Twelfth Night teacher's guide - California Shakespeare Theater

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lesson plan
Overview: This activity uses a familiar, modern social context to increase personal connection to the play.
Grade: 6-12
State Standards: English Literary Response and Analysis 3.0-3.4
Goal: To build empathy with fictional characters by translating their situations into a modern social context.
Outcomes: Students will be able to use basic facts from the text to imaginatively enter into the thoughts,
feelings, and motivations of fictional characters by creating a mock Facebook news feed.
Technology Description: This activity is based on the way a social networking site works. Any networking
site keeps track of the friends you link with, and gives continual updates as they update their activities. This
“news feed” gives a snapshot picture of what everyone on your friend list is up to on the site.
Activity: Familiarize students with the news feed concept of a social network site page, such as Facebook.
(See following sheet). Ask students to create a written “news feed for the play”, as if they were friends with
all the characters and could see their updates over the course of the play. Students should use information
drawn from their knowledge of the plot and characters, and make the imaginative leap to connecting to
modern life.
Share the pages you have created in student pairs or in a group discussion.
Reflection:
• Name one thing you had to imagine about your character that you think is really interesting.
• Was it easy to imagine how the events in the play would correspond to modern life?
• How easy was it to decide who your character’s friends are? Would your character ignore a friend
request from other characters in the play? Why or why not?
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