3 songs to pair with Romeo and Juliet activity - two pages of a book fold to shape into a heart with a red background

3 Aligned Song Pairings for an Innovative Romeo and Juliet Activity

How do YOU introduce students to Romeo and Juliet? Are you looking for an engaging Romeo and Juliet activity to start, center, and end your unit? If you are like me–tired of fighting the never-ending battle of AirPods in my students’ ears–then, I have advice for you. Stop fighting it, and embrace it. Incorporate activities where students have the chance to analyze music. Using music will boost student engagement AND give you a much-needed break from pleading, “Put away your headphones!” It will also help demystify Shakespearean language and the stigma that all of his works are difficult, boring, or irrelevant to our students’ worlds. Use the 3 contemporary song pairings below to incorporate music when teaching Romeo and Juliet. Each diverse song is used as a Romeo and Juliet activity to start, center, and

Carina Assayed January 31, 2023

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Why I Love Reader’s Theatre in the ELA Classroom

Reader’s Theatre is a fun, low-stress way for students to learn about drama, practice public speaking, and embrace their creativity. What is Reader’s Theatre? Reader’s Theatre is the lowest-risk way you can bring drama into your ELA classroom. Students have the support of a script, but you encourage them to add vocal inflection and potentially some light blocking. You want to see some emergence of characterization and fluency. Reader’s Theatre, however, doesn’t have to be super-rehearsed. In my classroom, Reader’s Theatre replaces our in-class reading for that day. I try to choose scenes so that we have a mix of RT and reading/discussion days. If you want students to become super familiar with the script and have rehearsed blocking and even costumes, you’re in the realm of a Staged Reading. What does good Reader’s Theatre

Danielle Hall October 25, 2022

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Drama in the Classroom: Tips & Activities

Using theatre in Secondary ELA is a great way to build classroom community, increase public speaking skills, and get students to understand complex texts. Here are some ideas for how to introduce drama in the classroom, from quick, 5-minute games to a class play. Improv Games build public speaking skills In every English class I’ve ever taught, I’ve used improv games to help students build public speaking skills. When I taught ESL in Germany, my students LOVED telling wacky stories in games like “Story, Story, Die!” Here are two sets of improv ideas you can use in any class! Improv games are a great way to spend an extra five minutes or what’s left after a fire drill, so you should definitely have a few in your pocket. Halloween Themed Drama Games Drama in the

Danielle Hall November 30, 2021

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Halloween Themed Drama Games for the ELA Classroom

These Halloween themed drama games will help students flex their creative muscles & boost their public speaking skills, all while having fun. I’ve blogged about Halloween themed ELA activites before, but this year I wanted to focus games. Drama games and improv are a great way to boost student confidence and increase collaboration in your classroom. These Halloween themed drama games will give you those same benefits, while adding some seasonal flair! Drama is a great way to build public speaking skills, memory, and community in the classroom. I have used drama with grades K-12 in France, Germany, the US, and Puerto Rico, and students beg for more. Literally. After finals one year, I was planning to show a movie, and students asked to reprise some improv games instead. How cool is that? So, where

Danielle Hall October 5, 2021

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Teaching Shakespeare to ESL Students

My approach to teaching Shakespeare to ESL students will make it an engaging and accessible experience for teachers and students alike! Teaching Shakespeare to ESL students (English Language Learners/ELLs) is an important consideration, particularly if you’re working in a pull out model. If students are studying Shakespeare in their regular ELA classrooms, teaching Shakespeare to ESL students can level the cultural playing field. Now, I don’t think Shakespeare is the be-all, end-all of excellent writing. I’m not sure why students study a Shakespeare play every year of high school. However, I think that teaching the same thing to all students with appropriate academic support is the key to making all students feel like a community. Shakespeare isn’t something we should reserve for Honors students. Teaching Shakespeare to ESL students with appropriate supports is key to

Danielle Hall September 22, 2021

Teaching Shakespeare with David Rickert cover

Teaching Shakespeare: a Conversation with David Rickert

I love teaching Shakespeare, and I LOVE discovering new and innovative ways to engage students in the material. I’ve talked before about teaching Shakespeare’s language or using abridged versions for in-class productions. I’ve even shared how my 9th graders put on a full production for the middle school! Today, I’m so excited to share about one more way I get my students’ total buy-in – Shakespeare comics! – AND share a conversation with the comics’ creator, David Rickert. If you don’t know David yet, you are in for a treat! He’s an amazing artist with a keen sense of humor, and he has over twenty years of classroom experience. He’s also a kind and generous guy! We decided to swap some tips for teaching Shakespeare, so let’s get started. David’s Work

Danielle Hall March 5, 2019

5 Fun & Resourceful Tips for Teaching Shakespeare’s Language including Thou & You

Help students understand and engage with Shakespeare’s Language with these activities on vocabulary, grammar, and rhythm. 1. Thou & You: Rank and Emotion My students know well in advance that I love teaching Shakespeare and drama, so they’re a little surprised when they confront Shakespeare’s language. They always assume I’m some sort of super genius if I can possibly understand that. Who could possibly understand all of those thous and wherefores and yons? Well, I’m not a super genius, but I can teach my students a few tricks to help them feel like geniuses. One of the most important aspects of teaching Shakespeare’s language is helping students understand the meaning of thou and you. Analyzing the use of pronouns in a play can tell students a great deal about the status of characters and about

Danielle Hall September 10, 2018

Tips for Teaching Shakespeare

Teaching Shakespeare: Tips & Tricks Teaching Shakespeare can be a tricky prospect, but here are some tips to help you and your students get the most out of your unit. Students have very different reactions to Shakespeare based on their experiences and expectations. I want to advocate for teaching Shakespeare through performance, and I’ll be talking more about that in the next few weeks. Today, I want to talk about how to approach an unmarked script. If you give students any script outside of their literature anthology (like a play from my Shakespeare in 30 collection, for example), it’s likely going to be unmarked. This means that there likely won’t be any direction for staging or voice. This is one of the joys and challenges of teaching Shakespeare: it’s so versatile! Here

Danielle Hall February 23, 2018

The Team Behind Shakespeare in 30

Introducing Danielle & Michelle, Shakespeare in 30 Creators So, I recently worked with my friend Michelle to release a collection of plays to use in the ELA Classroom called Shakespeare in 30. Since we collaborated on this project, I thought I’d take the time to talk a bit about us and how we met. It’s weird for an introvert blogger to really talk about herself, versus talking about the thing she usually talks about, you know? But I figured I owed it to you to give you some background and let you know why we’re the experts we profess to be. About Me I developed a love of drama in middle school and cultivated my skills in high school in Oregon. I was lucky enough to attend a high school with a

Danielle Hall February 20, 2018

Staged Readings in ELA – A Play in 5 Days!

Using Staged Readings in ELA It’s no secret that I love using drama in the ELA classroom, and I’m here today to advocate for using more rehearsed, scripted drama as you teach English. Maybe you’ve avoided this because it has seemed overwhelming. Maybe you think you don’t have enough time. Well, friends, you do! This post will help you produce a play in five days. The answer is producing staged readings in ELA. I’ve written before about my experiences producing a class play. I talked about casting, rehearsing, and evaluating the experience. The whole thing took about six weeks, and it was AWESOME. I’ve also talked about using Improv and how that benefit almost any teaching unit. But what happens in between? What if you want to spend a week putting together a class

Danielle Hall February 6, 2018

It can be challenging to keep students focused and engaged before the Winter Break, but these five tips will help you succeed! Save yourself stress and fatigue and check out these tricks today. Blog post includes a holiday gift freebie!

5 Tips for Teaching before Winter Break

Tips to Save Your Sanity Before Winter Break Teaching in the weeks leading up to Winter Break can be a challenge, you can save your sanity by following a few key tips. It can be hard to keep students’ attention before the holidays: they’re tired, we’re tired, and we all just want to push through. Plus, with various “treats” throughout the day, students have a constant sugar high and can’t seem to focus. Here are some tips to help focus your classroom during the last couple of weeks before Winter Break. Do Short, Creative Projects I’ve found that students find it a lot easier to focus on creative, collaboration-based tasks in the last couple of weeks before break. During this time, I give students small partner or group projects that take a day or two

Danielle Hall December 9, 2016

Evaluating drama can be tricky, but in the ELA classroom, it's important to still hold students accountable. Here's how I assess a variety of skills. This is a mix of objective and subjective assessments every step of the way in the process of putting together a class play. This is applicable for every drama activity in the ELA classroom.

From Casting to Confidently Evaluating Drama in the ELA Classroom: An Actionable 5-step Guide on the Class Play

So, you’re considering doing a Class Play or you’ve started practices. Now, you’re wondering how evaluating drama will unfold. Or you’re wondering how to cast students or deal with irritation during rehearsals. This post breaks down the class play into 5 actionable categories to give you confidence in your drama unit! Drama in ELA: The Class Play In this series, I’m going to share my experiences integrating Drama in ELA and producing a class play with my 9th grade English class. Drama is so engaging for students, but is often put aside because it seems like a lot of work or doesn’t obviously correlate to higher test scores. In this series, I’ll show you that Drama in ELA is not only possible, but beneficial to all students. How to Set up and Cast the Play When I first

Danielle Hall August 16, 2016

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Drama Games for High School: 3 Easy Improv Games

Are you looking for ways to integrate drama games for high school? Get started with these three zero-prep improv games! Why drama games? I have loved drama since my 3rd-grade class got to be Arabian dancers in the school’s performance of “The Nutcracker”. When I was in middle and high school, I always wanted to do “acting” options for projects, sometimes asking my teachers ridiculous things like “can I show you the parts of the cell as an interpretive dance?” As a teacher, I seek to give my students the same opportunities. Drama in the ELA classroom is a great way to build public speaking skills, memory, and community. I have used drama with grades K-12 in France, Germany, the US, and Puerto Rico, and students beg for more. Literally. After finals one year, I

Danielle Hall February 21, 2016

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