Shakespeare Festival Lesson
All the School’s a Stage
A Shakespeare School Festival Chronicle by Althea Terenzi
Introduction
Shakespeare was born at a time in which the English language, fueled by the invention of the printing press, a growing middle class, and rising literacy rates, was undergoing a rebirth. Poets were the webmasters of their age. Our students have been born at a time when literacy is no longer a singular noun and STEM is an acronym first, a slender stalk second. In an age that prizes technology and the sciences and reframes literacy increasingly in the context of informational texts, Shakespeare’s wild web of words may seem irrelevant in our twenty-first century schools.
Enter English teacher Althea Terenzi with a script for a week-long school-wide celebration of William Shakespeare’s birthday, which falls by fortunate accident in National Poetry Month. Part lesson plans, part journal, this entry outlines the elements of a dynamic Shakespeare festival that can be replicated in your school. April is the coolest month.
Reading Shakespeare 
April 21, 2015 at 3:46 pm
[…] The author of Reading Shakespeare with Young Adults and Reading Shakespeare Film First has created the website Reading Shakespeare in the Twenty-First Century. Here visitors can connect, extend, update, and animate the ideas and materials in both books. Two resources to note are “The Shakespeare Conspiracy” and “The Shakespeare Schoolwide Festival.” […]