This assessment provides an opportunity for students to independently complete a text to film comparison. NOTE: Please read Teacher's Notes for film clip information.

This is the first in a series of four lessons in which students build background knowledge about Shakespeare and the questions about his authorship. In this lesson, students study an article that addresses one viewpoint on the question of whether Shakespeare penned all of the works attributed to him. Students begin their close reading and analysis of this article by reading the article for the gist.

In this lesson, students set up “Discussion Appointments” with five peers; these appointments will be used for peer conversation throughout the module. This new routine builds on students’ work in their “numbered heads” group in Module 1, gradually encouraging them to work with more and more of their classmates.

In this lesson, students engage in a jigsaw on the evidence-based claims in Schama’s article.

Students continue to work with Simon Schama’s article “The Shakespeare Shakedown.” In this lesson, they work together to analyze paragraph structure in the article. This is a complex text and a challenging task.

The assessment text in the lesson is excerpted from “The Top Ten Reasons Shakespeare Did Not Write Shakespeare.” The text has been excerpted due to the long length of the article.

In this lesson, now that students have built some background knowledge about Shakespeare, they begin reading A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

The Mid-Unit 2 Assessment Part 2 is broken down into three parts: The first part (a) requires students to analyze an author’s word choice. The second part (b) requires students to explain how Shakespeare uses a classic myth in his play and how he renders it new, and the third part (c) requires students to analyze the structure of two texts and explain how they contribute to the meaning of each.

In this lesson, students begin the writing process for the End of Unit 2 Assessment, an argument essay on A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

This lesson continues to prepare students to write their argument essay for their End of Unit 2 Assessment. Today, students use their Evidence of Control note-catchers and their understanding of the concept of control as expressed through two of Shakespeare’s characters from A Midsummer Night’s Dream by weighing the evidence and crafting the claim for their argument essay.

In this lesson, the Quote Sandwich is introduced; this is a way to help students understand that when they use evidence in an argument essay, they should always: introduce the quote with context so the reader is not confused about what is happening in the novel, include the quote, and analyze the quote.

In this lesson, students start a Writing Improvement Tracker that they will return to after writing the essay in each module for the rest of the year. In Work Time A, students craft a response to a counterclaim. During Work Time B, consider working with students who still need help understanding what an argument essay is or how to write a claim with reasons and evidence for an argument essay.

In this lesson, students write the draft of their essay about Shakespeare making the case that it is not possible to control another person.

Although this lesson is in Unit 2, it is actually the kickoff for Unit 3. This is to give you time to look over the draft end of unit assessments before handing them back to students with feedback in Lesson 18. Before this lesson, use the exit ticket from Lesson 15 to analyze students’ favorite character choices and assign characters to students.

In this lesson, students read and analyze a model character confessional narrative to generate criteria for an effective narrative that they can then apply when writing their own drafts later in today’s lesson.

In this lesson, students now use the Written Conversation to conduct a nearly completely independent discussion about the text. The discussion question is open-ended; students’ Written Conversations will differ greatly. Consider collecting the Written Conversation note-catchers to gain insight into students’ comprehension of the scene and ability to use dialogue as a way to analyze character.

In this lesson, after the Drama Circle, students get out of their seats, move around, and interact with others while discussing text-dependent questions in a Three Threes in a Row activity.

In this lesson, students continue to discuss the scene read-aloud in the Drama Circle more independently. This time, they will follow the World Café protocol in which they get out of their seats and move from group to group to discuss key questions about the read-aloud.