Why I Teach Shakespeare to Elementary Students

"Alas, poor Yorik"-from The Fifteen Minute Hamlet

I love teaching Shakespeare to young children.  There is something kind of intimidating about the Bard of Avon.  I didn't study Shakespearean plays until high school, and I remember feeling very nervous about it.  I thought that only geniuses could understand Shakespeare.  I was surprised that I actually enjoyed the plays we studied.  I loved the feud between the Capulets and the Montagues; the balcony scene. I loved when Hamlet held up Yorik's skull.   And the words, words, words! "Beware the Ides of March;" "Et tu, Brute?" "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." "Though this be madness, yet there is method in 't."  The more I read his words, the more confident I felt. 

When I taught fourth grade, our big end of the year celebration included a production of The Fifteen Minute Hamlet, a play by Tom Stoppard.  I love using this play because it is pure Shakespearean words, just ultra-condensed.  The tragedy seems almost like a comedy because of how quickly the action takes place.  The boys in my class loved it because of all the sword fighting, poison, and death scenes.  The girls loved it just as much.  My hope was that by studying Shakespeare at a young age, they would carry with them the confidence to read other intimidating texts.  One of my former students wrote this to me when she was in high school:

"So a couple of days ago, we started reading Hamlet in my AP English class. My teacher was and still is extremely impressed that I had been exposed to Shakespeare in fourth grade. As I'm reading through it though, all I can think about is our absolutely fantastic performance that we did. It's almost next to impossible to read it because I'll hear Noah and Jacob and Isaac and Kelly and everyone else saying the lines! However, just that little edited version we read has made a world of a difference for me. I cannot thank you enough for making us read through something that people eight years above us were reading and helping us understand it. You've made AP English easier!"

Students sign their names with quill and ink

Now that I am a home educator,  I want to give my own children and their homeschooled friends the same confidence I gave to my fourth graders.  The last two summers, I have hosted a Shakespeare Camp in my home.  We play camp games, sing camp songs, and learn a lot about Shakepeare's life and his stories.  At the end of camp, we celebrate by performing an abridged version of a Shakespeare play.  In 2015, we performed The Fifteen Minute Hamlet.  This year, we performed A Midsummer Night's Dream.  In the next few blog posts, I will be sharing some ways that I made Shakespeare approachable to children during our Shakespeare Camps.