Macbeth: An introduction to Shakespeare through storytelling

The following series of workshops based on Shakespeare’s Macbeth is designed to enable students in Years 5 and 6 to appreciate and enjoy a Shakespeare play without feeling inhibited by the language or cultural ‘weight’ of the text. I have found storytelling to be the best way to approach a text with young students because they engage instantly with the twists and turns of a narrated plot, and empathise with the characters through their emotional highs and lows.

I use Leon Garfield’s version of the play to re-tell it to KS2 students, and rely on my storytelling skills and my own style of delivery to involve the students with the story. I have also threaded quotations from the play into my spoken version so that students grasp and use some of Shakespeare’s more easily accessible language.

This scheme of work is focused on making Shakespeare user-friendly and dispelling any fears students might have about either reading or going to see a production of one of his plays. I have divided the play up into thirteen sections which can fit into four 90-minute workshops. I have numbered and described these in Support Material 1. How the sequences are delivered can vary according to individual timetables and the strictures on allocated time for the project.

Number of lessons: 4