I know many parents are now looking for help keeping their children engaged and learning while they’re forced to be at home.

How about some Shakespeare?

A number of years ago, my husband Michael Fox (a theatre director who received a Ph.D from UC Irvine in drama and has published several scholarly articles on Shakespeare) taught a class on Shakespeare for the Orange County Community Home Education Program (CHEP).  The class was called “Approaching Shakespeare” and was for middle school students, but could easily work for high school students, too.

Michael created an online syllabus with lots of useful material and references, including an introduction to Shakespeare, guides to the plays and sonnets, a guide to reading Shakespeare’s poetry, a guide to acting in Shakespeare’s plays, questions to think about, suggested projects, and a historical timeline that shows the relevant historical events in England during Shakespeare’s time.

The specific plays focused on are the tragedy “Macbeth” and the comedy “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

Click HERE to view “Approaching Shakespeare.”

Some of the links might no longer work, but most of them, including links to the texts of the plays, still work fine.

If you have any questions or need some help with the course, I’m sure Michael would be happy to connect with you.

You can email him at maximdarius@yahoo.com.

Play on!