A Midsummer Night’s Dream: The Big Question

A 15-page, one-to-two lesson, ready-to-teach KS3 & KS4 Shakespeare, PSHE & Citizenship resource

What can Shakespeare teach young people about love, friendship and healthy relationships? Quite a lot, as it turns out.

Bring A Midsummer Night’s Dream into the modern classroom with a practical teaching resource that uses Shakespeare’s tangled relationships to open up thoughtful conversations about an issue that matters to young people: how does love affect us?

Through drama, discussion, close reading and creative activities, students explore the complicated friendship between Helena and Hermia and consider how love can influence the way people think, behave and treat one another.

Along the way, they investigate friendship, romantic and platonic love, jealousy, loyalty, conflict, respect and communication — while developing their ability to form opinions, listen to other perspectives and construct reasoned arguments.

Shakespeare becomes the starting point for conversations that reach far beyond the play.

What students will do

Rather than simply reading A Midsummer Night’s Dream, students actively explore it. The sequence includes a 10-event introduction to the story, freeze frames and physical character work, discussion and debate, and close exploration of Helena and Hermia's confrontation in Act 3, Scene 2.

Students consider how Shakespeare portrays love and friendship, examine the language of conflict between Helena and Hermia, physically explore the characters' changing emotions through a sculpting exercise, and discuss how communication might help resolve their conflict.

The sequence culminates in a creative written task in which students respond as an agony aunt, giving advice to someone experiencing difficulties in a relationship.

What's included?

• A complete Big Question lesson sequence centred on How does love affect us?
• Clear learning objectives, success criteria and differentiation
• A 10-event summary of A Midsummer Night’s Dream
• An extract from Act 3, Scene 2, focusing on Helena and Hermia
• Practical freeze-frame and thought-tapping activities
• A physical character sculpting exercise
• Discussion prompts exploring love, friendship, jealousy, conflict and communication
• Guidance for introducing the story to students unfamiliar with the play
• A creative Agony Aunt written outcome
• Curriculum links for KS3/KS4 Citizenship and Personal Wellbeing.

This resource helps students encounter Shakespeare not simply as something to study, but as a way into questions they can recognise in their own world.

The wider scheme explicitly connects Shakespeare with topics including personal growth and maturity, responsibility, mental health, forgiveness, cyberbullying, social-media pressures, diversity and respecting difference, while developing students' ability to weigh evidence, debate viewpoints and make reasoned arguments. A Midsummer Night's Dream Secon…

For English teachers, it provides an active route into Shakespeare's characters, language and dramatic choices. For PSHE and Citizenship teaching, it provides the useful distance of a fictional world from which to explore relationships and behaviour.

Ideal for KS3 and KS4 English, Drama, PSHE and Citizenship teachers, as well as cross-curricular Shakespeare teaching.

Add it to your teaching toolkit and get your students talking, questioning and thinking about Shakespeare — and about the relationships that shape us.