At the start of our Othello unit, I wanted to get my students excited about Shakespeare. This is no small task as most high school students cringe and recoil when they hear the name William Shakespeare. They assume they will hate every moment of reading his plays. Each year I am on a mission to prove them wrong!

On the first day of our unit, I sent a Remind text to all of my students during their morning break informing them that there was a Shakespeare trivia question on the board. I told them the first student to correctly answer the question would receive extra credit. I decided to record a movie to see how long it would take for a student to come to my class and answer the question correctly.

Screen shot 2014-04-14 at 6.08.27 PM

I’m not sure what I expected, but I definitely didn’t expect a student to come blazing through the door fists of triumph in the air 46 seconds after sending the text message. I was stunned. My student was stoked.

I’ve continued to post Shakespeare Trivia questions each day to keep Shakespeare at the forefront of their minds. It’s fun to see them research the questions and excitedly write them on the board. I love that technology can make learning so fun and engaging.

I want to thank Ramsey Musallam for inspiring my Shakespeare Trivia! He uses Remind to alert his students to chemistry problems that need to be solved. I am so grateful to my PLN for sharing awesome ideas and continuing to inspire me.

Creatively Teach the Common Core Literacy Standards with Technology  Available NOW! 

4 Responses

  1. […] At the start of our Othello unit, I wanted to get my students excited about Shakespeare. This is no small task as most high school students cringe and recoil when they hear the name William Shakespeare. They assume they will hate every moment of reading his plays. Each year I am on a mission to  […]

  2. My son Kenneth and I were exceptions to the “Shakespeare Cringe” phenomenon. I was exposed to Shakespeare in early high school, fortunately by a Basilian priest/teacher who was something of a Shakespeare expert and conveyed his love for The Bard to me. I was overjoyed when my son fell in love with Shakespeare at about the same age. I’m also overjoyed that there are still teachers–like you, Catlin–who love Shakespeare and make a real effort to interest their students in his work.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *