Assign this text to deeply engage your students!

Actively Learn provides free ELA, science, and social studies digital content—short stories, primary sources, textbook sections, science articles, novels, videos, and more—and embeds them with assignments aligned to standards for all 50 states that you can assign immediately or customize for your students.

Whether you’re looking for “The Tell-Tale Heart,” The Hate U Give, “The Gettysburg Address,” or current science articles and simulations, Actively Learn is the free go-to source to help you guide your students' growth in critical thinking all year.

Teaching Sonnet 130

Sonnet 130

Shakespeare's Sonnet 130 mocks the conventions of the showy and flowery courtly sonnets in its realistic portrayal of his mistress. The last historian sonnet 130 satirizes the concept of ideal beauty that was a convention of literature and art in general during the Elizabethan era. Influences originating with the poetry of ancient Greece and Rome had established a tradition of this, which continued in Europe's customs of courtly love and in courtly poetry, and the work of poets such as Petrarch.

William Shakespeare
Public Domain

ESSENTIAL QUESTION:

Why does Shakespeare choose to describe what his mistress is 'not' like?
STANDARDS:
RL.1 - Meaning & Evidence, RL.2 - Main Ideas, RL.3 - Characters & Plot

DEPTH OF KNOWLEDGE (DOK) LEVELS:

1,2
Assign this text to your students for free!