Introduction to Shakespeare: Sonnet 73 & Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Looking for engaging lessons that will give your students the confidence and skills they need to read Shakespeare independently?

So often, teachers think that the only way they can introduce their classes to the Bard is by working through the same old boring power point lectures on when Shakespeare was born, when he died, and where he lived.

But Shakespeare’s work is popular 500 years after he died for a reason. The universal themes and questions of his poetry and plays are still very much relevant today.

If you want to get your classes excited to read the often challenging work of one of our greatest writers, you need an innovative unit that will help them to truly read and understand the words, engage independently with texts, and build the skills they need to read challenging poetry on their own.

This innovative unit focuses on one main question: What is the best way to approach death and dying? It’s a question that has been asked for centuries, and it is one that has never been fully answered, even by the greatest poets of all time. And yet, it is an important question to ask, especially for teenagers who are still struggling to define their world.

As they work through different answers to that question in this engaging unit, your classes will analyze William Shakespeare's poem Sonnet 73 or "[That Time of Year Thou Mayst In Me Behold]" and Dylan Thomas' poem "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.” These two iconic poems offer two very different views on these important questions.

This unit is a great way to introduce a longer unit on a Shakespeare play, and it’s also a great stand-alone unit that will get your classes thinking critically, discussing big ideas, and having fun exploring language and meaning.

When you teach this innovative unit on death and dying in poetry you will:

• Fulfill common core requirements with fun, low-key lessons.

• Introduce your unit on a Shakespeare play by boosting your students’ confidence in reading his work.

• Give your students the scaffolding they need to work through challenging texts by utilizing the proven questions and graphic organizers included in the unit.

• Inspire your students to think critically with the ready-to-go handouts, writing prompts, and activities.

• Easily teach the unit with Google Classroom using the ready-to-go instructions, links, handouts, and forms.

• Easily review the questions using the extensive answer keys which quote the important passages, so there is no guessing on your part as to which parts of the text are most important.

• Add rigor to your lesson plans when your students analyze diction, imagery, figurative language, point of view, shifts, poetry forms, tone, repetition, rhyme, and theme in poetry

• Help your classes to better understand their own views on death, dying, and how to approach our inevitable ends.

Pairings: The two poems together could also be paired with any texts that deal with old age, death, or love such as Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, MacBeth, Death of a Salesman, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, King Lear, or Things Fall Apart.

There are no lectures or power points here—students will do the work themselves, with guidance from you. Rather than telling them what the texts mean, you will empower your students with the confidence and skills to tackle challenging texts on their own.