A Midsummer Night's Dream: Engaging ELA Shakespeare Unit!

42-page complete, detailed MS 2013 Word document for a 3-4 week Shakespearean unit! Exceptional detail in this FUN, engaging learning goal-driven, creative day-by-day unit plan to introduce Shakespeare, his time period, and writing with the hilarious romp-in-the-woods romantic comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream in your secondary English Language Arts curriculum: this is a must-view, as everything is done for you in exquisite detail!

This unit plan supports students in navigating from the first (lower) levels of Bloom's Taxonomy of remembering and comprehending into the highest levels, through leading students with applying, analyzing, evaluating, AND synthesizing/creating from day 1 through the grand finale in various, new, and engaging ways. The unit will begin with a cooperative jigsaw learning team activity of research, documentation, and presentation for pre-reading and culminates in a multi-genre summative assessment on the whole unit, along with a student reflection survey to help document learning as well as student feedback (impressions/feelings) on Shakespeare and the unit overall.

With this unit, you'll not only have daily reading strategy activities, but you will also have original formative reading assessments on each of the five Acts of A Midsummer Night's Dream. All unit activities/reading assessments assess student comprehension of the play as well as the higher Bloom's Taxonomy levels and Common Core Standards of applying, analyzing, evaluating, and 21st Century skills: media and information literary, critical thinking, collaboration and communication (of various types!), problem-solving, creativity, and innovation!

With this colorful, highly graphic, Common Core-aligned day-by-day unit plan, you get:

a.) detailed lessons for 23 days (assuming a traditional hourly schedule, to be revised at your professional discretion).

b.) warm-up activities, including a pre-reading team research activity, various journal writings and graphic organizers to invite more thorough, textually-based student understanding and synthesis of literary elements, from the three types of irony to character relationships, characterization AND iambic pentameter/blank verse, two of Shakespeare's cornerstone, most beloved sonnets along with invitations for original student poetry and hands-on formal English/grammar practice, Shakespearean insults, and MUCH more in between and after!

c.) varying types of formative reading assessments for each of the 4 Acts of Shakespeare's masterpiece, PLUS a multiple choice, true/false, short answer Act V and Play Review assessment -- students will practice paraphrasing and identification of "who said it" and "what did it mean" of central quotes from the play.

d.) consistently engaging activities inviting students to develop their critical thinking, media and information literacy as well as communication, collaboration, and problem-solving skills, beginning with a set of thoughtful Focus Questions to set the stage for the reading of the play and to regularly return to and involve in cooperative learning activities throughout the unit.

e.) EVERYTHING as a printable! (eg. assessments, literary graphic organizer charts -- character relationships/characterization, irony, APOEMS -- figurative language, from alliteration, personification, onomatopoeia, exaggeration/hyperbole, to metaphor and simile), all the way to the grand finale student favorite summative assessment activity of a multi-genre project, complete with genre ideas and specified directions with an Introduction, Table of Contents, and Works Cited for an all-class art gallery share. AND MUCH MORE!

f.) specifications for sharing the 90s movie version of the play (with Michelle Pfeifer and Kevin Kline) to review and compare to the original late 16th Century play, and to prep for the summative assessment activity (mentioned above in "c").

g.) Directions to help students develop skills in research and MLA documentation + formatting throughout the unit, from the first pre-reading research activity through the multi-genre project.

h.) reading comprehension strategies + plot / theme analysis activities, character development, two of Shakespeare's most famous sonnets as reading analysis and grammar activities as well as invitations for students' own original poetry creation in blank verse, AND a language focus (iambic pentameter with practice marking unstressed and stressed syllables with text from the play) -- starting with the Unit Focus Questions through reproducible, hands-on activities culminating the reading, analysis, and evaluation of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

i.) scene production / skit activity for individual students or small teams of students to first paraphrase a scene of their choosing (within parameters, as detailed in the activity), then to rehearse and act it out in a kinesthetic manner as if acting on The Globe stage!

Plus more -- all wrapped up in 42 pages of extremely detailed, polished, engaging day-to-day instructions to help you navigate as well as enjoy this fantastically magical play AND Shakespeare with your students in a very do-able manner!

I have recently implemented this unit plan with tremendous success in 8th as well as 9th/10th grade classes. On the 1st page, you'll find learning targets (goals/objectives) for whole unit clarified with the level(s) of Bloom's Taxonomy you'll be targeting with each goal! Thank you for visiting my store, and I look forward to your feedback!

***You may consider the Midsummer Night's Dream PowerPoint art connector presentation activity in my store in combination with this unit (http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/A-Midsummer-Nights-Dream-Common-Core-Analytic-Extension-Activity-378366) at a low rate as well as the Characterization or Theme PowerPoints in my store, which could easily be utilized to full effect with this unit.

**This item has recently been revised to an editable Word doc rather than a PDF to better suit your students' needs.

Thanks again!