Shakespeare

Can Shakespeare’s Henry V be done in 30 tweets? #ShakesTweet

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Fellow blogger and Shakespeare fan, Alan Peat, (@alanpeat) was a bit bored one day and decided for his 50th birthday to tweet all of Shakespeare’s plays in 50 tweets or less (not in one day, cuz, that’d be a bit crazy).  So, he knocked out his first “Shakestweet”, Henry V.

twitterThat leads to my thoughts on another Shakespeare lesson plan, the ShakesTweet.  What a great way to engage technology with Shakespeare.  As I’ve said before, probably half your kids already have a twitter account, and what a great way to get the basic storyline across?  140 characters can actually go a long way.

When I write my books, I start by making the play as short as possible, with as few characters as possible.  Only then do I have the basic core of the story, the frame.  From that frame, I can scaffold on more characters, details, and subplots of the play that I deem fit for the kids and the level of melodramatic nonsense I want to incorporate.  (It’s pretty fun!)  I’m no Shakespeare aficionado, I just love engaging kids and seeing them grow from learning through excitement and passion.

So, get your kids engaged with the ShakesTweet lesson plan, and be sure to mention me in the process, so I can follow along: @Shakespeare4kid #ShakesTweet

See you in the matrix…

Brendan

Can Shakespeare’s Henry V be done in 30 tweets? #ShakesTweet was originally published on Shakespeare for Kids Books

Violence, Kids, and Shakespeare – It’s all good…

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I was chatting with another mom the other day about telling bedtime stories to kids. Her five-year-old son had asked her to tell him a story about knights with swords. Before she knew it, she found she was telling him the story of Hamlet. She went on to describe the panic she felt when she realized that there was a lot about Hamlet that maybe wasn’t so child-friendly. Infidelity? Check. Insanity? Check. Fighting, poison, murder? Check. Check. Check. So, that raises the question: how appropriate are Shakespeare’s plays for kids, anyway?

If you’ve ever taught our plays, you’ll notice that kids go crazy over death scenes. They love swordplay and dying as dramatically as possible onstage. So…is this something parents should be worried about? (Now mind you, we DON’T do Titus, so don’t worry about that!)

Turns out there is a lot of research about video game violence and kids, but not so much about “playing with swords” or “kids playing murderous villains.”

Lisa Zamosky’s article on WebMD has this to offer about kids playing violent games:

“Play has been linked to social and cognitive development. Through imaginary games, children learn how to control impulses, delay gratification, think symbolically, and view things from another’s perspective. Play also allows children to act out their fears and aspirations.”

I also ran across a lovely article written by Janet Field-Pickering, who is the Head of Education at the Folger Shakespeare Library. Although she was addressing exposing children to the language of Shakespeare, not the violence, I thought her sentiment was fitting:

“Children learn through playing. They learn how to interact with other people; they learn to collaborate; they learn to express themselves through language and movement.”

The key word in both of the quotes above is ‘play.’ Don’t forget, they are reading and performing ‘plays.’

Do kids need to be exposed to all of humanity’s darkness? No, of course not. Do we put in every mention of sex, drugs and rock and roll, er, I mean Baroque, mentioned in these plays? Nope. Actually, we do gloss over much of the more adult situations in the stories, not only for propriety’s sake but for time’s sake as well.

The bottom line is that kids are smart. They understand that it’s make-believe. They get that all the dying and murder and violence is part of the story, and by acting these things out, they are learning to make sense (or make fun) of the world around them…both the world on the page and the world beneath their feet.

Violence, Kids, and Shakespeare – It’s all good… was originally published on Shakespeare for Kids Books

Lesson idea: Kids take over Shakespeare’s Home

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What a great “day in the life” experience!  Being a kid and working at Shakespeare’s home for the day!!!  I recently came across this a great little article out of the UK about some kids learning about the world of “work and decision making”.  But, what really hit my mind, was that they were in charge…

Lesson idea: Kids take over Shakespeare’s Home was originally published on Shakespeare for Kids Books

The Lulu App: Engaging Teens and Rating #ShakespeareMen

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I recently came across a post about an app called Lulu.  Now, mind you this is not an app for kids or Shakespeare for kids, yet, I’m thinking of this as much more for getting teenagers engaged with Shakespeare.  While reading the article about Lulu and Shakespeare’s male characters, which I thought was pretty funny (mind you, it’s not much of an “article” as it is a list of statements about Shakespeare’s male characters) it got me lulu-logothinking about being in high school again. (Actually, I hated high school and the simple thought of high school actually made me want to punch a wall, but, I will save that thought for my shrink…)  So, knowing this thought, I figured that Lulu might be a great avenue to engage teens with Shakespeare.  It’s got the perfect mix: Twitter, technology, smartphones, boys and girls, sex, and Shakespeare.  Yes, I said Shakespeare (hell, if any of you know Shakespeare at all, it’s all about boys, girls, and sex… why teenagers don’t like him for these very reasons, I don’t quite understand…yet, I tangent again…).  So, if we want to get these hormone crazed young adults hooked into something exciting, let them do a project with Lulu and Shakespeare…. which leads me to the article I came across.

The original article is here by Caitlin Kelly.  You really need to read it yourself to get the full enjoyment out of it. (again, it’s not much of a “read” as it is a bunch of one liners, but the teens, well, they’ll get it).  A description from the NY Times article about Lulu:

On Lulu, women can rate men in categories.… The hashtags are used to calculate a score generated by Lulu, ranging from 1 to 10.

Well, Caitlin goes on to show a few hashtags about some of Shakespeare’s more prominent males: Romeo, Hamlet, Macbeth, and a few more.  Below is a list of hashtags and men.  See if you can connect them to the correct male…

Romeo
Hamlet
Macbeth
Puck
Petruchio

#Man’sMan
#MakesMeLaugh
#ObsessedWithHisMom
#Unicorn
#CrayCray

 

 

 

 

Now that was fun… but, onto the potential lesson plan…if you haven’t already thought of it yourself.  Have your kids go on the Lulu app and start putting in the different Shakespeare male characters and see what they start getting back.  It will enlighten them on what a diverse array of characters Shakespeare created in a language that they understand. (I mean, who says “craycray” anyway if your over 17 years of age, right?)

So, now let’s get to Twitter.  I’m on twitter all the time, mainly to meet other people who teach Shakespeare and want to get kids more involved with him.   So, one of the keywords I search for is “teach Shakespeare”, makes sense, right?  By doing that, I see ALOT of teens tweeting about how Shakespeare has ruined their life or wasted their time, or how Eminem should be taught instead of Shakespeare because that’s “someone I can actually understand and relate to”.  And I’m leaving out all of the colorful f-bombs that these kids drop on the Bard for the sake that this is a family blog!  But, the point is, the kids use this forum to vent about Shakespeare, so, let’s turn the tables and have the kids use twitter to brag about him…At this point, have them tweet a description of a male character to all their friends, classmates, teachers, whatever… (I’m also assuming, by this time in their life, they are well into using twitter anyway and are probably sitting in your class right now doing just that very thing!)

The point is, we have tied in teens, tweets, and education about Shakespeare’s male characters in one fell swoop… should be fun!  I would love to hear if someone actually engages this idea in a class and how it goes.  If you do, have them tweet me their messages: @Shakespeare4kid

Till the next time…

Brendan

The Lulu App: Engaging Teens and Rating #ShakespeareMen was originally published on Shakespeare for Kids Books