Advanced Placement Classroom - Romeo and Juliet (Teaching Success Guide for the Advanced Placement Classroom)

Part of Prufrock's new series for the upper level classroom, Advanced Placement Classroom: Romeo and Juliet is a user-friendly guide to teaching one of Shakespeare's classic plays. Featuring more than 50 reproducible pages to supplement student projects, debates, and writings, this guide teaches students to consider new perspectives on the traditional tale.

VOYA

Lampert's set of classroom approaches for teaching Romeo and Juliet is aimed at teachers preparing students in Advanced Placement classrooms, but as he remarks, the materials can be usefully adapted to suit other teaching goals and to enhance the experience of students of varying abilities. Unlike some guides, Lampert's does not aim to explain Shakespeare's play to instructors; instead it assumes a well-educated and thoughtful reader. The opening chapters justifying the teaching of Shakespeare in general and Romeo and Juliet in particular are the least valuable elements in the guide. Later chapters on approaches to reading, understanding, performing, talking about, and writing about the play form the volume's heart. A glossary of literary terms, an appendix charting the appearance of literary devices in the play, and references (both online and traditional) complete the collection of materials. Reproducable materials, such as worksheets designed to shift students away from factual or pragmatic responses and toward well-supported interpretive positions, AP-style quizzes for each act of the play, discussion prompts, challenging writing projects, and creative ancillary activities (including a thoughtful listening guide for Tchaikovsky's symphonic interpretation of the play) provide plenty of hands-on resources for teachers. The text is not without errors, including repeated and inaccurate definitions of masculine and feminine rhymes, but the intellectually rigorous quality of the materials make the book valuable. Even instructors focusing on other Shakespearean plays will likely find inspiring and innovative ideas to borrow from Lampert's rich set of pedagogical practices. Reviewer: MeganLynn Isaac