Julius Caesar Lesson Plans

I realize the school year has just begun, but it won’t be long before even your favorite students will be looking to stab you in the back when you start talking about Shakespeare. These Julius Caesar lesson plans will help ease the pain of teaching Shakespeare to a class that may not be as loyal as they should be.

Just in case you’re only looking for a ready-to-use Julius Caesar lesson plan and don’t feel like engaging in this blog post, download this: Julius Caesar, Marc Antony Lesson Plan

Et Tu, Internet?

It had been a while since I’d taught Julius Caesar and when I put it back in my teaching rotation I did a search for Julius Caesar lesson plans and found nothing useful. There was a lot of administrative gobbledeguk with a bunch of arcane language used to satisfy politicians and lawyers, but not a whole lot of help for teachers.

And then I did an internet search for Julius Caesar lesson plans with quizzes, but the only quizzes I found were ones that had questions from the 70s, back when teachers thought that memorizing facts from a play constituted true learning.

That’s why I threw together my own Julius Caesar unit plan, modifying things I did a decade ago and adding some new things. Here’s what’s in there.

  1. Julius Caesar Lesson Plans

    You don’t need to spend every afternoon stabbing your Julius Caesar lesson plans on the back wall. These student-ready, teacher-ready plans can be used immediately. All you need to do is download, print, and copy.

    Summary charts. Although there’s more to learning than knowing a few random facts, understanding the basics of what’s going on is necessary. Summarizing is also a useful skill. Here are summary charts.

  2. Dialectical journal charts. You ever notice how much easier it is for students to organize journals and for you to grade them when they follow a specific format.
  3. Add a character. If only Cassius’ mother would have done a better job helping Cassius cope with life’s difficulties. In this assignment, she gives Cassius advice.
  4. Analyzing irony. There is plenty of irony in addition to everyone being aware of the upcoming assassination, except Caesar, of course.
  5. Making decisions. If you haven’t downloaded the lesson plan at the top of this post, what are you waiting for?
  6. Analyzing speeches. Antony’s speech is the turning point of the play. Find out why.
  7. Character motivation. Not all characters are motivated by the same thing.
  8. Character point of view. Each character sees things a little differently.
  9. A bunch of other stuff. I’m not going to bore you with all the stuff in my Julius Caesar unit. Take the two free downloads from this page and check them out.
Share This: