Activities for Hands on Experience

Create Character Puppets

Act out the Play

Here are a few ideas of hands-on activities that you could do with children to help build their comprehension and increase the enjoyment of all involved!

Take the play that you are reading and perform it with the children! There are Shakespearean scripts available that have been edited for use by children that you can use or you can have the children improvise or create a script themselves.

Here is a site that offers scripts for children to use.

Here is a Primary source explaining the use of hands in performance.

Have the children create their own puppets representing the characters that they are reading about. This helps express their comprehension of what they are reading because they get the character descriptions through the text. You could then have the children put on their own puppet show using the puppets they have created.

You could have the children draw their own scene for a play, it doesn't have to be from the text you are working with or even from Shakespeare, it can be a scene that they have imagined themselves. The children use the stage conventions of Shakespeare's time to draw the staging of a scene. You can provide the children with a template of a stage to draw their scene or have them draw their own. Then you could act them out or try to sequence the different scenes to create a collaborative play or even create a class book about all of the scenes you can create!

Here is a template for drawing a scene.

Have the Children Watch a Performance of Shakespeare's Work

Do some research and see if any of the theaters or theater groups are planning a performance of one of Shakespeare's works near you. If they are take the children to see the performance! This will help them visualize what they are reading and it may even give them an idea that they hadn't thought of previously.

Courtesy of Google Images 2013

Draw your own Scene

Activities for Hands-On Experience

Courtesy of Google Images 2013

Courtesy of Google Images 2013.