Teaching Romeo and Juliet is one of the pinnacle experiences of being a high school English Teacher. Romeo and Juliet has it all: poetry, love, fate, and tragedy. Try incorporating these 15 creative activities and assignments into your next Romeo and Juliet unit to keep students engaged and help them understand the play more!
All of the linked activities are included in my Five-week Romeo and Juliet Unit that comes with a pacing guide and multiple activities. It is perfect for teaching the play!
Teaching Romeo and Juliet: Pre-Reading Activities
1. Teach Blank Verse & Iambic Pentameter
With blank verse being such an integral part of the play to help establish character rank, teaching your students about blank verse and iambic pentameter will help them better understand the soliloquies and monologues!
After teaching students the basics of blank verse, I like to have students try out the classic poetry format for themselves. This free blank verse project is a great way to get students to write their own lines! Plus, these projects make for excellent classroom decorations and bulletin boards!
2. Prologue Annotation & Writing Activity
Shakespeare holds nothing back in his prologue of Romeo and Juliet. In fact, he basically spoils the plot before he even gets started with Act I! That is why this Romeo and Juliet Prologue Activity that breaks down the prologue through annotation and analyzing its themes, imagery, and meaning is such a great activity to complete with your students before you read Romeo and Juliet.
A fun classroom activity is to challenge students to rewrite the prologue in modern language! Another fun twist on this activity is to have them write a prologue for their favorite Disney or Pixar movie —bonus points if they do it in sonnet form!
3. Shakespearean Insult Battle
Introduce students to Shakespeare’s witty insults by having them create their own using authentic Elizabethan vocabulary. Let them engage in a playful (and classroom-friendly) battle of words. You can find Shakespeare insult words online and share them with students. It is a great way to familiarize students with Elizabethan language.
Teaching Romeo and Juliet: During-Reading Activities
4. Foldable and Interactive Romeo and Juliet Comprehension Bookmarks
These Romeo and Juliet Comprehension and Analysis Bookmarks are so great because they help you pace the drama as you teach and fold up so students can actually use them as bookmarks as they read! These bookmarks contain comprehension questions to help students understand the play, a place to track a timeline of events, and space for quote analysis!
5. CLOZE Summary Passages
One of the reasons why many students struggle with Shakespeare is because of the Elizabethan language. However, these Romeo and Juliet Cloze Summary Passages solve that problem! This resource includes a summary passage for the prologue as well as for each of the Acts! Each passage is summarized and written in everyday language and includes multiple fill-in-the blanks to assess students’ understanding of the play!
You can use these fill-in-the-blank summary passages to check for understanding and reinforce key events, themes, and character actions in each act or as a different kind of quiz.
6. Emoji Scene Summaries
One fun way to help students understand the text is to have them work in small groups to summarize scenes from an Act using only emojis! This can also be a fun and collaborative group presentation you assign your students after finishing an Act.
To assign an Emoji Scene Summary, divide your students into equal groups for each scene in the act you just finished. In a collaborative Google Slide presentation with one slide for each scene, have the students only use emojis to summarize their assigned scene. Before moving on, have each group present their scene summaries to the class.
7. Storyboard a Scene
Another great way to assess student understanding of an Act is to have students work on comic strips or storyboards where they summarize key details and quote from a scene. By allowing students to visually represent key scenes by creating a comic strip or digital storyboard, it will then break down complex Shakespearean dialogue and analyze the significance of each moment. Students can even work in groups to create a comic strip or storyboard for an entire act, or even the entire play!
8. Romeo & Juliet Meme Challenge
Another way to help students understand the themes and character dynamics from the play is to assign a Romeo and Juliet Meme Challenge. For this fun and modern activity, select a scene from the play and have students work in partners to create a meme that they feel best represents the conflicts, tensions, nuances, or underlying tones from the scene. Since students love and relate to memes, this will allow them to dig deeper and analyze the text beyond the surface level. The key for the meme challenge is that the memes cannot be super obvious!
9. Create a Romeo and Juliet News Report
This fun activity is a perfect way to wrap-up Act I so that all students understand the initial conflicts and become acquainted with the characters before the rising action begins! Students can use their phones or Chromebooks to record quick 1-2 minute videos that report just the facts: the who, what, where, and when of what happened from a particular scene. Students can even go further into this activity by playing roles such as characters and reporters and creating mock interviews!
10. Romeo and Juliet Act Writing Tasks
While it is fun to incorporate engaging, hands-on, and kinesthetic activities into your Romeo and Juliet unit, it is also important to go back to the basics. This Romeo and Juliet Writing Assignment Pack includes a guided writing assignment (prompt, organizers, and scaffolds) for each Act.
Teaching Romeo and Juliet: Post-Reading Activities
11. Final Argument Essay
Once you reach the end of the play, it is time to point fingers, assign blame, and decide who or what is ultimately at fault for Romeo and Juliet’s demise! This Romeo and Juliet Final Argument Essay resource includes everything you need from brainstorming organizers to peer editing sheets to walk students through the entire writing process.
12. Timeline Review Activity
To help students review Romeo and Juliet, assign a timeline review activity that requires them to work together and sort through all of the events from the play. Students will work together against other groups in your class to place all of the events in order first!
13. Rewrite the Ending
I’m not sure about you, but no matter how many times I read Romeo and Juliet with my students, I am always hoping that somehow the ending has magically changed and that there is a more favorable outcome. Alas, that never happens.
A fun way to incorporate the narrative writing standard into your classroom is to assign students a quick one or two-page rewrite of Act V.
14. Symbolism Analysis Stations
Help your students understand the symbols within the play by completing a symbolism analysis station. This Romeo and Juliet Symbolism Analysis Activity includes six different symbol analysis stations. At each station, students read carefully selected passages and analyze the passage for the included symbol. It is an engaging and collaborative way to gain a deeper understanding of the play!
15. Romeo and Juliet: The Soundtrack
At the end of the play, assign students a soundtrack assignment. In small groups, students will work together to curate a soundtrack that accurately captures the themes, conflicts, and ideas from each Act of the play. Students can either select multiple songs per Act or just one song to best represent each Act.
As students go through the soundtrack, they should experience the same mood and emotions as they did as they read the play. Students can also write a quick paragraph for each song explaining its connection and create an album cover for their compilation!
Make your next Romeo and Juliet unit your best one yet!
Whether it’s your first or fiftieth time teaching Romeo and Juliet, adding in some new activities is a great way to keep the play relevant, modern, and engaging for your learners. You can grab all of these linked resources in one bundle here: 5-Week Romeo and Juliet Unit.
Looking for more Romeo and Juliet ideas, check out our earlier blog posts about Romeo and Juliet and Shakespeare: 6 Creative Ideas for Teaching Romeo and Juliet and Six Tips for Teaching Shakespeare!
Additional Shakespeare and Romeo and Juliet resources and ideas:
- Romeo and Juliet Character Cards and Character Charts (Print & Digital Charts) by Addie Williams
- Romeo & Juliet Shakespeare Coloring Pages by Tracee Orman
- Romeo and Juliet Questions & Activities by The Classroom Sparrow
- Romeo and Juliet Activity - Romeo & Juliet characters on social media by Room 213
- Romeo and Juliet Activity Bundle - Creative Activities & Assignments Shakespeare by Presto Plans