Shakespeare isn't easy text to handle for a lot of native English speakers - what kind of text will you be using?

West Side Story might work just as well and has a similar story, being that it's a musical - the singing element might be nice.

I thought it might be too difficult, but I've seen lessons online and teachers sharing positive results from the lessons. I would have used a modern day interpretation, but I suppose that might still be too long and difficult.

I would really like them to do something with drama and role play and I feel that Disney material might be too juvenile for them to stay interested.

Perhaps I could do the class on poetry/songs/musicals? But in this case, I doubt the students would feel comfortable singing in class.

Also, the budget for this class is very high. I get 2,000,000 to use for this class and I would like to put that money into good use, preferably with them finishing the classes with a book of some sort.

I would appreciate some suggestions for the class. I now realize Romeo and Juliet was too ambitious.

I'd also just give googling "One Act Plays for High School" a shot. There are TONS of resources the Theater teaching community is HUGE.

I would lean toward something more contemporary anyway; I've never been a fan of Shakespeare to begin with. I don't berate the work, I would just never read it for pleasure or expect other people to do so. It's always a surprise to me when someone says, "I LOVE Shakespeare" and they're not already theater nuts.


I also second the use of poetry here. I'm doing it right now for an advanced class I teach and it's awesome for the following reasons:

1. SUPER accessible. A metric ass ton of free poems that span an INCREDIBLE range are available and searchable.
2. You teach GREAT English speaking and reading skills - analogy, metaphor, simile; English is a HIGHLY figurative language and this helps illustrate that
3. You can cover and incorporate historical and ethical talking points.
4. Studying scansion and meter can help build a more natural English speaking rhythm.

Right now, I'm covering analogy and I'm using Shel Silverstein's "Blue Skin" and it's working out pretty well.

As an example - here's what I've done so far with "Blue Skin" by Shel Silverstein.

I'll mention off the bat that the CT who sits in on this extra class with me is learning more English so they help out a lot; they are learning WITH the students. They just learn MUCH faster.

We open every class with new vocab words. I give them new words, define them, tell them whether they are an adjective, verb, or noun, and then use them in a sentence. Then we try to make a sentence with our new words. I always make the new words relevant to the subject matter.
So for this one, I used words like: truth,  belief,  believe , true , fear , hope , idea .

For period 1.

I introduce the idea of analogies by writing this on the board and asking them to fill in the blank:
bird : feather
head : hair
rabbit : _______

up: down
left: right
hot: __________
I just did a couple of analogy worksheets from here:

http://www.englishforeveryone.org/Topics/Analogies.htm

My high level students are comparably mid-level to other schools that I've seen and met, so starting out at a level 1 sheet and then doing 2 more from higher levels (maybe a 3 then a 5) will take about 30 minutes of my 40 that I have with them. - This includes of course, checking the answers and talking about why.

Then I showed  them this video here :
   - which got them into a line of abstract thinking and the visual analogies are in line with what we were doing on paper.

For period 2:
I opened with another PES video - the guacamole one; this one isn't as good because guacamole isn't really a staple of the Korean dining experience, but there was still enough to talk about.

Then we did 1 more of the analogy worksheets. -- I'll note here I don't expect them to MASTER it in 4 worksheets; native English speakers have trouble making proper analogies, I'm focusing here on getting them to think about word association and the figurative nature of language.

Then we read over Blue Skin. First they read it to themselves, then I read it aloud, then we do a listen and repeat, and then I throw concept questions at them and we reword it. The concept questions are important because the wording - while simple - is a little wonky; they're not used to the sentence structure I'm presenting them with, we reword it into a sentence pattern they know.
For example: "She had blue skin and so did he".
T: Who has blue skin?
S: She.
T: Who is she?
S: No name.
T: Ah, ok. So, it's a girl?
S: Yes.
T: Only a girl. Who has blue skin?
S: She and he.
T: Her and he? Her and him?
S: The girl and boy.
T: ok, great, so let's write, "She had blue skin and so did the boy." Or, "The girl and boy had blue skin." Is there another way?
S: The girl had blue skin. The boy had blue skin too.
T: Two sentences, that's ok.

So, we did the whole poem like that and then time was over.
The homework assignment is to make an analogy. Basically this is a fill in the blank exercise. I gave them 3 blanks:

Blue skin : _______________
Me: _____________

Mask : ________________
Me: __________________

the boy and girl : _______________
Me: __________________

I think this is really hard, so I only gave them 3. Period 3 is this Friday so we'll open by talking about their analogies. If they couldn't fill in any of the blanks, then I'm working on a list of words and possibilities for each one and they can choose from the list I give them and write their choice in.

EDITED: - here's my Blue Skin handout.

Some great ideas on here. I'd be interested to see how this goes for the OP. Good luck! Pighting!

Cool! Glad to see you're trying it out!!

My 6th graders had a little trouble turning their Korean ideas into English. They understand what the poem is saying, but they can only explore that idea in Korean. That's OK for me - I guess at 6th grade being able to explore ideas like empathy and being self conscious is a little daunting to do even in your native language.

I'm going to keep with the work of analogies and figurative speech but move into idioms and similes. Next week.

An idea I've been kicking around for a High School / Middle School camp is planning a real trip overseas.

I picked traveling from Korea to New York City - but you could do whatever.

Have the students use actual real websites, make a budget, research where they can go, what they can see / do - in a dream class, they would generate their own list of tourist questions, but you can provide those for them.

You could get subway maps and city maps and have them try to figure out how to get from their hotel to some attraction.

You could get restaurant menus from a place online and practice ordering.

This would last - I'd imagine - a great number of classes, and if your students are well behaved, it could be really laid back and conversation based.

This is pretty much the Inquiry Based Learning approach.

You could allow for smart phones. Maybe just 1 smart phone per group.

You could do as little or as much work as you liked. If you wanted to do a lot of work, you could find their hotels for them on a map and make a mini map for them.
Or you could have a total hands off approach and say, "This is what it's like in the real world!"

If you follow through - please let me know how it works out!

I'm in Elementary, so unless I'm asked to fill in somewhere or for someone, I don't think I'll get the chance to do this lesson anytime soon.

I started the NYC travel class this week and the students really enjoyed it. I showed a NYC tourism video first, then did a couple activities with worksheets, where the students had to find answers to questions I had asked them on the handout. They researched these questions on the internet (I had access to 4 computers and some students had cell phones) in groups of 3. They enjoyed doing the research, but I had to make sure they were using the websites I provided, otherwise they relied too much on naver or other Korean search sites. They answered the questions during class. Some questions I asked were: What are the two most popular musicals playing on Broadway? What are the names of 3 luxury hotels? What is the best place to get pizza? and so on.

For homework I asked them to choose a borough in NYC that they would like to plan their trip to and from the next class I will give them research-based tasks on their desired location. I will begin with choosing an airline and dates for their trip, as well as the first hotel they will stay at (price, location, etc.).

This is a really good lesson and actually exciting for me, too.

Once their entire trip is planned, each group will make a poster and present it to the class. I will see if I can use the budgeted money for this class to buy some pizza for the students, as well as maps, magazines and books, maybe even I Love NY t-shirts.


Thanks for the idea!