Tony Chursky

An awesome group project on Shakespeare's most famous play in which your students will become resident experts on scenes from Acts 3 and 4 of the play. Working in teams, they will learn how to teach their scenes by summarizing, paraphrasing and analyzing key passages; write scripts for their scenes that preserve the meaning of the texts but that rewrite them to fit a different time period or genre; and act out their scenes using scripts, costumes, and props. Students will also be tested on t

A student-led, interactive activity that emphasizes the Common Core Speaking and Listening Standards for grades 8-12. In the format of a talk show, students research and present information about a Greek and Roman god or goddess. Students dress up as and impersonate their deities, do a commercial linked to their deities’ domain, and interact with each other and the student audience. Each show is 40 to 45 minutes long, with 16 deities paired off for a total of 8 shows. This unit includes: a

IDEAS is an acronym I have created that will help your students remember both the content and the sequence of a paragraph written about a piece of literature. It lays out each step of the paragraph's structure: the introduction of the writer's idea, the development of that idea, the evidence used to support that idea, the application of the evidence to the idea, and the summary of the content and order. Also included in the description is an explanation of how to quote and format both short an