Elisa Balbuena - ILA Newsletter Weekly Project: Effective Literacy Website # 5

Elisa Balbuena

ILA Newsletter Weekly Project: Effective Literacy Website # 5

            Folger Shakespeare Library (https://www.folger.edu) is a teacher resource website and library that holds the world’s largest Shakespeare collection. It currently contains about 260,000 printed books; 60,000 manuscripts; 90,000 drawings, photographs, paintings, and other works of art; and about a quarter of a million playbills, films, recordings, and stage costumes. The website gives teachers access to free resources, including full text Folger editions of many of Shakespeare’s plays, sonnets, and poems, and other resources for students to learn about Shakespeare’s language, life, and the world he knew. There are also 32 free teaching modules with lesson plans and linked resources that are ready to be brought into the classroom.

            Folger Shakespeare Library was created by Henry Clay Folger and his wife, Emily Jordan Folger, when they began to collect rare books in 1889. Their focus was to build a collection of Shakespeare’s work and associated works from the same period. The Library opened in 1932 and continues to expand to this day. Today, the mission of the Library is to preserve and enhance their collection, make it accessible to scholars and others who can use it productively, and advance an understanding and appreciation of Shakespeare’s work and the culture of the early modern world. The Library works to revolutionize the way Shakespeare is taught in classrooms.

            The free full text Folger editions that are provided by the Library can be read online or downloaded in a variety of formats, including but not limited to PDF and DOC (Microsoft Word, Apple Pages, etc.). This makes it easily accessible for online teaching and learning, which has become more prevalent in the past two years. After downloading, students can practice their annotations skills with the proper software. If they are reading online, students can easily search for keywords to follow along with class discussion. Additionally, the website provides free audiobooks of Shakespeare’s most popular plays, including Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This is a wonderful feature that can help make Shakespeare available even to students with learning disabilities like dyslexia. Each text links to related articles and other resources so that teachers have an abundance of supplemental materials at their disposal as they teach the Bard’s works. The free lesson plans are Common Core aligned and very thorough.

            Folger Shakespeare Library provides a wealth of resources for everything related to William Shakespeare. Many students find Shakespeare’s works difficult to read and understand. One mission of Folger Shakespeare Library is to make Shakespeare less daunting, and with the types of resources available through the website, it largely succeeds. Although the website is not made with students in mind in terms of navigation and aesthetic appeal, the Library is a fantastic website that provides teachers with literacy tools they can bring into the class and use to make Shakespeare more approachable and interesting to students at any age.