Celebrate Shakespeare’s birthday in April or… any time of the year!

Collaborations between the Opening Doors team and our network of schools has truly flourished recently. Educators who have found their feet, strength and courage after the disruptions of the pandemic are working with purpose and energy to nurture young people’s reading into writing in ways that support creative composition and technical control and accuracy. These goals need not be in opposition. We always lean into rich and complex texts that grow language and thinking. We celebrate the ‘old and gold and new and bold’ to borrow a phrase from Teresa Cremin. We have not before now as a team dipped our toe into Shakespeare, since he is often already well served by agencies like the wonderful education departments at The Globe, The RSC, Poetry by Heart and The English and Media Centre. However, when we were last together as a team in March, Angela Jenkins reminded us April is the month of Shakespeare’s birth (and death) and could we, should we support schools to open doors into Shakespeare through, talk, thinking, reading, writing with our usual balance of focused language exploration and creative outcomes.

So I made the time!

With huge thanks to the team work and patience of Lucy Delbridge and the team at Crown House, you can download this FREE lesson sequence that aims to support teachers to bring alive the famous ‘All the world’s a stage…’ speech from the play ‘As you Like It.’

Is this view of the 7 ages of man as you like it or not? Your students get to explore and decide!

Probably best suited to upper KS2 and early KS3 classes- with lots of suggestions on how to scaffold and adapt through the commentary.

Enjoy! Do get in touch with any feedback and examples of young people’s writing outcomes, or if you wish to know more about Opening Doors to ambitious English for all.

Download here