A gift for anyone teaching Shakespeare
Community Review for Folger Shakespeare Library
My Take
This is a hard tool to rate using the parameters above. It is for teachers and almost functions like professional development by giving ideas for improving pedagogy around Shakespeare. Modules are great, particularly for teachers who have not worked with Shakespeare before. They help make the work more accessible to students. Ideas are curated by Folger staff to ensure good quality.
How I Use It
Before I teach any of Shakespeare's work (poetry or plays), I stop in at Folger. I look for ideas that I can use to help students more deeply understand/appreciate the complex language and build background knowledge for a deeper reading.
There are whole modules, for example on the comparison between primary source documents and Romeo and Juliet, modern sonnets (to help students appreciate Shakespeare's), and nonfiction sources related to Macbeth. And those are just three of many examples.
The modern sonnet is one that really helped my students dig into the unfamiliar structure of Shakespeare's work. All of them help me teach Shakespeare slightly differently each time - new background knowledge, new ideas, and new offerings for students.
This is very much a teacher site. Students would likely not find much of interest here.