Play on!

The music of Shakespeare’s language is something even four year olds can appreciate, and a new free resource from the RSC is helping children from reception up do just that, reports Katie Masters...

Earlier this year a book was sent to the heads of all state-funded primary schools: the RSC Shakespeare Toolkit for Primary Teachers. Edited by Miles Tandy, RSC Education’s head of professional development, the book provides hours of lesson plans and resources for teaching Shakespeare to children from the age of four upwards. And if you’re wondering whether children that young are really capable of engaging with Shakespeare the answer – from both Miles and the teachers who have tried it – is a resounding ‘yes’!

“It might seem counter-intuitive to expect reception children, including those who have English as a second language, to get on with Shakespeare, but the language really appeals to them,” says Miles. “There’s a line in The Tempest in which Prospero is talking about the boat in which he and his daughter are set adrift. He says, ‘The very rats instinctively have quit it.’ The children loved it: because the words are fun to say and you can hear the rats scuttling in the words themselves.”

He draws parallels between children’s reaction to Shakespeare and their relationship with other formative language experiences. “Children love nursery rhymes, even though their meaning is often very unclear – what does ‘The Man in the Moon came down too soon’ mean!?,” says Miles. “But the rhythm and the pattern is lovely in itself, and that’s what children respond to.”

Kate Condliffe, a Year 5 teacher from Springhead Primary School in Stoke-on-Trent, agrees, saying that the music of the words draws all age groups.

“My class really enjoy strong phrases like ‘Thou liest!’”she says, adding that the way the Toolkit focuses on small extracts from the plays allows children to get comfortable with the language, without being overwhelmed by it.

“There are lots of exercises in the Toolkit that are based around short phrases: just taking a few words and acting them out, or finding interesting ways of vocalising them. That builds the children’s confidence. Working in this way has improved the children’s grammar and vocabulary, and as speech comes before writing, it’s also paving the way for good writing.”

Act like the RSC

The aim of the Toolkit is to introduce the rehearsal room techniques used by the RSC into schools. It includes a bank of games and activities that can be used as a way in to any drama, but it focuses specifically on three of Shakespeare’s most regularly taught plays: Macbeth, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Romeo and Juliet. Having the chance to study these at primary school, before children have the pressure of exams to contend with, gives teachers time to let the children really get to grips with the language.

“We’ve been looking at Macbeth,” says Becky White, a Year 5 teacher from Freethorpe Community Primary in Norfolk. “There’s one exercise in which two children take it in turns to read lines from the play. Two other children stand behind them ‘shadowing’ them. Their job is to translate what the character has just said into modern English. The rest of the class help them out when they’re not sure, so everyone’s involved and listening.”

The Toolkit’s approach is a very active one. As well as helping children become familiar and comfortable with Shakespeare’s language, the lessons get the children exploring the characters and themes of the plays.

“One suggestion from the Toolkit is to read a few lines of a play and then ask the children to discuss what the character’s like,” says Brian Anderson, the head of Springhead Primary. “In another lesson, a Year 2 class was asked to pretend to walk around Prospero’s island. They were discussing what the island was like as they walked: feeding off one another. Afterwards they each wrote a description of the island and what it was like to live there. You could see how much their writing had been fuelled by the exercise: it had become real to them, so they could feel what it was like to be Prospero.”

Dealing with complex themes

The plays explore themes that are often emotionally complex. Becky say that she has seen her class becoming more mature as they’ve worked on Macbeth.

“We read the scene in which Lady Macbeth upbraids Macbeth for hesitating about murdering King Duncan and says that she would have preferred to kill her own child than behave in the way he was behaving,” Becky says. “Following that we had a really thought-provoking class debate. The children were discussing why Lady Macbeth would feel that way. They were questioning whether she meant it or whether she was trying to taunt him into taking action.” Becky acknowledges that she’s been surprised by how sophisticated many of the discussions her class have had during their work on Shakespeare.

“One instance was when the class was talking about how the banquet scene in Macbeth should be staged. It’s the moment in the play when Macbeth sees Banquo’s ghost – although no one else can see the spectre. The class were trying to decide whether they wanted a ghost to appear on the stage or whether there should just be an empty chair. They came up with excellent arguments on both sides of the debate: saying that a ghost should be there, both because it would be easier for the actor playing Macbeth to have someone to direct his words at, but also so that the audience would understand the scene from Macbeth’s perspective. The opposing argument was that it would be good if the ghost wasn’t there, because then the audience would become part of the scene. They would be witnessing what all the other guests were seeing: Macbeth’s breakdown.”

The children were thinking about the play in an active, dramatic way: not simply as a piece of literature but as something to be performed. They understood what the play was about and the different ways it could be interpreted. They were empathetic and engaged.

And it’s not just the children! Teachers don’t need to have a deep knowledge of Shakespeare to use the Toolkit. It’s designed to be simple to use and easy to navigate. You don’t have to read it all the way through: you can dip in and out. At the back of the book there’s a glossary of useful terminology, giving quick, child-friendly explanations of terms like ‘tableau’ or ‘ensemble’.

“We want the Toolkit to give teachers the confidence to give Shakespeare a go,” says Miles. “If children encounter his work early enough – before they start ‘knowing’ that it’s meant to be difficult – they’ll engage with it much more readily.”

Or as Shakespeare has already said, “Better three hours too soon, than a minute too late”.

Drama games

Warms up to get children in a playful mood…

* Showing emotions

Try a game that challenges your class to use their faces and bodies to show expression. Give them a scenario i.e.: “walk around the room as though you’re trying to hide from someone”. Alternatively give them one line to say and ask them to put different emotions into the line, i.e. fear or anger or surprise.

* Thinking aloud

Show the children one of Shakespeare’s soliloquies (a speech in which a character speaks their thoughts aloud). Get them to look at it really quickly and ask each of them to choose one word and think of a gesture to illustrate that word. Then ask them to stand in a circle. Go round the circle with each child saying their word and making their gesture. The exercise will start to build up a clear picture of what the speech is about.

* Exploring sounds

One fun game that gets the children working as a team is to stand in a circle. One child makes a sound and everyone has to imitate it. The sound goes round and round the circle before you move it on by asking each child to try and build on the sound that’s come before them.