Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare | Complete Teaching Unit with Workbook & Answer Key

Looking for the very BEST teaching unit on Shakespeare's Twelfth Night? This 180-page unit has everything you’ll need to deliver profoundly engaging lessons on Shakespeare’s fun-loving romantic comedy. Capture every student’s attention with daily worksheets that are visually stimulating and intellectually rigorous. Inspire students to arrive at a whole new depth of insight while falling in love with Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night! 

Here's what you'll find in this editable 180-page unit:

• Introduction to Shakespeare's World: The 30-page introduction includes five handouts covering topics like Shakespeare's biography, the language of Renaissance England, the construction of the Globe Theater, how to recognize iambic pentameter, and more. Every handout is followed by a comprehension check, practice exercise, or quiz. You could spend up to a week with the introductory handouts — or skip them altogether. Answer keys included. (30 pages)

• STUDENT WORKBOOKS on Twelfth Night: The 50-page workbook features colorful and highly engaging worksheets on EVERY scene in Shakespeare's comedy. Each worksheet is divided into sections which invite students to engage with the text in a variety of different ways:

• The Passage Analysis section invites students to analyze one or two key passages from each scene.
• The Evidence Hunt section challenges students to answer an interpretive question by finding the best textual evidence to support their answer.
• The Comparing Quotations section invites students to make connections between quotations from different scenes in the play.
• The Discussion Questions section features three higher-order questions designed to foster lively discussions and interpretive debates among students.
• The Quick Write section challenges students to compose short arguments that require the support of carefully selected textual evidence — leading to keen interpretive insights!

The workbook is guaranteed to foster skills in close reading, thoughtful analysis, and lively discussion. It will have your students feeling genuinely excited to study Shakespeare every day! (50 pages)

• WORKBOOK ANSWER KEY: The 50-page answer key provides detailed answers to the passage analysis, evidence hunt, and comparing quotations sections. The answer key is informed by the best books and articles written by leading Shakespeare scholars: Marjorie Garber (Harvard), Stephen Greenblatt (Harvard), Emma Smith (Oxford), Frances Dolan (UC Davis), Amy L. Smith (Kalamazoo), Elizabeth Hodgson (British Columbia), and others. (50 pages)

• Figurative Language Quiz: The quiz challenges students to identify 8 types of figurative language — metaphor, simile, metonymy, paradox, oxymoron, personification, apostrophe, and hyperbole — used across 35 quotations from Twelfth Night. Also included is a glossary with definitions of the types of figurative language as well as examples of how they're used in the early scenes of Shakespeare's play — so you can begin reviewing the types of figurative language with students before they tackle the quiz. Answer key included. (7 pages)

• Analytical Writing Assignment: Challenge students to take their interpretations one step further by writing an analytical paper on Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. Let students choose from one of 5 thought-provoking sample topics — or invite them to develop a topic of their own. Writing schedule, outline template, and rubric included. (8 pages)

• AP Lit Practice Essay: Designed for teachers of AP Literature, this in-class practice essay will allow students to rehearse the "FRQ3" essay from the AP Literature and Composition Exam. The assignment asks students to write an in-class essay in response to one of three recent FRQ3 prompts for which Twelfth Night is a viable work of literary merit. (5 pages)

• Pacing Guide: The pacing guide provides suggestions about which scenes to assign for homework to make sure the nightly workload is manageable while each class session is maximally productive. (3 pages)

As one of Shakespeare’s late comedies, Twelfth Night has been described as the play in which Shakespeare polished and perfected many of the themes introduced in earlier comedies: disguise, mistaken identities, doubling and mirroring, witty wordplay, and departures from reason as paradoxical routes to insight. This teaching resource helps students to appreciate the subtle flashes of humor sprinkled throughout Shakespeare’s play.

But Twelfth Night also engages with complex topics that are as relevant in the 21st century as they were in Shakespeare’s time: gender fluidity, class mobility, the unpredictability of desire, romance across socioeconomic groups, the brave act of standing up to authority, the border between love and madness, and the delicate line between humor and humiliation. This teaching resource invites students to engage with each of those topics in a thoughtful manner!

This unit is hot off the presses! It was inspired by cutting-edge scholarship on Twelfth Night. While the colorful worksheets make it an engaging choice for any regular high-school English class in grades 9-12, the unit was also designed to have more than enough rigor for Honors, AP, and IB courses.

The entire unit will come to you in two separate formats: Word docs *and* PDFs. Because the Word docs are fully EDITABLE, you'll be able to customize every page to suit your teaching style and/or the skill levels of your students — year after year! If you don't have Word, you'll still be able to access the PDF version — which is easy to navigate and quick to print.

In case you'd prefer to purchase this resource on the TPT website, here is a link that will take you to the product page on TPT.

I'm eager to do everything I can to help ensure that you have an amazing experience with teaching Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. If you have any questions along the way, please don't hesitate to get in touch via the email address below. I'm always happy to hear from fellow teachers who share a passion for great literature!

Happy teaching,

Adam Jernigan

adamjernigan@gmail.com