SHAKESPEARE AND MORE ENGLISH UNIT MACBETH WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE WRITTEN

1 USING VERSE ACTING SHAKESPEARE MOST OF SHAKESPEARE’S
10ÉVFOLYAM IRODALOM SHAKESPEARE – ÉLETMŰ SZAKASZOLÁSA MŰVEKKEL RÓMEÓ
18 EVERYTHING AND NOTHING HUGO AND SHAKESPEARE FIONA COX

5 MA PATHWAYS IN SHAKESPEARE AND ENGLISH LITERATURE TEXT
ACTIVIDADES SOBRE LA PELÍCULA SHAKESPEARE ENAMORADO IES ROSA CHACEL
“HAMLET” DE WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE GUÍA DE LECTURA ACTO PRIMERO

School

Shakespeare and More

English Unit

Macbeth

William Shakespeare

Written Outcomes:

A detailed character study of Macbeth or Lady Macbeth

An extended piece of writing answering the question- Who is responsible for King Duncan’s death?

Resources:

Macbeth by William Shakespeare

Shakespeare Stories by Leon Garfield

Shakespeare- The Animated Tales DVD

Duration: About two weeks

Unit Objectives:

Over the course of the unit pupils will be given many opportunities to:

Develop positive attitudes to reading by increasing their familiarity fiction from the English literary heritage

Discuss similar themes occurring across stories and expressing  preferences

Prepare play scripts to be read aloud and performed, using  appropriate intonation and volume so that the meaning is clear

Discuss and summarising main ideas and identify key supporting  details

Discuss how authors use language, including figurative language, in the books they read, and considering the impact on the reader

Participate in conversations about books that are read to them and those they can read for themselves, building on their own and others’ ideas and challenging views courteously

Plan, draft, write, edit and evaluate written work to produce outcomes of a high standard

Identify the audience for and purpose of the writing, selecting the appropriate form for their own writing

Select appropriate grammar and vocabulary, understanding how such  choices can change and enhance meaning

Session

Learning Objectives

Lesson Content & Organisation

Differentiation & Assessment

To read and discuss fiction from the English  literary heritage

To discuss themes occurring in narratives

To make predictions about a narrative based on evidence from text and prior knowledge of genre

Introduce class to the story, briefly describing some of the key elements and themes.^¹ Then read to them/tell them/show them the start to Macbeth, until just before the witches appear.^² Discussion^³- Who is Macbeth? How would you describe his character? Take feedback from class, try to draw out- physically strong/good soldier/loyal to the king. Tell class that one of their tasks throughout the unit is to track any changes to Macbeth’s character.^⁴ Explain the role of Banquo as Macbeth’s trusted friend and comrade. Tell/read/watch the scene where the witches make their prophecies. Discussion- Who are the witches? What do their words mean? What might happen to Macbeth? What about Banquo?^⁵ Finish today’s section of the story with the king’s messenger proclaiming Macbeth Thane of Cawdor.

Task: Children write their predictions for the rest of the story, either as an open-ended task or using a frame.^⁶

Finish by comparing predictions from class, recapping story so far and asking pupils to explain one thing they’ve learned this lesson to the children on their table.

Target questions at different groups/individuals to ensure participation.

Frame to complete for pupils- differentiated to provide more detail for those needing further support

To read and discuss fiction from the English  literary heritage

To discuss themes occurring in narratives

To infer characters' feelings, thoughts and motives from their action and dialogue

Introduce class to Lady Macbeth.^⁷ Show the class her reading Macbeth’s letter and her thinking. Discussion: What are your first impressions of Lady Macbeth?

Continue the story, reading Shakepeare Stories (p.274-276) together as a class, stopping after each section to discuss and clarify.

Task: Should Macbeth kill King Duncan? In groups of 3-5, pupils are given one side of the argument and given 10mins to prepare as many reasons in support of their view.^⁸ They can then pair with another group to put their arguments to.^⁹

Finish by bringing all the arguments together. Finish the lesson by continuing the story to the point where Macbeth sets off to kill Duncan, daggers drawn.^¹⁰

Differentiated questioning and clarification to ensure whole class follow what is happening.

To read and discuss fiction from the English  literary heritage

To take part in role play to explore characters

To infer characters' feelings, thoughts and motives from their action and dialogue

Open the lesson with ‘Is this a dagger I see before me?’ Discussion: Where has the dagger come from? Is it real?^¹¹

Tell/read/show the story up until Macbeth has killed Duncan and Lady Macbeth has disposed of the daggers.^¹² Lead discussion/ask children to make comparisons about the part they both play in the murder, their actions and what this tells you about them as characters.

Share some of these to finish or invite pupils to the front to be hot-seated in role.^¹³

Challenge those pupils capable of this to back up their views with evidence from the text.

To read and discuss fiction from the English  literary heritage

To discuss themes occurring in narratives

To infer characters' feelings, thoughts and motives from their action and dialogue

Recap the story so far/watch the Animated Shakespeare up until Macbeth is crowned.

Discussion: Is Macbeth happy now? Draw out that he does not feel safe in his position because he has taken the crown and fears someone may take it from him and also Banquo’s prophecy. What can he do to feel safe?

Read/watch/tell Macbeth’s decision to pay to have Banquo murdered. Read the banquet scene from Shakespeare Stories (p.282).

Drama activity: Pupils to work in groups to produce 3 tableau images of the scene. Share together and evaluate each as a class. Another group to provide narration/thoughts for each character.^¹⁴

Some pupils can be challenged to make links between this scene and the dagger.

To read and discuss fiction from the English  literary heritage

To prepare play scripts to be read aloud and performed

To infer characters' feelings, thoughts and motives from their action and dialogue

Continue the story with Macbeth going to visit the witches and the apparitions.^¹⁵ Use full text in class or as drama activity.

Discussion: What does this tell us about Macbeth’s character? How has he changed since the start of the story? What evidence is there in the text for this?

Some pupils will be able to make the connection that Macbeth has moved from being passive in his evil actions (the witches appearing to him, Lady Macbeth talking him into the murder) to actively choosing his actions (killing Macduff’s family, going to visit the witches). Is this Macbeth becoming more evil or circumstances running away with him? Discuss the role fate plays in the play.

To read and discuss fiction from the English  literary heritage

To discuss themes occurring in narratives

To infer characters' feelings, thoughts and motives from their action and dialogue

Read/watch/tell the death of Macduff’s family and the news reaching him.^¹⁶ Tell of the English army marching towards Scotland.

Discussion: How is Macbeth feeling at this point? Is he still confident? Should he be?

Continue the story^¹⁷ with Macbeth receiving the news of Lady Macbeth’s death. Read and discuss Macbeth’s words. Tell the class that is one of Shakespeare’s most famous speeches. Discussion: What is it about?^¹⁸

Continue the story as Macbeth straps on his armour and goes out to fight. Discussion: What does this tell us about his character?

Continue the story. Macbeth and Macduff fight and Macbeth is slain. Malcolm is crowned king.^¹⁹

Target questions at different groups/individuals to ensure participation

Challenge more able pupils here. Macbeth has been on a downward spiral, becoming more and more evil. Now he chooses to fight rather than give up. How would this fit with a Jacobean view of the world?

Note- Two lesson 7s are given now- one if your class are writing character studies and one if they’re writing the ‘essay’. Just delete the one you don’t need.

To draw conclusions about a character and support this with evidence from the text.

To plan for writing, selecting the appropriate form

To developing initial ideas, drawing on reading and research where necessary

To write, selecting appropriate grammar and vocabulary, understanding how such  choices can change and enhance meaning

To write using a wide range of devices to build cohesion within and across  paragraphs

Character Study

Tell class they will be writing a character study of either Macbeth or Lady Macbeth^²⁰ As a class write a plan for what would be in a character study:

Description of the character (possibly appearance, definitely nature)
Their role in the story
How we know this from the text
Whether their character changes

Divide children into groups and ask them to collect evidence about each character (actions, what other characters say, quotes) from their memories, books and extracts used previously). These can then be presented to the class.

Draw together ideas about the characters. Provide pupils with quotes to use etc. if needed.

Homework: First draft of Macbeth personal response.^²¹

Key questions: What is Macbeth/Lady Macbeth like as a character? How do they change over the course of the play? How do we know this? Where is the evidence from the story?

The expectation is that many children, including more able children will be able to describe how a character changes over the course of the play. This idea that characters develop is one of the key facets of great books.

To draw conclusions about a character and support this with evidence from the text

To plan for writing, selecting the appropriate form

To developing initial ideas, drawing on reading and research where necessary

To write, selecting appropriate grammar and vocabulary, understanding how such  choices can change and enhance meaning

To write using a wide range of devices to build cohesion within and across 

paragraphs

Who is responsible for King Duncan’s death?

Tell class they will be writing an essay, like a secondary school pupil. Share the title.

Discussion: Who is responsible? Collect names of characters, but don’t comment too much. Accept all suggestions.

Divide children into groups and allocate each a suggestion. As a class you’ll probably want to discount suggestions other than Macbeth, Lady Macbeth and the witches. Ask them to collect evidence about each character (actions, what other characters say, quotes) from their memories, books and extracts used previously). These can then be presented to the class.

As a class, write a plan for what would be in a great answer. One possible structure is:

Some people argue…

Others argue that…

In my opinion,

Rehearse some of the vocabulary of persuasive writing as a class, provide resources for quotes, useful phrases etc.

Homework: First draft of essay.^²²

This should be the harder of the two tasks. However, with differentiated support, all pupils can access it, even at a simple level. At its heart, it is about holding an opinion and all pupils can do this.

To develop written work, tailoring improvements to needs of the reader

Success Criteria to include:

Organise texts into paragraphs to distinguish between different information

Use adverbs and conjunctions to establish cohesion within paragraphs

Clarify meaning and point of view by using varied sentence structure

Collect homework in and give brief feed back.^²³ Children to swap work with partners, read and then give feedback to one another.

Whole class teaching of one or more key elements of English.^²⁴

Provide pupils with opportunity to edit their writing, making necessary changes to spelling, grammar, presentation etc. Pupils may add additional content or improve clarity, but this is not essential at this point. While pupils are feeding back to one another and editing their own work, the teacher will work one-to-one with pupils identified as needing support.

Work is collected in for detailed written feedback.^²⁵

Target questions at different groups/individuals to ensure participation

The teacher can focus their attention on different individuals and groups, stretching more able children or supporting those who have struggled with the task.

To develop written work, tailoring improvements to needs of the reader

Success Criteria to include:

Organise texts into paragraphs to distinguish between different information

Use adverbs and conjunctions to establish cohesion within paragraphs

Clarify meaning and point of view by using varied sentence structure

Pupils read copies of one pupil’s work that is strong, along with teacher feedback.^²⁶ Discussion: What are the effective strong/effective elements and the areas to develop?

Process is repeated with a less-developed piece of work. Analyse strengths and share in table groups. Individually identify one area where improvements could be made. Discuss as class. Pupils consider their own work. Are any of the points made about other pupils’ work applicable to their own? Pupils decide on changes they can make and share in groups.

Pupils edit and then redraft work.

To assess the effectiveness of their own and others’ writing

To reflect on the learning process

Pupils have opportunity to finish redrafting process.

Children to swap work with partners, read, and then give feedback to one another. Completed drafts are shared and celebrated through group and whole class discussion. Children consider what they have learned from this unit of work.^²⁷

1 Here’s an opportunity for the big sell: This is a story about murder and treachery, soldiers and war, witches and ghosts, the battle for a very man’s soul and we like to make sure the children know it! This (and the start of the story) is your hook, if you can get them interested and motivated here; the whole unit is going to be a joy to teach. You can’t lay this on too thick…

2 Right, up to you how you want to start the story off. After trying out lots of different approaches, we’ve finally settled on telling a really hammed-up version of the opening battle, with the battle looking lost until ‘brave Macbeth-well he deserves that name-disdaining fortune, with his brandish'd steel, which smoked with bloody execution’ joins the fray. If you are keen to read something, then the opening to Leon Garfield’s Shakespeare Stories is our favourite, or watch the Shakespeare- The Animated Tales version.

3 You’ll have your own way of running discussions and classroom talk, but if you haven’t read our section on talk in English, then you might want to…

4 We like to have a little chat about character development at this point. There are lots of ways to get across the message that in really good stories the characters don’t just stay the same, but that they change and develop. Macbeth is a brilliant story for explaining this concept because we see an essentially good man gradually do more and more terrible things, dragged along by his ambition (and his wife!) We like to use a vegetable analogy here, explaining that great books and characters are like an onion, with layers of complexity and meaning that can be peeled away through analysis. Admittedly, this did lead a boy to write for homework: ‘in many ways Macbeth is like an onion. In the story he makes a lot of people cry.’

5 The big thing to get across here is that these are not ‘pointy hat, black cat, green and a bit warty’ witches- basically old women who cackle a bit. To the Jacobeans, witches weren’t human, but creatures made of pure evil magic who could take any form they wished and entered the world of humans with the express intention of causing misery and suffering. You’ll also need to talk to the class about what a ‘Thane’ is. This isn’t a bad moment to mention the Thane of Fife in passing, as he’ll be pretty important later. Talking about the predictions and what this means for the different characters is one of our favourite things to teach. Normally, at this point nobody really knows the story, so you get some fantastic predictions. One of my favourites was a boy who suggested that Macbeth would turn out to be King Duncan in disguise, and that there would be a Scooby Doo-style unmasking at the end. They say it’s hard to improve on Shakespeare, but he may just have managed it…

Anyway, we’ve found that its best not to ask for predictions after today, because someone will go home and look up the story of Wikipedia or watch the film on YouTube and then you don’t get to control all the twists and turns.

6 Completely up to you if you want to use our frame (you’ll find it in the zip file on the Macbeth homepage), make your own or not use one at all. A frame can support some children with their thinking and does take away the ‘fear of an empty page’. If the class are used to this, then go for it. However, you’re more likely to get really inventive ideas if you don’t give them one. It can be a bit slow getting everyone just to write in their books, but it does save on paper, sticking and less time queuing for the photocopier means more time in the morning!

7 As usual, read, tell or show the film. If you’re feeling brave, this is also a great opportunity for a bit of teacher-in-role. A scrunched up bit of paper and some over-the-top acting generally goes down pretty well here and sets the tone for a great lesson.

8 Of course, this exercise can also be done individually or in pairs. It can also be left up to children to decide whether they think the Macbeths should kill Duncan or not and construct arguments based on it. However, we’ve found by giving the children their argument, it forces them to think beyond ‘yeah, just kill him’ or ‘oh no, it’s terrible’ and construct legitimate arguments, based on their knowledge of the characters and text, rather than just go for easy arguments. Reasons for killing Duncan that tend to come up are:

‘It’s the only way to become king’

‘It will fulfill his destiny and make the prophecies come true’

‘Macbeth doesn’t want to let Lady Macbeth down or look weak’

‘He’s a soldier and has killed plenty of people already, one more won’t hurt’

And, reflecting the unique world view of a 10 year old: ‘Duncan is old, so he’ll probably die soon anyway’

The reasons for not killing Duncan have included:

‘Murder is wrong’

‘The prophecy says he’ll be king anyway, why doesn’t he just wait?’

‘The king has been good to him and made him Thane of Cawdor’

‘Duncan is a guest in his house’

And, restoring faith in the youth of today and giving us all some hope in our twilight years: ‘Duncan is old and weak and Macbeth should look after him’

9 This can be structured however you like, but is a good opportunity for Twos to Fours, or a Carousel or Jigsaw. You’ll know what works well in your class.

10 A cliffhanger!

11 We love this bit! A really long and beautifully detailed description of the scene, followed by the full quote in (as near as we can get to) mellifluous, actorly tones, followed by ‘is it? - turn to your partner’. So often the best ways to start a discussion are open-ended questions like this. Hopefully you then get a discussion about how it could be a real dagger, how it might have been sent by the witches to make Macbeth go through with the murder or maybe it was all in his mind because he’s so upset. Or you might just get ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Sorry, our fault.

12 This is a great scene to introduce the actual text. We normally give children a copy of the text to Macbeth Act II Scene II (in the zip file on the Macbeth homepage) in partners and read through, stopping after each bit to work out together what it means. The capacity of children to understand this language never fails to amaze us and, in our experience, primary school is the perfect age to start as children have no fear or preconceived ideas. They also love the detective work involved.

13 Hot-seating is a good activity here. Even just asking different children the questions from the frame works well, although the class generally have some juicy questions of their own. As with teachers, over-the-top acting is to be encouraged and we have been privileged to hear some remarkable Vincent Price laughter in the past. Our personal favourite has to be the inner-London school who felt both characters should speak with an authentic ‘Scottish’ accent that, alas, they couldn’t quite master. Until you have heard Lady Macbeth denounce her critics in an accent swinging wildly from thick West Country to Scouse and back again, you haven’t experienced the magic of Shakespeare.

14 Although it might be tempting to edit this bit out, go on, do the drama activity! The process of setting up the tableaux and then adding commentary definitely helps pupils to see the scene from another point of view, not just Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. It’s just as easy to bring the class round to sit on the floor and talk about the link between Macbeth seeing Banquo and seeing the dagger earlier as it is in the classroom. If you’re starting to get twitchy about not having anything really in books, you could photograph this and get the children to write underneath. Voila!

15 This can be the usual watch/read/tell. However this is a great place to either add a drama activity or return to the actual text. A drama activity like ‘story circle’ works brilliantly here, with children sat in a circle and taking up the roles. The actual text is brilliant for the detective work. Reading it as a class, stopping to do some detective work can be brilliant. ACT IV Scene I is great, but you might want to use an abridged version (both in the zip file on the Macbeth homepage). If you wanted to extend the unit, you could take some time to prepare this scene for performance. Over the course of a lesson, pupils can work in groups to stage the same scene. They can watch each other’s, evaluating and making comments.

16 ‘Not in all the legions of horrid Hell can come a devil more damn’d in evils to top Macbeth’ says Macduff- a useful quote to know.

17 By all means carry on with whatever method you’re using at the moment- we’re sure it’s going very well. However, there is some wonderful language and scenes at the end of the play, including the ‘tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow’ soliloquy (that every class should get the chance to read and discuss) and the end of the play. Please use our series of extracts and prose called, imaginatively: Macbeth Ending (it’s in the zip file on the Macbeth homepage).

18 ‘In Macbeth's final soliloquy, the audience sees his final conclusion about life: that it is utterly devoid of any meaning, and that our days on this earth serve no purpose other than to lead us toward ‘dusty death’. Life is a seemingly endless and depressing succession of days creeping along at a bleak, ‘petty pace’. Our time on this earth is so insubstantial that it can only be compared to a shadow or an illusion; so unreal that it can only be compared to an actor onstage. When the play is over, his character disappears into nothingness, and has left nothing significant behind.’ Thanks Wikipedia!

We’ve had some great whole-class discussions about this speech over the years. Most children are able to understand that this is Macbeth’s view of the world because of the experiences he’s had. One boy explained it like this: ‘It’s like Macbeth is a character in an X-box game. Everyone takes it in turns to control him, the king, the witches and his wife. Then at the end they just turn him off and go for tea.’ And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why we are teachers.

19 How you end the story is up to you. You can then have a quick discussion about what happened, but our guess is that most of them will have got the hang of it all by now. Personally, we like the drama of saying ‘Malcolm was crowned as the rightful king of Scotland and Macbeth’s severed head was raised high, blood dripping down the spear that bore it. The reign of the dead butcher and his fiend-like queen was over- dramatic pause- right, blue table , off you go…’ You can pick up any misconceptions in the next lesson if you need to, although we’d just leave them with the story.

20 Up to you if you let them choose another character. They could do the witches or Macduff at a stretch. We once taught a girl who wanted to do the guards…

21 Some success criteria can be useful for focusing children’s writing, but its so important to stress to them that this is a first draft and if they’re not sure about a point, put it in. It can always be sorted out later. See also our notes on homework.

22 Some success criteria can be useful for focusing children’s writing, but its so important to stress to them that this is a first draft and if they’re not sure about a point, put it in. It can always be sorted out later. See also our notes on homework.

23 Effective feedback is the one thing that makes children’s writing better. See our section on giving feedback for how we go about it at Shakespeare and More.

24 This is an opportunity to teach the children one facet of English in a meaningful context. It may be that from the brief feedback you have noticed something that children have not got the hang of yet (this could be anything from writing in full sentences, to using specific types of clauses or punctuation) or it may something more advanced taken from the age-appropriate section of the National Curriculum. Then, when children move onto editing their own work, they can use it.

25 This means you’ve got to mark it all. For tomorrow. Yeah, thanks.

26 Scanned and on the whiteboard, photocopied, up to you. If this is something that happens regularly in your class, you’ll have your own system for doing it that works. If it isn’t something you do already, we’d wholeheartedly recommend it. In our opinion, it is one of the things that most improves pupils’ writing. Setting up the culture in your classroom where it’s fine to make mistakes and criticism is seen as constructive takes a bit of time, but it will transform children’s writing. And that’s got to be a good thing. See our section on sharing children’s work to learn more.

27 And we’re done! Help yourself to another unit from Shakespeare and More.

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