Macbeth: Shakespeare Book Club

Macbeth is Shakespeare's classic tale of betrayal. This stark and violent play is required reading for a lot of high school students. It is the perfect story for group discussion and analysis because Shakespeare's language and word choices can be hard to appreciate and understand when reading alone.  

Students will read one act a week on their own time. Each act contains 3-8 scenes. (Longer scenes will be broken into 2-3 smaller, more manageable chunks of reading.) A separate video will discuss each scene the student reads. I will also post a summary of each scene and a worksheet with vocabulary definitions to important words and phrases within the scene. I use the worksheets to address/remind the students of some of the important topics from each scene. The worksheets may also have space for short discussion questions and fill-in-the blank answers. 

Lesson Breakdown:
Students will receive access to one new video that discusses a different assigned scene. This class does not meet live. The prerecorded sessions will emphasize characters, their motivations, theme, social issues, story plausibility, and inferences about what might come next. Students will receive a scene summary paragraph and a corresponding worksheet with vocabulary definitions, discussion questions and places for fill-in-the blank answers for each day. For weeks that have less than six scenes to read, students will have access to a Macbeth related question, activity, joke, or pun. Students are assigned a one-two page writing assignment focused around that week's act. I ask the students to share their responses in the classroom. I also ask students to submit any vocabulary words the students still struggle with or passages the students still do not understand. The more questions the students ask, the more "discussion" we can have in the classroom after each scene/act. I also post a link to an optional online Kahoot! trivia review quiz for the students to further immerse themselves in this week's reading before we move onto a new act the following week. 

Weekly, students will have access to: 
3-7 videos, scene summaries, vocabulary and supplemental worksheets 
1 one-two page weekly writing assignment to gauge the reader's understanding of their previous reading 
1 Kahoot! trivia game
as needed: supplemental interactive questions, activities, jokes, or puns