{"id":116,"date":"2010-06-05T13:13:41","date_gmt":"2010-06-05T11:13:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.teachenglishtoday.org\/?p=116"},"modified":"2010-06-11T08:25:26","modified_gmt":"2010-06-11T06:25:26","slug":"review-cambridge-school-shakespeare-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/teachenglishtoday.org\/index.php\/2010\/06\/review-cambridge-school-shakespeare-series\/","title":{"rendered":"REVIEW : CAMBRIDGE SCHOOL SHAKESPEARE SERIES"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"image_pdf\"<\/a>\"image_print\"<\/a><\/div>

Morag Venter<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Retired English teacher and former Head of English<\/em><\/p>\n

Sometimes teaching Shakespeare is just hard work.\u00a0 Often we spend so much time explaining the vocabulary that we don\u2019t seem to get beyond the words to the play.<\/p>\n

Help is at hand!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The Cambridge School Shakespeare series is a most valuable resource.\u00a0 Although these books would probably cost too much to provide for all your learners, you as the teacher should make every effort to get them.\u00a0 I bought the latest one I needed second-hand from Amazon.com for 5 cents and it has been worth every cent of the postage.<\/p>\n

Although the text is not pruned or simplified, the activities provided for enrichment and discussion are just at the right level for teenagers.\u00a0 These books are packed with splendid suggestions, incorporating all kinds of skills from writing headlines, to interviewing for positions (eg Chief of Police for Verona!), to casting staff members (oops!) or film stars the pupils think would best convey the role.\u00a0 There are suggestions for letters and replies to agony aunts, for debates, for television interviews \u2013 the list goes on and on.\u00a0 The suggestions are so practical and yet such fun that they will involve all the pupils in the analysis of the play.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The general handbook for teachers, Teaching Shakespeare,<\/em> is most stimulating and contains a 73-page chapter on \u2018Active methods\u2019.\u00a0 And the individual editions on the different plays are more specific but equally exciting.\u00a0 All of them are printed in a most user-friendly format \u2013 easy to use in the classroom. Series editor, Rex Gibson, and his team have done an excellent job.<\/p>\n

Do yourself a favour and get yourself a copy as soon as possible.<\/p>\n

Teaching Shakespeare <\/em>by Rex Gibson, Cambridge University Press, ISBN: 0 521 57788 8<\/p>\n

Or Romeo and Juliet <\/em>ISBN: 0 521 63497 0<\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many years ago I decided something had to be done about the scrappy, incomplete and useless literature notebooks belonging to my weaker pupils. Every year it was the same story. The year would start off well: logical, legible notes would be written in the first two, or maybe three, pages but gradually, as books were left at home or someone was absent or the day was hot and I was boring, the notes descended into chaos. And yet these pupils were not trying to be difficult. What to do? After much reading and thinking I decided that I had to spend more time with the pupils formatting these books. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/teachenglishtoday.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/teachenglishtoday.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/teachenglishtoday.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teachenglishtoday.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teachenglishtoday.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/teachenglishtoday.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":308,"href":"https:\/\/teachenglishtoday.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116\/revisions\/308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/teachenglishtoday.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teachenglishtoday.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teachenglishtoday.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}