Teaching A Midsummer Night’s Dream to Year Seven this term. These are my go-to books when planning Shakespeare: Rex Gibson’s indispensable Teaching Shakespeare, which always offers some new idea or insight, and Marchette Chute’s retellings of the plays, Stories from Shakespeare. My approach is to nail down the main characters are, the plot outline and act out some quotes (usually 10) before reading the text. I definitely don’t “front load” context or The Life of Shakespeare.