study guide for As You Like It - Stratford Festival

Imaginative Ways to Approach the Text
The Rhymes of the Forest
Grade Level 9 -12
Ontario
Curriculum
Expectations
Writing:
Developing and Organizing content
Using Knowledge of Form and Style
Applying Knowledge of Conventions
Time Needed one class period
Space desks that can be arranged in three working groups
Materials small papers
hat, bowl or other container
writing paper and pens or pencils
Before you begin:
Read As You Like It up to Act 3, scene 2.
Setting up the exercise:
Each student writes down, on a small piece of paper, two rhyming
words about the same subject. Subjects can be anything, such as:
o love
o jealousy
o the school principal
o student’s significant other
Students fold up their papers and place them in a hat (or bowl or trash
can).
Give the class the Ground Rules for a Sonnet (see page 11).
As practice, ask each student to come up with one line of their own
text in iambic pentameter.
Have each student speak their line out loud; have the rest of the class
decide whether it follows iambic pentameter.
The exercise:
Divide the class into three groups.
Each group pulls two papers from the hat. Each paper has two rhyming
words, written down earlier.
Each group creates four iambic lines of text (a quatrain) using the
rhyming words they picked from the hat.
Each group presents their quatrain to the rest of the class.
The class decides together how to arrange and adjust the three
quatrains to form the first three stanzas of a sonnet.
The class works together to create the final rhyming couplet to finish
the sonnet.
As You Like It Study Guide 10
Stratford Shakespeare Festival 2010