Teachers
Teacher’s Workshops
The Great River Shakespeare Festival, in collaboration with the Graduate Professional Development for Educators (GPDE) program at Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota, offers:
GPDE 5129: Writing and Rhetoric:
Using Shakespeare to Build Better Writers
Tuesday, July 20 - Sunday, July 25
10am – 4pm
Includes attendance at all Festival Events
Original: “The man was mean.”
Revised: “The man viciously screamed and stared and threw things at the children as they passed by his yard, his bony hands shaking, his gray hair standing straight up.”
Original: “There was a boy who was fat and fell down.”
Revised: “Tripping over his shoelaces, the boy fell and rolled down the street, the ketchup packet in his jacket pocket squirting onto his shirt, his legs twisting, his cheeks puffing out, his mother screaming, the neighbors staring with their mouths open.”
These are actual sentences, reconstructed by inner-city sixth graders at a public school in St. Louis, MO, after taking a weeklong writing course with one of our Great River Shakespeare Festival Teachers’ Workshop instructors. At Great River, we don’t just produce great plays - we make it our business to understand why those plays are great. Shakespeare learned to write very differently from the way our children learn today - and contemporary methods of composition instruction simply don’t do the job.
At Great River, we help teachers use Shakespeare to turn their students into competent, even extraordinary, writers. Learn techniques to get your kids thinking about creative writing in a whole new way - a way that triggers creativity and activates their imagination. Discover how to get your students to write reports that are clear, thoughtful, and potent. After our weeklong workshop for teachers, you’ll walk back into the classroom invigorated with real world, concrete strategies to change your students’ writing - and their lives.
Some of the techniques you’ll learn:
Getting rid of the “is” – The passive voice (in which “is,” “was,” “were,” “are,” “has been,” and “will be” become the main verbs) destroys good prose. Explore our list of 20 “forbidden” words that, once eliminated, catapult your students into active writing.
Cumulative sentence structure – The cumulative sentence works like an erector set for writing – easy to understand and master, yet so versatile that it offers endless possibilities for the creative writer. It actually stimulates story action!
Style: Shaping the “voice.” What does it mean when we say student writers need to have an individual “voice?” How do we teach such a thing? Investigate the concept of “voice,” and learn how to teach your young writers how to find theirs.
Rhetoric. A naughty word, oft used to rebuke the speeches of modern politicians, the term “rhetoric” used to apply to the craft of good writing. (It made up the entirety of Shakespeare’s writing curriculum!) Learn how the use of rhetorical devices (parallel construction, if/then construction, chiasmus, alliteration, simile, etc.) can push your students’ writing to the sublime.
Suspense – Explore how to help your students make conscious choices about how to keep their audience reading to the very last page – whether they’re writing a report, a story, a poem, or a journal piece.
The Great River Shakespeare Festival has held Teachers’ Workshops revolving around Shakespeare’s plays and writing for six years, and has helped to improve the techniques of teachers all over the United States. Workshop instructors have used these methods in real-world classrooms ranging from middle school to graduate school with enormous success. Six days of your summer could change the way you and your students think about writing!
Workshops may taken for non-credit by signing up directly with GRSF. For more information on this option please call 507-474-7900 x122.
Registration Fees:
For Graduate Credit- $573 through Saint Mary’s University (contact 877-218-4755)
Audit (non-credit)- $250 through GRSF. To audit contact 507-474-7900
For more information or to apply, fill out the form below or click here to enroll through Saint Mary’s.