Shakespeare’s Midsummer in December

This free interactive virtual session uses Folger Method Essential Practices to bring the comedy, confusion, and theatrical energy of A Midsummer Night’s Dream into the classroom.

With four lovers, a troupe of amateur actors, a feuding fairy king and queen, and more than a little magic, the play can feel overly complicated for students before they have a chance to discover how much fun it is. This session offers practical ways to help students see the whole story, get students speaking Shakespeare’s language, and discover the play’s humor, energy, and possibilities.

In this session, you’ll experience, and leave ready to use, three adaptable activities for teaching A Midsummer Night’s Dream:

• Get the whole play on its feet with a 20-Minute Play. Experience a fast-moving, highly participatory version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream that gives students the architecture of the entire play before they dig into individual scenes. We will explore how knowing where the story is going can free students to focus less on keeping track of the plot and more on character, language, and interpretation.
• Play with tone and stress. Invite students to speak Shakespeare’s words and experiment with how changes in emphasis, tone, pace, and delivery can transform the meaning of a line. Participants will explore how this low-stakes language work helps students see that Shakespeare’s text is full of possibilities rather than a single correct way to read or perform it.
• Build meaning through choral reading. Take up key passages as a group, using repetition, shared voices, and different arrangements of the language to make meaning together. We will consider how choral reading can help students hear patterns, uncover important ideas, and experience the sheer pleasure and musicality of Shakespeare’s language.

Come ready to read, speak, move, and play. You’ll leave with classroom-ready strategies for helping students find their way into Midsummer and make the play their own.

This session will be led by Casey York, who currently teaches 9th grade English, leads the English department, and serves as the instructional lead teacher at High Point High School in Beltsville, Maryland.