No gimmicky Hamlet intro activities!
Talk about the issues that really matter to teenagers
When I was a 22-year-old English teacher attempting a Hamlet unit, I did what any frantic first-year teacher would do: I grabbed a bunch of files from gracious experienced colleagues and took them way too seriously as The Way to Teach. Included in those files was a Hamlet intro activity that had been passed around online. It went something like this:
Write the names of your mom and dad next to one another and draw a line to connect them.
Write your name below your parents’ names. Draw a line from each of them to connect to yours so it makes a triangle.
Cross out your dad’s name. He’s dead now.
Write your uncle’s name (or the name of a close male family friend) in your dad’s place. Your mom just married your uncle. And that’s what Hamlet’s all about! What do you think?!
This activity was so cringe (and I knew it, but I had nothing else at the time, okay). Of course, not every student has a family situation that can work with this scenario. And it just uses a salacious plot detail to grab students’ attention. The intended gross-out effect worked momentarily to create some chatter, but it did nothing to tee students up to see Hamlet as a complex work of art with Big Thoughts worth contemplating.
My Hamlet unit felt more cohesive and engaging when I dumped that gimmicky intro activity (and sidestepped the memes, etc. that just make Hamlet seem like a one-note portrait of emo-ness) and instead gave students an anticipation guide that framed big issues from the play in ways that matter to teenagers.
Side note if you’re unfamiliar: An anticipation guide typically presents students with a handful of thought-provoking statements related to themes or issues in a unit of study. Students note whether (or how much) they agree with the statement and explain their reasoning. (Some quick tutorials on the essentials of designing them are here and here.) Now, I think “anticipation guide” is a clunky designation (or, as Polonius would say, “an ill phrase, a vile phrase”) which doesn’t really get students excited to anticipate anything, so I’ve used Jeff Wilhelm’s term “pre-reading opinionnaire” or just called this kind of thing an intro activity.
Yeah, I know: Hamlet himself acknowledges that he’s been moping around in an “inky cloak” and “customary suits of solemn black,” but to focus too much on that trivializes the play. The young characters (Hamlet, Ophelia, Laertes, and at times Horatio) deal with issues that at their cores are relatable to everyone:
Grief
Figuring out how family relationships shape our identities
Feeling controlled by parents and lacking the means to exert independence
Uncertainty about who to trust when things get weird
Romantic relationships going sour
Wondering if a show of anger would be effective or make things worse (in other words: managing emotions)
Trying to understand one’s mind and reaching for a sense of truth
Hamlet actually seems to become more relatable when students know at the start that it’s about grappling with change and choice (or lack of choice) and not just about some guy lying in bed staring at the ceiling for five acts. Here are some examples of how I’ve used an anticipation guide to make it easier for students to connect with a 400+ year old play that takes place in a castle:
An anticipation guide should have statements that lend themselves to debate, but keep in mind that activating controversial issues can backfire. It can result in either awkward silence or a conversation that goes off the rails because students don’t have enough information to relate it to the play. You also want to avoid statements in anticipation guides that are too specific to the play and uncommon in real life. Something like “It would be right to get revenge if your father was poisoned” won’t really go anywhere.
A well-constructed anticipation guide is the first step in getting students to understand what it means for a text to be a classic because they get upfront info about the enduring issues they’ll confront (which is different from simply giving students a list of themes that run through the text.) And let’s face it: the difficulty of the language in Hamlet is an obstacle, but students are more likely to understand what the lines are getting at when they’ve had a preview of the conflicts. So give the anticipation guide approach a try as you start your Hamlet unit. Click the image to check out mine:
Anticipation guides are great way to start almost any text!
They’re engaging without being gimmicky.
They don’t take too long.
Most students like to share their opinions.
They’re rigorous: students have to work through their opinions and express their thoughts succinctly.
They also make your unit feel cohesive when you have discussion points you can return to during and after your reading (and that is a thing of beauty with a rambling text like Hamlet!)
Like the idea of making anticipation guides part of your routine when starting a new unit? Browse my other anticipation guides in my TpT store here so you can get a good start to other British literature units like Macbeth, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and The Importance of Being Earnest!