My sophomore Julius Caesar unit and junior unit on The Crucible are two highlights of the year! I love seeing the students read and “perform” the plays. Each class brings its own unique perspectives and insights to each drama and its characters. Memorably, one group chose to read Rev. Parris like Gollum.
While I love teaching each drama unit, sometimes it’s tricky to incorporate writing in a reading-heavy unit. However, the language arts classroom requires that students be constantly engaged in writing of some form. Not every unit needs to culminate in a formal research essay, but each unit should provide opportunities for students to write.
Because I know how hard it can be to find the right moments to incorporate writing, I put together this list of suggestions!
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Incorporating Opinion Writing
Drama is all about big audience reactions, so the drama unit can be the perfect opportunity to incorporate opinion writing! The larger-than-life personalities of stage characters make them perfect subjects for discussion. Is Brutus a patriot or a patsy? Who is the best leader for Scotland? Does John Proctor make the best choice?
To help students cultivate their opinions, I often use anticipation guides. Throughout the unit, students can revisit topics from the anticipation guide to see how their opinions change. Then, students can use each topic as the foundation for opinion writing. Students can write brief paragraphs, campaign speeches, battle cries, or longer, formal essays! Grab my favorite writing rubric today.
Check out my favorite anticipation guides:
Journaling and Creative Writing
Bell work is an important part of any class. Plus, bell work can be an easy way to incorporate writing without letting writing take over your entire class period. I love journals because they help students process the text, can be the foundation for a longer project, or can make great conversation starters!
Check out my favorite journal prompts:
Dramas can also be a fun place to incorporate creative writing. Students can write one of Rev. Hale’s sermons, their own version of Caesar’s funeral speech, or a new spell for Macbeth’s witches!
Romeo and Juliet is one of my favorite plays for creative writing. To incorporate writing, students can write love letters from Romeo to Juliet, excerpts from Juliet’s diary, or declarations from the Prince. Usually, when students write love letters, we use this quick letter writing rubric. However, when we were on distance learning, we used this free email rubric.
Incorporate Writing and Movement
I’m a big believer in the importance of meaningful classroom movement. Since movement is so important to me, I often use gallery walks or stations.
Because I appreciate classroom movement, I often use an Art Walk during my drama unit. Because drama captures the imagination, artists have oftentimes created frequent recreations of famous scenes or moments from the stage. To help students synthesize across mediums, I have put together several collections of this art work.
Incorporate Writing and Literary Criticism
Literary criticism is one of my great classroom loves, and drama lends itself beautifully to different critical lenses. Asking students to apply a critical lens or lenses to a text can help teachers incorporate writing and create a meaningful activity. These are my favorite resources for teaching literary criticism:
- 5 Reasons to Include Literary Criticism, and 5 Ways to Make it Happen
- Introducing Historical and Biographical Literary Criticism
- How to Introduce Deconstructionist Literary Criticism
- 13 Texts for Introducing Psychoanalytical Criticism
- 6 Texts for Teaching Biographical Criticism
- 40 Texts for Teaching Literary Criticism
- Introducing Literary Criticism Notes
- Deconstructionist Criticism Bundle
- All Literary Criticism Resources
- Introducing Literary Criticism
- Feminist Criticism Bundle
- Historical Criticism
