At myShakespeare, we aim to provide the most robust multimedia digital Shakespeare textbook available. While we frequently hear from teachers expressing their love of our tools and resources, we sometimes get curious about how unique classrooms are utilizing myShakespeare to best suit their specific needs. We reached out to our users asking for lesson plan ideas and instructional anecdotes that explain how myShakespeare has changed the way they teach–and they delivered!
If you are new to myShakespeare or still testing the waters in your classroom, we hope these insights will inspire you to make the most out of all we have to offer!
Performance and Classroom Theater
One clear stand-out among our teacher submissions was the ways in which teachers are utilizing our video performances and character interviews to inform and inspire performance-based activities in their classrooms. Grace B. shared that, following an intro-to-Shakespeare scavenger hunt, her classroom begins working through myShakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream while planning a
collaborative production. “We ‘audition’ roles, cast the show, and turn the desks into as much of a Globe Theatre as we can in a tiny classroom,” she explained. To help students study for their parts, Grace projects myShakespeare’s scene pages at the front of the classroom while learners follow along with a physical text. “We utilize the modern translations when we are feeling confused, we watch the videos, and we LOVE to learn about all the little nuances and hidden meanings in the language.” Similarly, Kirsten D. explains that her students find myShakespeare’s short performance clips both creative and digestible, inspiring classroom recreations of Macbeth’s cauldron scene where students are tasked with making the atmosphere of the classroom as spooky as possible with what they already have on hand.
Teachers find myShakespeare’s character interviews particularly helpful in building characterization in order to support student performance. Renata F. uses the performances and character interviews to inspire curiosity about Shakespeare’s other plays, in addition to the one her students are focusing on in class. “The group's task is understanding [one of the other plays featured on myShakespeare] and then to bring the characters to life. They dress up and tell their stories, sometimes reenacting an interview they have seen on myShakespeare.”
One exciting anecdote came from Adil H., a teacher in India who explained that they once found it nearly impossible to convince students that they could perform Shakespeare. “When I introduced them to myShakespeare,” Adil shared, ”I successfully got my students to enact the opening act from Hamlet. In fact, the students’ interest in the play was so piqued that we had a go at the act in our native language, Kashmiri.”
Reading Comprehension and Language Support
Another clear point of value among our users is the ways in which myShakespeare’s built-in supports have improved student comprehension and their ability to engage with Shakespeare’s language. Referring to our glossed definitions, modern English translations, and audio feature, Jason E. explains, “myShakespeare allows students to get help with decoding the language through the 'modern' words and vocabulary definitions. The spoken word aspect allows them to hear the play read professionally so they can emulate that when they have to perform a scene from the play in modern language.”
Rheanna C. sees myShakespeare’s many points of entry to the text as ideal for reaching diverse learners, writing, “Visual learners benefit from the videos, auditory learners from the read-aloud passages, and struggling readers from the summaries and rewritten passages that offer clarity without losing the richness of Shakespeare’s language.” She also finds that using myShakespeare to work through the intricacies of the text has vastly improved student confidence, adding, “Just simply having the text projected in front of them and asking them to find for examples of light metaphors in Romeo and Juliet's balcony scene makes them realize Shakespeare is understandable even if it's not everyday English.”
Maria T. shared that she has found myShakespeare’s offline resources valuable in aiding comprehension as well, saying, “Last year, I needed a printable version of Romeo and Juliet for a student's accommodation, so I reached out to myShakespeare because I wanted to use their version, as I like the way it's laid out and is so easy to read. [The print version] is helpful for students with different needs because the line numbers are visible and there are notes underneath hard-to-understand words. They got back to me very quickly with nice PDFs of the text, which I shared with other teachers who needed them. They were downloadable by scene and were accompanied by audio MP3s and versions in other languages. “
Analysis and Creative Extension
For teachers who wish to dive deeper into literary analysis or build a foundation for off-screen projects, myShakespeare’s tools provide endless instructional possibilities. Kirsten D. shared, “We have taken inspiration for some of our activities from the extra pieces that are included [on myShakespeare]! For example, [when] teaching Romeo and Juliet, I have the students choose a symbol and create their own advertisements for them.”
Many teachers also expressed how our site has helped them dive deeper into skill-building and analysis. Explaining that she stumbled 
upon myShakespeare as a tool for teaching remotely during the pandemic, Claire D. shared, “Once we returned to in-person learning, I continued to use myShakespeare in this way—as an aid for student comprehension—but I also began to experiment with screening some of the dramatic reenactments of key soliloquies and speeches as fodder for analysis of tone and mood (two literary devices with which students famously struggle). The concreteness of these videos and the skill of the actors really helped my learners grasp these essential literary devices. “
How are you using myShakespeare?
We are so grateful to the teachers who took the time to write in about their classroom experiences with myShakespeare. If you have additional insights or suggestions, we’d love to hear from you! You can write to us at info@myshakespeare.com to let us know which tools you find most valuable, how you are incorporating creative projects into your Shakespeare unit, or to share a complete lesson plan that utilizes some of our resources.
