Response to "Romeo & Juliet"

William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet is a bit different than the other texts that we have read in this class. Its most importance difference: if I end up teaching freshman ELA, it is not a question of if I will teach Romeo & Juliet, but a question of how. Virtually every freshmen ELA class in the country teaches this play and chances are that I will teach it too.

So, how would I teach Romeo & Juliet? The first important thing to realize is that I need to meet the students at their level and teach to that. I love Shakespeare. I find Elizabethan England fascinating. I loved English 350 (Shakespeare with Dr. Smith) and learning about previous works that Shakespeare's plays are often directly based on, how words were pronounced in Elizabethan England, etc. All of this context is fascinating, and high school freshmen don't need to know about almost any of it. In fact, it could be detrimental to their learning if I bring in tangents that I personally love when they themselves are struggling with the basic text, still learning about plot development and character development, etc. Romeo & Juliet is mainly a text to introduce students to for its difficulty and plot development. It is a good introductory piece to Shakespeare, arguably the greatest and most influential writer ever in the English language.

The great emphasis of a unit on Romeo & Juliet would be text comprehension. This could be the first truly difficult text that students encounter. When a large swath of freshmen ELA classes are below reading level, this creates serious challenges. First and foremost, this play will be read entirely in the classroom. Comprehension will have to be checked after every scene and after every act. Teaching students how to read a difficult text like this--how to comprehend a text like this--is the challenge. Some of Tovani's strategies can be useful with this text->making predictions, defining words (thankfully almost all Shakespeare editions have a list of defined terms at the bottom of every page for words that have dropped out of usage), visualizing what is happening, etc. This includes characters, characterization, plot and plot development. Having students understand and comprehend the basics from this text is the goal with a unit on Romeo & Juliet.

In addition to what I typed above, Romeo & Juliet does provide other teaching opportunities. If the curriculum calls for poetry, it could be good to teach poetry basics prior to reading Romeo & Juliet. I could end the poetry unit with a couple lessons on sonnets too. Since Romeo & Juliet begins with a sonnet and includes at least one other sonnet, in addition to poetry, the chance for student comprehension is instantly increased. The chance for student retention of knowledge is increased too as students will apply recently learned knowledge on poetry and sonnets. There would probably be an element of writing involved with Romeo & Juliet. It may be profitable for student learning to teach the Jane Schaffer essay style (or a district appropriate ninth grade essay style) and have students write an essay at the end of the unit on Romeo & Juliet too.