Student Choice and Shakespeare: Star-Crossed or Symbiotic? by Emily Malovich

 Student Choice and Shakespeare: Star-Crossed or Symbiotic?

by Emily Malovich

If you visited my AP Literature class this winter, you would have seen something every English teacher dreams of: a class of seniors thoroughly engaged in reading, performing, and studying Shakespeare.

About half the class sat at desks, reading along with an audio production alone or with a partner and stopping to discuss their questions and reactions along the way. In the hallway, other groups of students listened aloud together. Still others dedicated themselves to reading the entire play out loud. They were asking questions, grappling with the text, and even excitedly or mournfully sharing their reactions to what they read. And the key that made this Shakespeare unit different? The students were all reading different plays.

Every year as I plan my AP Shakespeare unit, I have a decision to make: Which play are we going to study? Typically, I rotate between Hamlet, Othello, and Macbeth. This year, I was inspired by a presentation from the 2024 NCTE Annual Conference by Dr. Sheridan Lynn Steelman about her book club approach to Shakespeare’s problem plays. I was attracted to this approach for several reasons: the element of student choice, its student-led structure, and the real-world application of Shakespeare’s stories. I decided to conduct this year’s Shakespeare unit as a literature circle/individual study using all three plays to examine tragedy as a genre.

My Literature Circle/Individual Study Approach

At the beginning of the unit, students selected their plays, and we spent a couple of days learning about the genre of tragedy. Students read an excerpt of Aristotle’s “On Tragedy,” Anne Carson’s “Tragedy: A Curious Art Form,” and the findings of an interesting research article about schadenfreude. Students wrote about and discussed our central question: what is the purpose, function, or importance of tragedy as a genre?

Next, students jumped into reading their selected plays. Students had the freedom to select how they wanted to read: independently, with a partner, or in a small group; silently, using an audio performance, or aloud in groups. I also shared my recommended film adaptations of Hamlet, Othello (or this non-R-rated version), and Macbeth. Students had the option during the unit to watch and respond to the film for bonus credit.

Before they began their reading of each Act, I led mini-lessons about the elements and structure of tragedy that would be most relevant to that Act.

Because Shakespeare is challenging for so many students, and because they would be reading more independently as opposed to a typical whole-class approach, I incorporated the following scaffolds:

• Professional Audio Recordings: Since Shakespeare is meant to be experienced and not just read, I shared a full cast performance of each play from YouTube.
  
  
• Reading Guides: Teacher-provided guiding questions for each Act and scene. Students were not required to formally answer these questions, but they could use them before reading to help anticipate what would happen or after reading to check for understanding.
  
  
• During Reading Notes: For each Act, students wrote brief summaries of each scene, added to their personal character maps, recorded standout quotes, and journaled their personal reactions. Each set of notes also required them to analyze how the elements and structure of a tragedy were evident in this Act, connecting their reading to our mini-lessons.

After reading, students assessed their understanding of the genre by evaluating their play’s effectiveness and impact as a tragedy. Based on their feedback and my observations, several clear benefits and drawbacks to this approach became evident.

Benefits

1. Student engagement. Multiple times during this unit, I found myself sitting back and realizing that I had never seen a class of students so engaged with the Bard. Many of them came to class excited to get back to the story, and the conversations I observed among students, often ones who were reading different plays, were incredibly insightful and rewarding to hear.
   
   
2. Student-led learning. Students appreciated the chance to move through the text at their own pace and in the method that they preferred. One student commented that this experience was “a lot more personal” because they could focus on the aspects of the story that most interested them within the frame of a genre study. 
   
   
3. Going beyond the text. When teaching a single text, it’s easy to get bogged down in the minutiae and lose sight of the bigger picture. Because students were reading different plays, my instruction had to go beyond the specific events of one play. Focusing on the elements and purpose of tragedy over particular names and details gave the unit more purpose and authenticity.

Drawbacks

1. Differences in plays. Not every play aligned perfectly in content or length. Othello, for example, lacks the supernatural elements of Hamlet and Macbeth. Macbeth’s opening sequence expands into three scenes instead of just one. Hamlet is significantly longer than the other plays. These differences required some flexibility from me and understanding from my students. It is also important to be well-versed in all of the texts offered; I chose to re-read Macbeth along with my students because it had been several years since I taught it, and I was feeling a little rusty with it.
   
   
2. Missing the details. As English teachers, we love the stories we teach and want our students to learn everything there is to know about them, but this isn’t feasible in a student-led approach with multiple texts. Some specific moments or concepts that I might have focused on in a whole class study of the play were certainly overlooked. As I discussed with my students, though, we don’t have to understand everything about a complex text on a first read. Part of the joy of Shakespeare is uncovering new layers of meaning with each exposure.
   
   
3. Teacher workload. Three texts means more prep work from the teacher. Fortunately, I was able to adapt materials from teaching these texts in the past, which made the workload a little easier to manage.

Concluding Thoughts

Despite the drawbacks, the way that my students engaged with Shakespeare during this unit made this trial an overall success. My students overwhelmingly indicated that they preferred the literature circle/independent study approach to the whole class approach they have experienced in the past. Multiple students commented that this was their favorite thing we had read this year, or the first time they felt like they could enjoy or understand Shakespeare. (Though don’t get me wrong -- some students still professed by the end that they do not like Shakespeare!) Being able to pick what and how they read and direct their own study of the plays made this a meaningful experience for my AP Literature students. While student choice and Shakespeare is a challenging dynamic, it is worth exploring to create more authentic, engaging experiences with the works of the Bard.

Author Bio

Emily Malovich (she/her) is the WPCTE Blog Coordinator. She teaches sophomore English and AP Literature at Sharpsville Area High School in Mercer County. Currently, she is pursuing her D.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction at IUP and writing her dissertation about classroom teachers’ experiences with book banning. Outside of teaching, her hobbies include the “three B’s”: books, birding, and sourdough bread. Contact her at emalovich@sasdpride.org.