How Do You Teach Shakespeare To Children?
Are your babies ready to do battle with the Bard? Alliteration aside, here are the four basic steps to keeping Shakespeare so simple that a child can do it. Read it aloud. Kids pick up so much more than adults think they do. If you understand Shakespeare, one of the best things you can do is to read it out loud in front of the children you’re teaching. They will pick up easily on subtle nuances you naturally add and your understanding will only serve to emphasize and heighten their own. Define it. Once you’ve read it aloud and they’ve read it aloud, skip straight ahead to doing definitions. Make sure to keep in mind that Shakespeare was writing four hundred years ago, so some of the references will be a little bit different; use context clues to solidify any definitions you’re still not sure of. Have your kids make a list so that later on they can reference what they’ve already done should a word or phrase repeat itself at another point in the play. Break it down. Now you’ve got contem
