Charlotte Bourne, Deputy Head of Learning at Shakespeare’s Globe, shares four places to get started with the free online resources developed by the theatre’s education team.

As well as being an iconic cultural venue, Shakespeare’s Globe provides free resources for schools, supporting teachers to create learning opportunities that provide challenge for all. With materials available for teachers and learners across all phases, our education resources are designed to:

·         Offer flexibility within the teaching of Shakespeare through active approaches, rehearsal room techniques or technology – giving opportunities for children to flourish across a range of domains;

·         Add breadth to learners’ understanding of vocabulary through interrogating language choices;

·         Add depth to leaners’ understanding of the relationship between Shakespeare’s texts and their contexts;

·         Use them as a springboard to wider learning opportunities, such as homework projects or longer-term investigations.

Each year we also run a “Playing Shakespeare” microsite which tracks a production as it is developed and performed. This year’s microsite is dedicated to Macbeth (details below).

Ready to go deeper with Shakespeare? Here are four places to get started…

1.      ‘Discover' zone

Great for an introduction to Shakespeare or a focus on context, the Globe website’s ‘Discover’ zone provides a wealth of information on: the history of Shakespeare’s Globe(s); factsheets about Shakespeare's world; blog posts from the Globe; music at the Globe; ‘ask an actor’ podcasts.

Our fact sheets – on Shakespeare, London, writing plays, actors, indoor theatre, special effects, the first Globe, playhouses, audiences, and costumes and cosmetics – are particularly useful for introducing students to Elizabethan and Jacobean contexts in an accessible way at KS2, and can easily be adapted to your lesson objectives. For example:

·         Support the development of critical literacy skills: “We have very few accounts of how the audience behaved, and most of them are about ‘bad’ behaviour. This probably tells us more about what was considered ‘news’ than about how audiences behaved all the time.”

·         Introduce learners to how performance conditions impact on texts: “There were practical reasons why some plays were better suited to indoor theatres. Indoor theatres had a small stage (about half the size of an outdoor theatre’s stage). There were also stools allowed on the stage: the most expensive seats, where rich ‘gallants’ sat to be seen as well as to watch. This gave the actors far less space for big battles or crowd scenes. On the other hand, the smaller space and the candlelight enhanced a play’s magical effects.” This could be followed by an investigation into which of Shakespeare’s plays learners think would suit each type of theatre.

2.      Staging It

An interactive filmmaker for desktops and tablets, Staging It aims to help learners understand Shakespeare’s texts from a director’s perspective and offers the option to virtually stage a scene at the Globe.

Actors are filmed performing a moment of a play on the Globe stage. Each line of their speech is shot four times, each time performed in different ways (happy, flirtatious, defensive, etc.). Students decide which clips to add to the dynamic storyboard to build a final scene. They can then interrogate the choices they made, and the impact of these on how each character is perceived.

These resources support students in recognising that the text is a conscious construct, shaped by the context in which it is received – vital preparation for GCSE English that can be introduced at KS3 through this resource.

Follow-up questions can be used to support the development of critical thinking: How am I looking at this character? What leads me to have this viewpoint? What does my viewpoint ignore? Is there another way to look at them? How might [a different culture/gender etc.] view them? Which of these possible viewpoints makes the most sense given the text? This could be modelled in advance by the teacher, as “revealing the thought processes of an expert learner helps to develop [these types of] metacognitive skills” (EEF, 2018).

3.      Teach Shakespeare

The Globe’s website for teachers, Teach Shakespeare provides hundreds of learning resources in multiple formats: photos, video clips from previous productions, synopses, audio interviews, fact sheets and schemes of work. Designed with input from teachers, the site can be searched by age range, play, format, or purpose (e.g. lesson plan/exam revision). No signup is needed to access the resources.

Many of these resources incorporate rehearsal room techniques. These have experimentation, collaboration and reflection at their heart, and encourage students to make their own discoveries about the text.

For example, this resource suggests the activity ‘walking the line’ to investigate Shakespeare’s use of metre: foot up on unstressed syllables and down on stressed syllables, noticing and commenting on irregularities in the ‘Gallop apace’ speech in Act 3 Scene 2 of ‘Romeo and Juliet’. The ‘commenting’ is particularly important, because it is the collaborate nature of reflection that helps further the metacognitive talk referenced above. We provide video clips showing the actors undertaking some of these techniques, to model the insights that come through actively exploring the text in this way.

4. Playing Shakespeare

This site provides a gateway to all our previous production-specific websites created as part of the Playing Shakespeare project, each of which tracks a production from rehearsal to final performance. This year’s microsite is dedicated to Macbeth, with previous productions covered including Romeo and Juliet, Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Othello, The Merchant of Venice, The Taming of the Shrew. Each of these sites contains photos, interviews with the cast and director, design briefs, articles and teaching activities.

The interviews with cast members give students the opportunity to unpick the texts in performance – a key aspect in appreciating the form. Listen to several Macbeths discussing their interpretations, for example, can help students understand that, unlike a novel, a drama text is incomplete on the page.

There are research articles on particular plays, written for a KS3-4 audience moving to focus in more detail on the relationship between text and context. These provide a rich exploration of writer's craft that cannot be separated from context, and can be used to model the integrated approach to this required for higher-level literary analysis.

Our Macbeth 2020 website has launched and will begin tracking the production in January!

Are your primary maths lessons too quiet? Ahead of her upcoming workshop on strengthening talk in primary maths, NACE associate Sarah Carpenter explains why effective discussions are key to deepening and extending learning in this core subject. 
 
Often there’s an assumption that primary mathematics is about numbers, concepts, operations – and not about language. But developing the language of maths and the ability to discuss mathematical problems is essential to help learners explore, reflect on and advance their understanding.
 
This is true for learners of all abilities. But for more able mathematicians in particular, regular opportunities to engage in talk about maths can hold the key to deeper, more secure understanding. Moving away from independent, paper-based work and the tunnel-vision race to the answer, discussion can be used to extend and deepen learning, refocus attention on the process, and develop important analytical, reflective and creative skills – all of which will help teachers to provide, and learners to be ready for, the next challenge.
 
If you’re still not sure why or how to use discussions effectively in your primary mathematics lessons, here are five reasons that will hopefully get you – and your learners – talking about maths… 

1. Spoken language is an essential foundation for development. 

This is recognised in the national curriculum: “The national curriculum for mathematics reflects the importance of spoken language in pupils’ development across the whole curriculum – cognitively, socially and linguistically. The quality and variety of language that pupils hear and speak are key factors in developing their mathematical vocabulary and presenting a mathematical justification, argument or proof.” – National curriculum in England, Department for Education, 2013
 
Or to put this another way, when else would we expect learners to write something if they cannot say it? As Anita Straker writes: “Sadly, children are frequently expected to write mathematics before they have learned to imagine and to discuss, and those who do not easily make connections are offered more pencil and paper work instead of vital talk and discussion. Yet in other subjects it would be unthinkable to ask children to write what they cannot say.” – Anita Straker, Talking Points in Mathematics, 1993

2. Practice is needed for fluency… 

… and fluency is what the new SATs expect – not only in numbers and operations, but in the language of mathematics as well. For mathematical vocabulary to become embedded, learners need to hear it modelled and have opportunities to practise using it in context. More able learners are often particularly quick to spot links between mathematical vocabulary and words or uses encountered in other spheres – providing valuable opportunities for additional discussion which can help to embed the mathematical meaning alongside others.
 
Free resource: For assistance in introducing the right words at the right stage to support progress in primary maths, Rising Stars’ free Mathematical Vocabulary ebook provides checklists for Years 1 to 6, aligned with the national curriculum for mathematics.

3. Discussion deepens and extends mathematical thinking. 

The work of researchers including Zoltan Dienes, Jerome Bruner, Richard Skemp and Lev Vygotsky highlights the importance of language and communication in enabling learners to deepen and extend their mathematical thinking and understanding. Beyond written exercises, learners need opportunities to collaborate, explain, challenge, justify and prove, and to create their own mathematical stories, theories, problems and questions. Teachers can support this by modelling the language of discussion (“I challenge/support your idea because…”); using questioning to extend thinking; stimulating discussion using visual aids; and building in regular opportunities for paired, group and class discussions.

4. Talk supports effective assessment for learning. 

More able learners often struggle to articulate their methods and reasoning, often replying “I did it in my head” or “I just knew”. This makes it difficult for teachers to accurately assess the true depth of their understanding. Focusing on developing the skills and language to discuss and explain mathematical processes helps teachers gain a clearer picture of each learner’s current understanding, and provide appropriate support and challenge. This will be an ongoing process, but a good place to start is with a “prior learning discussion” at the beginning of each new maths topic, allowing learners to discuss what they already know (or think they know) and what they want to find out.

5. Discussion helps higher attainers refocus on the process. 

More able mathematicians often romp through learning tasks, focusing on reaching the answer as quickly as possible. Discussion can help them to slow down and refocus on the process, reflecting on their existing knowledge and understanding, taking on others’ ideas, and strengthening their conceptual understanding. This slowing down can be further encouraged by starting with the answer rather than the question; asking learners to devise their own questions; pairing learners to work collaboratively; using concept cartoons to prompt discussion of common misconceptions; and moving away from awarding marks only for the final solution.
 
During her 20-year career in education, Sarah has taken on a variety of roles in the early years and primary sectors, including classroom teaching, deputy headship and local authority positions. After a period as literacy and maths consultant for an international company, she returned to West Berkshire local authority, where she is currently school improvement adviser for primary maths and English. As a NACE associate, Sarah supports schools developing their provision for more able learners, leading specialised seminars, training days and bespoke CPD.

1. Invest in high-quality training for all teachers and support staff

2. Introduce a weekly vocabulary lesson

3. Focus on high-quality teaching of reading

4. Create a language-rich environment

5. Provide rich writing experiences