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Chatterbooks Activity Pack Shakespeare Week 2017 Reading and activity ideas for your Chatterbooks group Shakespeare Week 20 – 26th March 2017 About this pack Organised by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Shakespeare Week is a national annual celebration giving primary school children a great first encounter with Shakespeare, celebrating Shakespeare’s creative legacy with thousands of schools, families and organisations. www.shakespeareweek.org.uk Here is a special Chatterbooks activity pack for Shakespeare Week 2017 with details of books for young people about Shakespeare, retellings of his plays, ideas for discussion and activities in your Chatterbooks reading group and suggestions for more reading. This pack is brought to you by The Reading Agency and their publisher partnership Children’s Reading Partners. Chatterbooks is a reading group programme for children aged 4 to 12 years. It is coordinated by The Reading Agency and its patron is author Dame Jacqueline Wilson. Chatterbooks groups run in libraries and schools, supporting and inspiring children’s literacy development by encouraging them to have a really good time reading and talking about books. The Reading Agency is an independent charity working to inspire more people to read more through programmes for adults, young people and Children – including the Summer Reading Challenge, and Chatterbooks. Children’s Reading Partners is a national partnership of children’s publishers and libraries working together to bring reading promotions and author events to as many children and young people as possible. Contents 3 William Shakespeare 3 Ideas for your sessions 4 Things to talk about 4 Warm-up activities 6 Longer activities 13 The books – reading ideas 20 More reading Page 2 of 21 William Shakespeare William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, who is often described as the greatest writer in the English language His surviving works, including some collaborations, consist of 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other poems. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire and was baptised on 26 April 1564. Thought to have been educated at the local grammar school, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he went on to have three children, at the age of eighteen, before moving to London to work in the theatre. Two poems, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece were published in 1593 and 1594 and records of his plays begin to appear in 1594 for Richard III and the three parts of Henry VI. Shakespeare's tragic period lasted from around 1600 to 1608, during which period he wrote plays including Hamlet and Othello. The first editions of the sonnets were published in 1609 but evidence suggests that Shakespeare had been writing them for years for a private readership. Shakespeare spent the last five years of his life in Stratford, by now a wealthy man of property. He died on 23 April 1616 and was buried in Holy Trinity Church in Stratford. Ideas for your Chatterbooks sessions Get together a collection of books to inspire these activities and discussion - there are all the reading ideas in this pack, plus more from your library. Talk about Shakespeare – find out what your group already knows about him and his plays. Fill in on some of the facts about him – there’s a fact-finding sheet below to get you started. For even more ideas have a look at our 2015 and 2016 Chatterbooks Shakespeare activity packs. Page 3 of 21 THINGS TO TALK ABOUT Going to the theatre Talk about going to the theatre to see a live performance of a play or a pantomime – has anyone done this? Talk about the stage, the set, costumes and props, special effects and lighting, sound and music. (See below the book National Theatre: All About the Theatre.) How is the theatre different from being at the cinema or watching a play on TV? Being in a play ‘What’s it like?’ Will said. ‘To be in a play, I mean.’ ‘Why, it’s the best feeling in the world,’ Richard said. ‘That’s the long and the short of it’. (From ‘Master Will and the Spanish Spy’/Tony Bradman) Talk about taking part in a play. What do you need to do if you have a part in a play? Who else do you need for putting on a play, as well as the actors? Your favourite plays and films What plays have the children in your group you seen? Check out the difference between a play and a film. Talk about your favourites. What do you especially like about them? It could be the story, the acting or the feelings they give you. WARM UPS Shakespearean insults How about calling each other names using genuine Shakespearean put-downs? Just choose one word from each of the three columns below and put them together, with ‘you’ at the beginning, to make a delicious insult! For example – “You frothy cream-faced measle!” Column A Column B Column C Scurvy Lily-livered Toad Mewling Clay-brained Hog Frothy Smooth-tongued Bulls-pizzle Pribbling Lily-livered Eel-skin Saucy Beetle-headed Barnacle Villainous Dizzy-eyed Measle Mouldy Fly-bitten Maggot-pie Gleeking Tickle-brained Clack-dish Fustilarian Onion-eyed Flap-dragon Goatish Dismal-dreaming Rampallion Page 4 of 21 Or, to make ‘random insults’, you could write each word on a piece of paper and have a container for each group of words. Ask children to take a word from each container to create their insult. Then take it in turns to shout at each other! For more Shakespearean back-chat words like these just search the internet! Wordsearch – Shakespeare’s words Shakespeare used 17,677 words in his plays – and he invented at least 1,700 of them, many of which, such as ‘eyeball’, ‘swagger’ and ‘balderdash’, we still use today. Here is a Wordsearch with 14 of Shakespeare’s words hidden in the squares. The words go up or down, forwards or backwards. When you’ve found them, talk about what they mean – you could challenge everyone to come up with sentences or a story using all these words. AMAZEMENT BUZZER CHAMPION ELBOW GNARLED GREEN-EYED LONELY OUTBREAK RADIANCE SKIM MILK SUMMIT TRANQUIL UNREAL VARIED Q C W F B C Q P J F X Z B Q W Z J H V X U B X Z F S P W J F X J X A M A Z E M E N T X K P Q P F V M J Q Z F P Z W X W Q J W K S Q P S Z E Q S D V G B X T F X D J I D X R J F W X J P F I G J P F O P K J P Q J K L I M M I K S G N A R L E D F X S P F M P X V V S X W V X K T R A N Q U I L J X D J S P Q J W G F Q J S F G D R P V J X W K S D X W X F K P E A Q D E I R A V P V K J S X J Y D W P S K F E Q W U G X D J Q E I F J D X Q R D J N W F Q G W N A G W Q Q F B K F R P S B F X E N X F C V X T X S E D W O B L E C K J S F J U F D A W Q X B J R E W P D W L O N E L Y V P S D G Page 5 of 21 ACTIVITIES Shakespeare fact-finding We know about some main events in Shakespeare’s life, and there are some things which are a mystery, for example what he did in the years between 1585 and 1592. Be researchers and ask people, use the internet and read books in your library to find out more. Have a go at filling in the facts in this Shakespeare Top Ten facts sheet and then add your own extra fact. Question Answer………………………………………………………………… 1.What date do we think Day: Month: Year was Shakespeare’s birthday? 2.Where was he born? 3.What date did he die? Day: Month: Year: 4.What was his father’s work? 5.Where did Shakespeare go to school? 6.Who did Shakespeare marry? 7.How many children did Shakespeare have? 8.What did he do when he first went to London? 9.Give the name of one of the theatres where he wrote and acted. 10.Give the name of one of his plays PLUS: Your Shakespeare fact Page 6 of 21 Which Shakespeare play am I in? Here are the characters from eight Shakespeare plays, talking about their part in the play, plus a list of these plays. Can you match them up with the play they appear in? Talk about the stories in these plays. You could choose one of them and read a retelling from the selection in the ‘More Reading’ section below to your group. A Midsummer Night’s Dream Anthony and Cleopatra Hamlet Henry V Julius Caesar Macbeth Romeo and Juliet The Tempest Character in a Shakespeare play Name of the play 1.I fall in love with Juliet Capulet but things go wrong and together we die 2.I am a ghost and my son is the hero of this play.

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