Romeo & Juliet

Romeo and Juliet is one of the first plays that I have ever been introduced to. It’s a classic tale of star-crossed lovers (not Starbucks lovers as Taylor Swift might have you think) who both die at the end because of their families’ feud. Although, it’s not my favorite play it does have a lot of great uses in the classroom. Dramatic structure is the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about lesson plans for the play. Teaching students about rising action, falling action, climax, resolution and the other terms for dramatic structure would be something easy to do.

                When I was in high school my favorite activity that we did when we were learning about Romeo and Juliet was recreating a scene in my class. We were each assigned groups and we reenacted a scene of the play. It was quite fun and it helped my comprehension of the play.  I also think it would be fun to do a critical analysis about how the characters are portrayed across different versions of the film. It would be fun to compare and contrast the difference between Leo’s Romeo and the Romeo of the 2013 version of the movie.

                Shakespeare has such a huge impact on literature. It would be fun to do a unit on Romeo and Juliet but also just Shakespeare in general to help students understand the cultural impact that this one man made. Romeo and Juliet also makes use of different literary techniques like Irony and Puns making it easy to teach students about these as they go through the play.  Overall, I think this play should be taught and I hope to one day teach it in my classroom.