Students hone their literary analysis and writing skills as they read Shakespeare's iconic Romeo and Juliet in the original Early Modern English.
icon/ela/whiteRomeo and Juliet has been archived. You are welcome to use the resources here, but there are no Fishtank Plus features offered within this unit. If you’d like to implement one of our complete Fishtank Plus units, including all in-lesson and unit-specific Plus features, check out 9th Grade ELA.
This end-of-year unit draws upon the literary analysis and writing skills that students have been honing over the course of the year and asks them to apply these skills to the complex language and style of Shakespeare. While students have previously read No Fear Shakespeare versions of other works by Shakespeare, this will be their first experience with reading in Shakespeare’s original, more archaic language. Additionally, the unit contains an emphasis on building the skills described in Common Core ELA standard RL.9.-10.9, "analyzing how an author draws on and transforms source material in a specific work." While reading Romeo and Juliet, students will analyze works by the fourteenth-century poet Petrarch, investigating how Shakespeare drew on some of Petrarch’s themes and characters and used them to develop his own play. They will also watch pieces of the 1996 film version of Romeo and Juliet, directed by Baz Luhrmann, and read excerpts of the novel Street Love, by Walter Dean Myers, analyzing how these two modern artists transform Shakespeare’s sixteenth-century play to inform their work. As part of their analysis, students will read, discuss, and write about the play itself and compare it to these other works.
When planning out the final days of the year, teachers should be sure to leave one or two class days for review for the final exam. That review is not included in the count of days for this unit.
At Match, students have a Composition class 4 days per week in addition to English class. Below, we have included Supplementary Composition Projects to reflect the material covered in our Composition course. For teachers who are interested in including these Composition Projects but do not have a separate Composition course, we have included a “Suggested Placement” to note where these projects would most logically fit into the English unit. While the Composition Projects may occasionally include content unrelated to English 9, most have both a skill and content connection to the work students are doing in their English 9 class.
In English 9 Unit 6, students will read Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare. The major areas of focus in the English unit are: (1) decoding and comprehending Shakespeare’s archaic language and (2) comparing his original text to other works that have drawn on his original text. These supplemental Composition Projects will focus primarily on the latter, asking students to compare in writing how the newer works have drawn on and transformed Shakespeare’s original work. These writing focus areas mostly spiral from the earlier units, providing students with opportunities to apply their writing skills to new projects. The newer skill that students are asked to develop is to consider the structure of their essays and ensure that the structure lends itself well to the task and purpose.
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