This unit is intended to be taught at KS4 and is designed to meet the objectives for CIE IGCSE 0475 Component 3 – Drama. It is recommended that this unit is delivered after students have studied Component 1 – Poetry and Prose, and have become familiar with planning and writing essays in response to exam questions.
This unit could also be taught at the end of KS3 in order to prepare students for studying drama at IGCSE.
This scheme of learning uses clips from the following two performances of the play which can be purchased online. Specific timings are given within individual lessons:
Mid-unit deliberate practice:
Lesson 13 – Act 2, Scene 1 and Magic
Mock Exam:
Lesson 25 – Act 2, Scene 1 and Demetrius
Understand the conventions of Shakespeare’s comedies
Explore how they are used within a range of different plays
Evaluate how they contribute to the humour and plot of the plays
Display the conventions of Shakespeare’s comedies on the board (without the terminology) and ask students to predict what they may be. Prompt students to draw upon their existing knowledge of any Shakespearean comedies and the comedy genre as a whole.
Introduce the LQ and share the correct terms for each of the conventions.
Organise students into 5 groups to explore how these conventions are woven into Shakespeare’s plays. Provide each student with a Shakespeare’s Comedies summary grid and ask groups to identify and label where they can see each of the conventions. To help groups focus on one play at a time (and to offer further clues), carousel these posters of the play too.
At the end of the task, discuss:
Which conventions seem to recur the most?
How do they create humour?
How do they drive the action of the play forward?
Next, watch this animated summary of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
In the remaining space on their grids, guide students to make note of (a) which comedy conventions they can identify, and (b) how they appear in the play. E.g. Clever servant – Puck, Oberon’s fairy.
Finally, discuss: Which three conventions seem most integral to the events in this play? Why? Take feedback and encourage students to ABC responses.
Recall the main characters and plot events in the play
Track when and how key themes appear
throughout the play
Explain the links between events, themes and settings and why Shakespeare has structured the play in this way
Guide students to complete a multiple-choice plot quiz to help them quickly recall characters and events in the play (convert quiz to Google Forms and assign on Google Classroom).
Introduce the LQ and organise students into triads. Ask them to draw a large narrative arc/Freytag’s pyramid on large whiteboards, and then label it with the 6 key elements of narrative structure (exposition, inciting incident, rising action, climax, falling action and denouement).
Next, ask groups to timeline the 10 most important plot events on their diagrams (they can refer back to their quizzes). Support students with their selections by displaying the following questions on the board:
Share the following themes with students and ask them to annotate their diagrams (in a different colour) explaining where and how they are revealed through the events that they have plotted: love, power and conflict, magic, dreams vs. reality, order vs. chaos.
Teachers could model this process with one theme first before guiding students to complete the rest of the task independently.
Help students to identify thematic patterns in the plot, by posing the following questions:
