How to Teach Romeo and Juliet to 9th Graders

In many ways, 9th grade is a great time to teach Romeo and Juliet—there’s something about a whole tragedy about an unending feud, over-the-top love, and deaths resulting when “they stumble that run fast” that is just perfect for that age.  Freshmen are often right at that stage where emotions feel huge, decisions feel urgent, and everything seems like the end of the world. 

Freshmen are also often excited about the prospect of their first real Shakespeare, and that energy can go a long way towards dealing with the challenges of the text. At that age, students desperately want to feel capable of doing something difficult and grown-up.

On the other hand, they’re often not quite mature enough for a lot of the double entendre in the play, and they don’t always have the skills they really need to read the challenging language. If they see it as just some rite of passage or thing they’re supposed to read because everyone else does, then they definitely won’t be willing to put in the needed effort. They also get embarrassed quickly when they feel confused or lost, and once freshmen decide something is “too hard” or “boring,” it can be really difficult to win them back.

I definitely think that tools like Shakespeare Made Easy or graphic novels have their place. But I also think that they miss what’s really great about the Bard—it’s not the story so much as it is the language, and when we deny students the opportunity to really grapple with it, we take away so much of the experience for them. There’s something powerful about watching freshmen realize that they actually can understand Shakespeare if they slow down and work through it.

The best way that I have found to engage both the reluctant learners and the future literature scholars with Shakespeare is to give them the support they need to grapple with the text independently while also giving them the structure they need to engage with the big questions.

If you want your freshmen to actually engage with Romeo and Juliet instead of just surviving it, you can take a look at my complete Romeo and Juliet unit here—or keep reading for the routines, structures, and discussion strategies that have worked best in my classroom over the years.

Here are my best tips for teaching Romeo and Juliet relevant to 9th graders.

1. Get Your Freshmen Primed to Deal With the Big Questions.

I love freewriting and probably write about it at least once in every one of my blog posts—it’s just that useful!  And when it comes to making a 400-year-old text relevant to a group of 14 and 15-year-olds, I really find starting each class period with a bellringer freewrite prompt to be an indispensable practice.  

Getting students to start the class period writing and reflecting on questions like “Do most teenagers do what their parents want—or the exact opposite?” or “Why do we want what we can’t have?” or “When you are stressed or having a hard time, are you more likely to take it out on others or yourself?” helps freshmen emotionally connect to the play before they ever have to tackle the difficult language. Then, when those same ideas appear in the text, students are far more willing to engage with them.

2. Support Students To Grapple With the Text Independently 

I follow the exact same process whenever I teach Shakespeare, and I’m a big believer in the results of that structure. After the freewrite, we listen to a section of the play together as students read along.  Then, I have them work through close reading questions on the play.  The key is that rather than trying to understand absolutely every detail, I just focus on a few key elements. Once they are more comfortable working through the language, we increase the amount we listen to and the questions start to shift more into opinion while maintaining a healthy dose of reading comprehension.  

While students usually have zero practice with Shakespeare as ninth graders and often little practice reading texts that aren’t explicitly YA, I find that focusing on specific lines goes a long way toward easing their anxiety.  So, for example, when we are in the early days of reading the play together, I’ll give them a question that gives them almost everything they need in the text of the question. Rather than asking something like “How do Romeo and Benvolio differ on their views of love?” I’ll ask “Romeo says of the girl that he loves, ‘when she dies with beauty dies her store’ and Benvolio goes on to explain that ‘she hath sworn that she will live chaste.’ What point are they making about Rosaline (the girl Romeo is in love with)?”  This way, even if students don’t remember who Rosaline is or didn’t catch the ideas on first listening to the play, they can still answer the question.  Later on, I expect them to be more comfortable with the characters, language, and plot, and so I can ask a question like “Who do you think is the most upset about Juliet’s “death”? Why? Quote and explain one thing that character says when they believe she is dead.” And I can be fairly confident that students will be able to answer the question.  Still, I never assume, and we always review any questions students find confusing or that it looks like they are missing as I circulate around the room.

3. Talk About the Serious Questions

Many teenagers are in sort of the perfect time of life to start really pondering the big questions, and while they sometimes seem completely absorbed in memes and internet drama, they are actually often dealing with some big questions in their lives, so rather than shy away from topics that seem too complex or too dark, I suggest really embracing discussions around the serious questions.

The brawl that opens Act 1 begins, as the Prince says, with an “airy word.” And in many ways, similarly pointless conflicts still shape teenagers’ lives today. Students understand what it feels like when small disagreements spiral because pride, loyalty, social pressure, or the fear of looking weak get involved. Once students start recognizing that dynamic in the play, the violence in Romeo and Juliet starts to feel much less distant and much more human. 

It’s also key for students to see that, as Shakespeare portrays those who occupy the streets of Verona, youth who are involved in street violence are not simple, one-dimensional gangsters. Spending time analyzing and discussing questions around how best to end violence, how people get caught up in gangs, and why stereotypes persist around people who are involved in gangs is all part of getting students to look beyond simple explanations and really wrestle with difficult social questions.

Teenagers today are all-too-familiar with the idea of YOLO (you only live once) and they get plenty of messages about how cool it is to live hard and die young from pop music and other popular culture.   While the Friar might believe that long and moderate love is better than passionate love that is short-lived, Juliet and Romeo and the other young characters in the play all prefer to love and live violently.  Getting students to truly question why and when they get the message that it’s better to burn out than it is to rust is important for their own lives and is a great way to connect them to the play.

Ultimately, my biggest goal in reading any piece of literature in school is to get my classes to question their own beliefs and assumptions.  Shakespeare wrote about love, family dynamics, death, violence, revenge, parenting, teenage rebellion, street life, and about what happens when we rush through decisions without slowing down to think things through.  These are all important issues in our students’ lives, and they are topics which warrant reflection and thought.  

Often, I wish that the story of the tragic deaths of the two teenagers wasn’t so relevant to my students’ lives, but the fact is that kids today deal with many of the same issues that kids dealt with hundreds of years ago.   They might not have such tragic outcomes, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t warrant serious discussion and examination.  The more we get students to understand how and why any literature is relevant to their own lives, the more we can get them to work to develop their own ideas and opinions, and the more resilient they will be when they go out into that big world.

If you want to spend less time translating Shakespeare and more time helping freshmen wrestle with the big questions in the play, you can take a look at my full Romeo and Juliet unit here.