Welcome to Reading Shakespeare, a website constructed for teachers by teachers.

What do accomplished readers do to understand Shakespeare’s text? As classroom teachers, how can we guide our adolescent readers, novices all, to become more accomplished and potentially lifelong readers of Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets?

Our purpose at Reading Shakespeare is to explore these questions and to empower our students to read Shakespeare’s works with greater skill and engagement.

Our primary goal is to publish lessons tested in a variety of classroom settings— urban, suburban, and rural, remedial and advanced— that apply valid research on adolescent literacy to the teaching of Shakespeare, that include explicit reading strategy instruction, and that address the interdependent literacy strands of reading, writing, speaking, listening, and viewing.

Our secondary goal is to publish lessons that assimilate the ideas of Shakespearean scholars, incorporate the methods and materials of both fine and performing artists, and explore technology as a literacy tool.

In all of the work we share, we strive to recognize our students as readers, thinkers, collaborators, and creators.