Become a Teacher Member and get access to Folger Teaching, the online home for Teacher Members of the Folger Shakespeare Library.
Explore this free selection of teaching modules, lessons that help every single student unlock a range of texts.
As you try these out in class, ask yourself:
- Are all students speaking the language of the text?
- Are all students collaborating and creating with one another and the text?
- Has the voice of every student been included, honored, and amplified?
- Have students bravely and respectfully confronted the tough issues (identity, difference, power) raised by the text?
- Did I, the teacher, get out of the way?
For even more classroom resources and professional development, become a Teacher Member today and gain exclusive access to Folger Teaching, our online universe just for teachers.
For a $40 tax-deductible contribution to the nonprofit Folger Library, you'll enjoy all the benefits of Teacher Membership, including full access to everything on Folger Teaching. Your school may even cover the $40 donation. Use this template letter to help make the case to your administration.
Interested in Folger Teaching but not yet ready to take the plunge? Try out the free lessons shared below.
A Sampling of Folger Lessons
Special Teaching Materials for Right Now
Play-Specific Teaching Modules
Hamlet
- “To be or not to be”: Close Reading Hamlet’s Soliloquy
- Enter Players: Pre-reading Hamlet
- Performing Spoken and Silent Moments in Hamlet
- Paparazzi Shakespeare
Julius Caesar
- Ambiguity in Iambic Pentameter
- Close Reading the Conspiracy
- Cutting Antony's Speeches
- PRIMARY SOURCE SPOTLIGHT: Plutarch’s Lives of Noble Grecians and Romans
- Silent Caesar Scenes
Macbeth
- Macbeth and a Nonfiction Source
- PRIMARY SOURCE SPOTLIGHT: Holinshed’s Chronicles
- What's Up with the Crime Scene?
- Macbeth: “What are these…?”
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Romeo and Juliet
Twelfth Night
Other Lesson Plans
Sonnets
- Close Reading Shakespeare's Sonnets
- Easing into Shakespeare with a Modern Sonnet
- Petrarch, Father of the Sonnet
- Shakespeare's Sisters and Modern Sonnets
- Shakespeare's Sonnet 138: A Close Reading Module
- Sonnet Performances: Shakespeare's Sonnets as Scripts
- Spenser, Shakespeare, and the Blazon
- The English Sonnet: Michael Drayton
- Writing a Group Sonnet
Any Play
Other Texts
The Folger Method gets all students unlocking all kinds of texts, not just Shakespeare.
Become a Teacher Member and get access to Folger Teaching, the online home for Teacher Members of the Folger Shakespeare Library.