Introducing Shakespeare: Minimal Context, Maximum Content

Teachers, join us for this interactive virtual session focusing on strategies to help students enter Shakespeare’s plays through action, choice, and shared meaning-making from the very first moments of a unit. Rather than frontloading background information, the session centers on approaches that invite students to discover meaning by speaking Shakespeare’s language aloud. 

In this one-hour session we’ll focus on getting a play started using three Folger Essential Practices. 

Meaning Through Voice. Explore Tone & Stress as tools for interpretation with lines from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. By asking students to make and revise vocal choices, teachers can help them surface emotion, relationships, and stakes while building confidence and agency. Speaking becomes a way of thinking and testing ideas, not a performance to get right.  

Purposeful Context. Experience a powerful context lesson that is featured in each of the Folger Guide to Teaching editions that reframes background knowledge as a response to student curiosity. Consider how to offer just enough context to deepen inquiry while keeping students actively engaged with the text. 

From Language to Action. Close with a focused look at an action-packed opening scene, Julius Caesar 1.1, using the 3D Lit strategy that combines close reading with a performance-based approach. Explore how movement, proximity, and physical choices help students track power, relationships, and urgency, turning confusion into collaborative discovery.