This unit extends students’ oral communication and reading skills. Interweaving the text of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream with the graphic novel Bone and the fantasty novel Ysabel, the lessons reinforce previously learned reading strategies. The main text, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, is approached primarily as an oral and dramatic text, and students are regularly enacting parts of the script.
- Level: ENG1D (Grade 9 Academic)
- Timeframe: 21 classes, including a test period
- Lesson 1: Introduction to Fantasy (3 periods)
- Lesson 2: Introduction to Shakespeare & A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2 periods)
- Lesson 3: Acts 1-3 (6 periods)
- Lesson 4: Memorization, Vocabulary, and Recital (3 periods)
- Lesson 5: Acts 4-5 (1 period)
- Lesson 6: Theatre Education Project (5 periods)
- Lesson 7: Written Review (1 period)
The unit outline [PDF] includes a summary of curriculum expectations plus a sample calendar.
Unit lesson plans [PDF] provide detailed steps to covering each of the unit topics, relating them to the corresponding expectations and teaching strategies.
Assignments
Multi-Media Presentation (40 marks)
Students develop and deliver a presentation to educate younger students about A Midsummer Night’s Dream, including a visual aid, a brief discussion, and a dramatic scene using the original text OR an audio recording of a scene scripted into a different genre. Students are evaluated using the theatre education activity rubric.
ThinkBook Written Review (15 marks)
Students answer one of three options, commenting on their reading experience of Ysabel.
Bone Dialogue and Dramatic Script (10 marks)
Given images from Jeff Smith’s Bone, students imagine possible dialogue for the characters, then transform the dialogue into a proper dramatic script.
Passage Memorization (10 marks)
After repeated practice together as a class, students memorize and recite a passage from 2.1 (Fairy’s lines 30-40; or Puck’s lines 42-58; or Oberon’s lines 253-263).
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Image by Niffty