Teacher Page
Shakespeare's sonnets can be a difficult topic to tackle with high school students. The language is dated and foreign, and its poetic character too often renders it inaccessible to many capable students. This activity is designed to help students gain access to the language, meaning, and form of the sonnets by allowing them to create their own. Engaging in creative writing inspires analytic thinking and personal reflection, enabling students to think more profoundly about Shakespeare's poetry.
This project is recommended for students at or above a 9th grade reading level. If you feel your students are not yet ready for Shakespeare, you may want to scaffold this activity with a preliminary lesson on poetry, concentrating specifically on the sonnet form. If you are teaching a unit on Romeo and Juliet, you could have them read the prologue to Romeo and Juliet before diving into the sonnets.
This project is recommended for students at or above a 9th grade reading level. If you feel your students are not yet ready for Shakespeare, you may want to scaffold this activity with a preliminary lesson on poetry, concentrating specifically on the sonnet form. If you are teaching a unit on Romeo and Juliet, you could have them read the prologue to Romeo and Juliet before diving into the sonnets.