Hamlet: Activity Pack for AS and A Level English Literature

Set text for:
  • AQA B AS & A Level
  • Edexcel A Level
  • OCR AS & A Level
  • Eduqas A Level
  • WJEC AS

Hamlet is considered Shakespeare’s most successful and celebrated work for a reason. At the core of his famous soliloquies is a complex, thrilling and tragic play filled with grief, betrayal, love and family.

This Activity Pack explores the play’s key themes through engaging activities, stimulating discussion prompts and interesting ideas for further research and analysis.

Ready-to-use handouts cover the whole text, for you to mix and match to suit your class.

Activities include:

  • engaging questions
  • critical thinking
  • close reading
  • pair and group tasks
  • visual, audio and kinaesthetic tasks
  • further research

Accessible for every level and linked to the AOs!

Plus! Answers to all activities

Prepare
Pre-reading exercises provide a starting point for study

Explore
Appealing chapter-by-chapter tasks guide students through the play, allowing them to gain understanding and analytical skills while remaining engaged

Reflect
Whole-text activities show the bigger picture, exploring key areas of: Characterisation • Relationships • Genre • Themes • Attitudes and Values • Writer's use of language • Form • Structure • Context • Critical Reception

What do teachers say about this resource? (10399)

Very well organised and structured... Like how it starts with focus on revenge and justice - good to have really thought about this before reading 'Hamlet.' Clear focus on terminology - needed for top answers... Nice to have tasks linked to images as well as to written content. Draws on information from a breadth of sources. Impressive range of tasks and choice of information... Impressive breadth of activities. Good to have modern quotes, as well as key information, vocabulary and also tasks linked to images... Challenging content, but accessible steps... Excellent resource. Really brings studying Hamlet to life, and with a nice balance of information and activities to secure understanding. Very logical and systematic guide. Critical approaches section is excellent... Links closely to all AOs... Superb resource. Supports study of Hamlet to a high level. Links well to demands of essay questions, and ensures understanding is secure. Challenging tasks, but well scaffolded to secure understanding. Very detailed... A superb resource. Very impressive. I will definitely be purchasing. Covers all aspects of teaching Hamlet, and will be a valuable resource.

N Phillips, Teacher & Peer Reviewer

A carefully constructed resource with a range of different activities that targeted a variety of different AOs that would be incredibly useful to any teacher as a starting point when planning and delivering a series of lessons on this text. Hamlet can be quite an intimidating text to begin teaching: this gave an accessible entry point for any teacher.

Each activity could be the basis for a lesson introducing a set theme or section of the play. They lend themselves well to being adapted or developed: I could easily see how I could use activities either as a starter or as a plenary activity, or indeed to support learning or as a flipped resource to allow pupils to engage with certain sections of the play before teaching them. They were in-depth and could easily be part of a lesson that would stretch and challenge pupils through access to some of the other resources (critical articles etc). I felt therefore that the educational value of this resource lay partly in how it differentiated effectively, giving extra information that would push the more able.

An excellent resource: a veritable cornucopia of ideas and go-to activities to help both teachers and pupils.

J Hathaway, Head of English & Peer Reviewer