How to Use the Romeo And Juliet Anticipation Guide in Your Classroom
An anticipation guide is a pre-reading activity where students respond to a series of statements before diving into a text. The goal is to activate prior knowledge and surface misconceptions. For Romeo And Juliet, the statements typically deal with themes like fate, family loyalty, teenage relationships, and violence. You hand out a worksheet, students mark agree or disagree, then they come back to it after reading to see how their views changed. I've been using these with high school students for years, and the basic structure is simple but easy to mess up if you're not careful. Here's how it actually goes down. The statements need to be debatable and relevant to the text. Avoid anything too obvious or purely factual. "Romeo and Juliet are teenagers" is not a good statement because there's nothing to disagree with. "Love is more important than family loyalty" works because it invites argument and connects directly to what happens in the play.
Here's a practical list I use. Each one ties to a major theme or character motivation: Fate controls our lives more than our choices do. Young people are too impulsive to make serious relationship decisions.
Family honor is worth fighting and dying for. Violence is the language of this community. Parents in the modern world are no better at understanding their children than Lord and Lady Capulet are.
Get the Full Details
Suicide is sometimes a rational response to hopeless circumstances. That last one always gets interesting reactions from students. It also forces them to engage with Romeo and Juliet's final actions rather than just accepting the romance narrative at face value.
Running the Activity
Hand out the guide before any close reading. Give students five minutes to mark agree, disagree, or unsure. Don't discuss it yet. The point is individual honest response. After that, have them pair up and compare answers. This is where you get the actual classroom energy. One thing I've learned the hard way: don't collect these sheets at this stage. Let students keep them throughout the unit. They come back to the same worksheet after each major act, and sometimes after the full reading. The real learning happens in those revisions, not in the first round of responses.
What Usually Goes Wrong
Students tend to pick statements that are either too easy or too vague. If you write "Murder is wrong," nobody's going to push back. You need statements with genuine moral tension. Also, students often treat the anticipation guide as a comprehension check rather than a personal response exercise. They'll try to guess what the teacher wants rather than actually think about the statement. I deal with this by framing the activity explicitly: "There are no right answers here. I want your honest position, even if you change your mind later." Then I model it myself by sharing a statement I genuinely find difficult to take a side on.
A Specific Problem I Ran Into
Last year I used a statement that read "Romeo's love for Juliet is genuine, but Romeo's love for Rosaline was not." Several students flagged this as unfair because they'd never actually read the play yet. The anticipation guide is supposed to happen before close reading, but that particular statement required knowledge of Act 1 Scene 1. I didn't catch it during my prep because I was reading from memory. From then on, I fact-check every statement against the actual text to make sure it can be evaluated on general life experience or basic literary understanding, not on specific plot knowledge students shouldn't have yet. Collect the sheets after the full reading. Have students go back through and mark which statements they've changed their minds about and why. This is where assessment actually becomes useful. You're seeing growth in their thinking, not just recall of plot points. If you want to use this for grading, focus on the quality of the revision notes rather than whether they agree with you. A student who writes "I said Romeo was impulsive, but after Act 3 I see his actions as desperate rather than reckless" is doing exactly what this exercise is meant to produce.
Limitations
This approach works well for thematic engagement and discussion generation. It does not work as a substitute for close reading or textual analysis. Students can change their minds about a statement without actually engaging with the language of the play. I've seen groups complete the entire anticipation guide cycle and still struggle to cite specific passages when asked. Always follow up with targeted reading questions that require quotation evidence. The method also assumes a classroom environment where students feel safe enough to express opinions they might otherwise withhold. In a large class with little discussion time, the paired comparison step often becomes perfunctory. Consider moving this to a small-group or journal format if your schedule doesn't allow for structured talk.
Where to Find Ready-Made Versions
Several educational resource sites host Romeo And Juliet Anticipation Guide downloads in PDF or Word format. The Quality Teacher website and TeachingEnglish at the British Council both have versions suitable for grades nine through twelve. I usually start with one of those and edit the statements to match my students' reading level and the specific focuses of my unit. A ready-made guide is a starting point, not a finished product.
