Unlock your numeracy potential with Shakespeare

Dive into the world of Shakespeare with activities that make numbers come alive! We've crafted engaging challenges that blend literary exploration with essential numeracy skills, all designed to make learning fun and interactive.

Numeracy Skills

Get ready to explore numeracy skills through the dramatic lens of Shakespeare's plays. From counting words to budgeting for a performance, these activities are designed to be interactive, challenging, and heaps of fun!

Activity 1: word frequency

Examine a passage from Macbeth, count specific words like "blood", "night", and "king". Calculate percentages and create a pie chart to represent your findings, honing your counting, percentage, and data representation skills.

Activity 2: timelines

Discover when Shakespeare wrote his famous plays and construct a scaled timeline. Work out his age for each play and accurately represent the time between his works, developing your counting, scales, and timeline skills.

Activity 3: insult composition

Craft your ultimate Shakespearean insult! Spend 15 points on words from a provided bank, each with a score, ensuring your total adds up to 15. This activity boosts your counting, problem-solving, and range skills.

Activity 4: globe-al economics

Manage the finances of the Globe Theatre! Create a budget for a hypothetical performance, setting ticket prices for different audience types and calculating total revenue based on various audience sizes. Sharpen your multiplication, budgeting, and percentage skills.

Activity 5: iambic pentameter

Delve into Julius Caesar to count syllables and identify stressed/unstressed beats in lines. Calculate the ratio of lines that strictly follow iambic pentameter versus those that don't, enhancing your pattern recognition, ratios, and statistics skills.

Fun and interactive learning for all

Our aim is to make learning numeracy skills enjoyable and relevant. By connecting maths with Shakespeare and the English curriculum, we hope to spark a lifelong love for learning in every student.

Activity 1: Word Frequency 

Task:

Examine the below passage in Macbeth and count how many times certain words appear (such as blood, night, king) exploring more dark and complex themes. 

Then calculate what percentage each word comprises of the passage’s total word count, and compile these results in a pie chart. 

 

(Macbeth Act 4, Scene 2 Text: https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/macbeth/read/4/2/ 

 

Your Word Find:
(fill in)
.
.
.
.
.
.

Use this space to calculate the percentage and form a pie chart:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here's some helpful tips on how to calculate this! 

 

Activity 2: Timelines

With the sonnet document below, use the above timeline template to construct a timeline of when each sonnet was written and published, and uncover the historical significance on how long Shakespeare has stayed relevant in English teaching. 

The timeline must include how old Shakespeare was when writing each of them, and highlight how many months and/or years apart they are. 

Activity 3: Insult Composition 

How many stars are you giving these insults?

The Rating Game

Watch this video filled with 26 of Shakespeares best insults (which we still use today in modern English! 

Now it's time to rate them!

Get your pens out judges, we're looking for 5 out of 5 star insults! Once you have your ratings, divide them into columns based on your answers to make a combination. You only have 15 points to spend on your combination, make sure they're good! Now that you have your combos, it's time to perform! 

Give it your all ;) 

Budgeting and Finance for the Theatre!

Its time to budget! 

Your task is to create a budget for the Globe Theatre to facilitate a performance. This means: 

1. Assign ticket prices to the different classes of audience member (hint: wealthier patrons upstairs, and the peasant commoners standing) 

2. Determine the revenue from the ticket sales 

3. Account for expenses such as actor wages, props, etc to determine the Net Profit

 

Use this basic budget template to determine the forecast income, the operating expenses and the net profit: 

A = Income B = Expenses C = Net Profit
Wealthy ticket sales Actors Wages
Peasant ticket sales Stage workers
Food/ Props Net Profit eqauls Inome minus expenses: A - B = C (Net Profit)
Total $ Total $ Total $

1, 2, 3, Count with Me! 

Iambic Pentameter 

The Syllables Count: 

- Using lines from Julius Caesar, you are instructed to count the syllables in each line and identify the patterns of stressed and unstressed beats. 

- Then, it is up to you to calculate the ratio of lines that strictly follow iambic pentameter, and lines that do not! 

Use the below document to find all the syllables, and reference the video below to help with your calculations! 

https://dn720309.ca.archive.org/0/items/shakespearesjuli00shak_7/shakespearesjuli00shak_7.pdf