetic forms and poets for exam purposes. Throughout this absorbing book, the authors aim to combat the widespread 'fear' of teaching poetry, enabling teachers to teach it with confidence and enthusiasm and helping students to experience the rewards of listening to, reading, interpreting, performing and writing Caribbean poetry.

Arts Integration and Young Adult Literature: Strategies to Enhance Academic Skills and Empower Student Voice combines two research-based concepts, arts integration and the use of young adult literature, to provide activities and instructional strategies to boost students' communication, reading, and thinking skills, while utilizing a variety of art integrated methods with a diverse range of young adult literature to enable high school literacy teachers to harmonize art and young adult literature into their curriculum

Exam Board: AQA Level & Subject: GCSE English Language, GCSE English Literature First teaching: September 2015 Next exams: June 2023 AQA approved Teach AQA's GCSEs in English Literature and English Language as one coherent course with Student Books that help students to build and apply the skills that underpin both qualifications. Offer your students the right level of challenge. The Core Student Book provides an excellent foundation in the skills and knowledge required for both courses. Help all students make good progress. Each chapter follows the hierarchy of skills and knowledge in the mark schemes, so students have a clear sequence of learning. End-of-chapter 'Apply your skills' practice tasks, annotated answers and self-assessment guidance helps students understand how to improve their work. Get to grips with the new specifications with expert suggestions from leading professionals as to how you could plan and teach the course. Our practical, ready-made resources can be used in your first years of teaching the specifications, and edited and adapted to your requirements. Save time updating your English Language resources with our comprehensive selection of passages from nineteenth- to twenty-first century literature and literary non-fiction, perfect for building students' confidence in tackling unseen texts. Engage all learners with a rich and exciting approach to English Literature that takes students step-by-step through the fundamentals of how to analyse, interpret and write critically about literature to provide a starting point for your own in-depth exploration of your chosen set texts.

This book takes a fresh look at secondary urban English classrooms and at what happens when students and their teachers explore literature collaboratively. By closely examining what happens in English lessons, minute by minute, it reveals how literary texts function not as a valorised heritage to be transmitted, but as a resource for the students' work of cultural production and contestation. The reading that is undertaken in classrooms has tended to be construed as either a poor substitute or merely a preparation for other reading, particularly for that paradigmatic literacy event, the absorbed and simultaneously discriminating consumption of the literary text by the independent, private reader. This book argues for a different understanding of what constitutes reading, an understanding that is informed by historical and ethnographic perspectives and by psychological and semiotic theory. It presents the case for a conception of reading as an active, collaborative process of meaning-making and for a fully social model of learning. Drawing extensively on data gathered through classroom observation and filming of English lessons taught over the course of a year by two teachers in a London secondary school, the book explores students' engagement with literary texts and the pedagogy that facilitates this engagement. The book offers new insights into reading, and reading literature in particular. It challenges the paradigm of reading that is offered in government policy and the assumption, common to much work within the field of 'new literacies', that 'schooled literacy' is the already-known, the default, against which the alternative literacy practices of homes and communities can be defined. It will be valuable reading for researchers, teachers, teacher educators and postgraduate students, and will have particular appeal for those with an interest in the fields of English studies and literacy.

Each of the 12 extracts from contemporary children's literature is accompanied by eight sets of questions based on the Key Stage 2 (KS2) Reading Content Domains and National Curriculum. This book provides opportunities to tackle more complex vocabulary, explore how authors use language to impact their readers and develop endurance for longer passages. The clear structure and the author's passion for literature make Developing Reading Comprehension Skills Years 3-4: Contemporary Children's Literature invaluable for everyone working with pupils in Years 3 and 4. Support for teachers and parents is built in with guidance for how to teach the different question types, plus suggestions for embedding these texts in the wider English curriculum. This series is suitable for new and recently qualified teachers as well as those who are more experienced and wanting to expand the range of texts they use. If you're looking for a comprehensive resource to enhance reading provision and teaching in your classroom or to support home education, this is exactly what you need. Look for other books in the Developing Reading Comprehension Skills series.

What do students think about Shakespeare? Classic, timeless and full of rich ideas; or difficult, impenetrable and completely uninteresting? We want young people to develop a real interest in Shakespeare, based on their understanding and engagement with the texts. A meaningful classroom discussion that enables every individual to contribute and covers a range of viewpoints, can help students' understanding of Shakespeare's plays, consolidate their learning, and increase their motivation. This highly practical book enables teachers to organise, stimulate and support group discussions that will help students to relate to the characters, and develop their own ideas about the language and meaning. Drawing on four of the most commonly taught Shakespeare plays, the book provides a broad range of exciting tried and tested resources, taking the reader through key parts of the text, along with suggestions for further activities involving writing, drama and electronic media. Features include: -Scene by scene Talking Points for each play -'Thinking Together' extension activities for group work -Guidance on developing your own Talking Points -Talking Points focusing on Shakespeare's language use Offering an accessible, thought-provoking and above all enjoyable way for students to engage with Shakespeare's plays, this book will be highly beneficial reading for English teachers and trainees.

George Mackay Brown's sparkling, fable-like novel Greenvoe depicts the sudden, destructive intrusion of brute modernity into a tight-knit and unchanging community, as witnessed by an eclectic host of local characters. Alan MacGillivray's SCOTNOTE study guide carefully traces Greenvoe's narrative threads and is an excellent resource for senior school pupils and students.

This major new edition of Shakespeare's greatest tragedy of love argues that that play is ultimately Juliet's. The play text is expertly edited and the on-page commentary notes discuss issues of staging, theme, meaning and Shakespeare's use of his sources to give the reader deep and engaging insights into the play. The richly illustrated introduction looks at the play's exceptionally beautiful and complex language and focuses on the figure of Juliet as being at its centre. Rene Weis discusses the play's critical, stage and film history, including West Side Story and Baz Luhrmann's seminal film Romeo + Juliet. This is an authoritative edition from a leading scholar, giving the reader a penetrating and wide-ranging insight into this ever popular play.

Like every other play in the Cambridge School Shakespeare series, Antony and Cleopatra has been specially prepared to help all students in schools and colleges. This version aims to be different from other editions of the play. It invites you to bring the play to life in your classroom through enjoyable activities that will help increase your understanding. You are encourage to make up your own mind about the play, rather than have someone else's interpretation handed down to you. Whatever you do, remember that Shakespeare wrote his plays to be acted, watched and enjoyed.

'This book is clear, approachable, and true. The elegant simplicity of its good guidance is the product of years of practical experience in the classroom. I wholeheartedly commend it to primary school teachers everywhere.'

Michael Boyd, Artistic Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company

Shakespeare s plays are widely regarded as the greatest inheritance in English literature and recent years have seen a growing interest in introducing them to children in their primary schools. In this book, the authors bring a blend of clear thinking, playful and inventive practice and straightforward practical advice to bear on teaching Shakespeare in the primary school.

Children who encounter Shakespeare early have the opportunity to become comfortable with the plays, their stories, characters and settings, long before they might become intimidated by their associations with exclusivity and high culture. They are also given the chance to become familiar with and absorb his powerful and complex language at a stage when they are constantly encountering new vocabulary. To do this most effectively demands a dynamic pedagogy, one which recognises that the plays are best explored and understood through active, physical engagement.

Beginning Shakespeare 4-11 offers a sound rationale for teaching Shakespeare in primary schools and shows how to engage children with Shakespeare through story, through the very best of early years practice, and through his rich and sensual language. It also illustrates how engagement with the plays and their language can have a dramatic impact on children s writing. And because plays are for performing, there is helpful and practical advice on how to develop the work and share it with the whole school, parents and the wider community.

This accessible and comprehensive guide is ideal for teacher trainees and practising primary teachers everywhere.

The standard analytical approach to teaching Shakespeare does not tend to help students understand the theatricality of the Bard's plays and can leave them with an overly dry, disconnected view of Shakespeare. Designed to address this problem, Holistic Shakespeare combines analysis with creative learning methods. Holistic Shakespeare acts as a guide for teachers as well as enabling students to feel as if they are in the stands of the Globe Theatre actually watching the play. This book is designed to explain the methodologies and values of the holistic educational model, which is directed toward whole-brain, integrated and experiential learning that motivates students to think deeply about the interlinks between what they learn in the classroom and the significant moral and ethical questions that impact their everyday lives. Further, in the holistic Shakespeare classroom, application of these foundational concepts opens up a fertile pathway that leads students toward a more intimate understanding of how Shakespeare thought - about himself, his relationships and his environment. In holistic education, WHOLENESS (or holism) describes an integrated curricular approach that places value on the complete learner and cultivates every student's unique potential to become active, thinking and caring contributors to the larger world. Holistic Shakespeare embraces the text's definitive status as a theatrical script, making performance-based activities an indispensable instructional tool. Like the exciting creative buzz that pervades the rehearsal room, the holistic learning environment is active, process-oriented, cooperative and exploratory, which restores true ownership of the educational journey to the place where it belongs - in the hands of the student. Performance-based teaching has reinvigorated the Shakespeare classroom in recent decades.

This series of unabridged Shakespeare titles is based on the premise that students can reach a clear understanding of their work only through a close and careful reading of the text. The commentary facing each page of the text has been designed to suggest a critical interpretation of the play.

A hundred short monologs for teenage performers capture the problems and joys of the teenage years.

Murder most foul... An action-packed retelling of Shakespeare's dark tale of revenge and murder. With notes on Shakespeare and the Globe theatre and Love and Death in Anthony and Cleopatra. The tales have been retold using accessible language and with the help of Tony Ross's engaging black-and-white illustrations, each play is vividly brought to life allowing these culturally enriching stories to be shared with as wide an audience as possible. Have you read all of The Shakespeare Stories books? Available in this series: A Midsummer Night's Dream, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest, Hamlet, Twelfth Night, Antony and Cleopatra, Much Ado About Nothing, The Merchant of Venice, Henry V, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, Othello, The Taming of the Shrew, Richard III, and King Lear.

For use in schools and libraries only. Offers explanatory notes on pages facing the text of the play, as well as an introduction to Shakespeare's language, life, and the theater.

No parent, teacher or nursery group should be without this classic treasury. There are songs, rhymes and games for every occasion, all chosen for their proven popularity with young children. Collected from all over Britain, the contents reflect the cultural diversity of the nation, making it an outstandingly rich and stimulating collection. Since the first edition of This Little Puffin was published over thirty years ago, it has been revised and updated, allowing it to remain the most invaluable book of its kind.

'By far the best edition of King Lear - in respect of both textual and other matters - that we now have.' John Lyon, English Language Notes 'This volume is a treasure-trove of precise information and stimulating comments on practically every aspect of the Lear-universe. I know of no other edition which I would recommend with such confidence: to students, professional colleagues and also the 'educated public'.' Dieter Mehl, Shakespeare Jahrbuch, vol 134

An engaging classroom playscript. In 1692, 19 people were executed for witchcraft and the whole village was engulfed in fear. But what actually happened in Salem? This play re-tells the Witch Trials by combining historical evidence with a healthy dose of imagination, and exploring the build-up of hysteria in the village. It covers important issues of prejudice and peer pressure, gang mentality, suspicion and fear. A more accessible version of events, Salem is ideal for preparation work for The Crucible. It also acts as an interesting comparison text to Miller's play, placing emphasis on different events and characters. New, innovative activities specifically tailored to support the KS3 Framework for Teaching English and help students to fulfil the Framework objectives. Activities include work on Speaking and Listening, close text analysis, and the structure of playscripts, and act as a springboard for personal writing.

An improved, larger-format edition of the Cambridge School Shakespeare plays, extensively rewritten, expanded and produced in an attractive new design. An active approach to classroom Shakespeare enables students to inhabit Shakespeare's imaginative world in accessible and creative ways. Students are encouraged to share Shakespeare's love of language, interest in character and sense of theatre. Substantially revised and extended in full colour, classroom activities are thematically organised in distinctive 'Stagecraft', 'Write about it', 'Language in the play', 'Characters' and 'Themes' features. Extended glossaries are aligned with the play text for easy reference. Expanded endnotes include extensive essay-writing guidance for 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' and Shakespeare. Includes rich, exciting colour photos of performances of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' from around the world.

This superb edition of Othello for South African learners gives you all that you need for success in tests and exams.

Features:

• the full text of the play with clear notes and illustrations alongside it
• an introduction to the background and themes
• a short, fascinating account of Shakespeare and his times
• a glossary of literary terms that are invaluable for interpreting and answering questions well
• a very clear plot summary
• excellent notes on the characters
• exam-style questions, with suggested answers, plus guidance on answering essay questions well
• ideas for further activities linked to the curriculum

King Henry VIII has one of the fullest theatrical histories of any play in the Shakespeare canon, yet has been consistently misrepresented, both in performance and in criticism. This edition offers a new perspective on this ironic, multi-layered, collaborative play, revealing it as a complex meditation on the progress of Reformation which sees English life since Henry VIII's day as a series of bewildering changes in national and personal allegiance and represents 'history' as the product of varied and contradictory testimony. McMullan makes a powerful claim for the rehabilitation of Henry VIII, providing the fullest performance history of any edition to date and reading the work not as a marginal 'late' Shakespeare play but as a play which is paradigmatic of the achievement of Renaissance drama as a whole.