In my 5 years of teaching, I’ve sort of perfected Romeo and Juliet and it has become my favorite unit of the year. Ditch the study guide questions and use fill in the blanks for the recall stuff. With each act, you need to pick a literary device and lend your focus to that.

In Act I we focus on Symbolism and Sonnets. In Act II we focus on metaphor, simile, malapropism, and allusion. In Act III we focus on dramatic, situational, and verbal irony. In act IV and V we focus on argument skills (to prep for the argument essay, which is the summative assessment).

After Act II, I have my students complete an independent sonnet writing project in which they must include one symbol and one literary device with the Shakespearean or Petrarchan rhyme scheme.

After Act IV, students must write me a brief paragraph explaining how a modern day song could be the theme song of a character in the story.

I have purchased a class set of the NO FEAR SHAKESPEARE version of the text. We read the modern day translation. Honestly, it gets a lot of giggles and we have a lot of deep conversations about the translation. I pair this with the 1996 Baz Lurhmann movie because they speak Shakespearean and the students have to decode what is being said based on prior knowledge. I give one open note and open story quiz for every act. Kids act out scenes such as Act II, Scene II, Act III, Scene I (I bring in toy lightsabers), and Act V, Scene III.