This Common Core resource includes 35 rigorous unit learning tasks for Shakespeare’s "Julius Caesar." The teacher-created learning tasks include standard(s) alignment using the language of Common Core State Standards. The unit activities represent a balance of analysis and evaluation activities focusing on a variety of literary elements, constructed responses, and extended informational/explanatory and argumentative writing. This resource also includes some embedded external documents and informational texts that have thematic parallels with "Julius Caesar." The learning tasks will delve deeper into the complex character development, figurative and connotative meanings, themes, and structure of the tragedy that have made it a literary classic.

Critical reading of literary texts is a critical component of the Common Core State Standards, and analyzing texts is a key skill that students will need for college and the jobs of the future. The critical foci of the learning tasks include:
1. Figurative and connotative meanings
2. Citing strong and thorough textual evidence (inferencing)
3. Analyzing themes
4. Analyzing complex character development
5. Analyzing how the author structures the drama including the role of stage directions and dramatic irony
6. Responding to literature using constructed responses and extended writing.
7. Analyzing thematic representations in video adaptations of the tragedy


Julius Caesar Common Core Learning Tasks - 35 Rigorous Activities!! by Dr. Joel C. Boyce is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.