This page features projects and activities from Major Works. Along with the details for each project, you’ll find opportunities for biblical integration across each overarching unit for visitors who work in Christian schools. This page is still being built, so check back for updates.
A Points-Based Choice Board in Place of a Final Test
Instead of a traditional final exam, students choose their own path through a menu of projects worth 25 to 150 points, mixing and matching options until they reach a target of 150 points. The menu ranges from a single movie poster to a full filmed courtroom trial, so a student can build a final assessment around visual art, performance, writing, or research, depending on where their strengths lie. This is an inherited project, not one I originally designed, so I'm sharing the shape of it rather than the full sixteen-option list.
A few examples across the point range show how the difficulty scales:
25 points — The Movie Poster: Design a poster for a film adaptation, including a title, tagline, and three quotations from the play. A contained, single-sitting task focused on selecting and framing key details.
50 points — The Visual Representation: Illustrate a single quote or passage and write a paragraph justifying the artistic choices. Adds a layer of interpretive writing to the visual work.
75 points — The Scene: Film a faithful recreation of a scene from the play, with attention to costumes, sets, and acting, running four to ten minutes. Requires rehearsal, collaboration, and sustained performance.
100 points — The Graphic Novel: Adapt an act or a scene from each act into a twelve-panel graphic novel with modernized but accurate language. Combines visual storytelling with close attention to the text's actual content.
150 points — The Trial: Prosecute or defend a character in a filmed twelve-to-twenty-minute mock trial, built entirely from evidence in the play, with opening statements, a witness, and cross-examination. The largest single option, requiring legal reasoning, collaboration, and performance all at once.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.2 — Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.3 — Analyze how complex characters develop over the course of a text, interact with other characters, and advance the plot or develop the theme.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.7 — Analyze the representation of a subject or key scene in two different artistic mediums, including what is emphasized or absent in each treatment.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.9-10.1 — Write arguments to support claims using valid reasoning and relevant, sufficient evidence (The Trial option).
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.9-10.3 — Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences using effective technique, well-chosen details, and well-structured sequences (Journal/Blog, The Update).
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.9-10.5 — Make strategic use of digital media in presentations to enhance understanding of findings and add interest.
Exact standard numbers reflect CCSS ELA and may need to be double-checked against your state's current adopted edition.
The task: Students select from a menu of sixteen projects, ranging from 25 to 150 points, and accumulate exactly 150 points' worth of work by the deadline, with project choice locked in after a second progress check. Options span visual art, performance, writing, and research, and the highest-value option is a filmed mock trial requiring students to prosecute or defend a character using only evidence from the play.
Why this works
Choice replaces a single point of failure. A traditional final test measures recall on one day. A points-based menu measures whether a student can do something meaningful with the text, and it gives them room to do that in the mode where they're strongest, whether that's writing, art, or performance.
The point structure teaches project planning, not just content. Reaching exactly 150 points forces students to estimate effort and scope their own final assessment, a real-world planning skill that a fixed test never asks for.
The locked-choice deadline prevents last-minute scrambling. Requiring a decision by the second project check keeps students from switching paths late and running out of runway, while still allowing an early change if the first choice turns out to be a poor fit.
The highest-value options require the deepest textual command. The Trial, at 150 points, cannot be completed with surface-level knowledge of the plot. Building a defense or prosecution solely from play evidence forces the same close reading and argument construction a written essay would, just delivered through performance instead of prose.
Lower-point options are not busywork; they're genuine entry points. Even the 25-point Movie Poster requires selecting three real quotations and framing the play's tone visually, so a student building their 150 points from several smaller projects is still doing text-based analytical work at every step, not padding the total with filler.
1. Ambition, Pride, and Power
Caesar refuses a crown three times in public, yet the conspirators fear what he’ll become. Cassius envies him, Brutus fears for Rome, and Caesar brushes off warning after warning.
What does scripture say about ambition, pride, and the desire for honor? Where is the line between ambition that serves others and ambition that destroys a person or a nation?
How do Caesar, Cassius, and Brutus each show pride in a different way?
What does scripture ask of those who lead, and who in the play, if anyone, leads with humility?
2. Can a Good End Justify a Wrong Act?
Brutus joins the conspiracy to save Rome and kills a friend to do it. What does scripture say about murder, authority, and resisting a ruler?
Does a good motive change the nature of the act?
Brutus believes he’s acting honorably, yet the conspiracy ends in civil war and his own death. What does that suggest about the limits of our own judgment?
When we feel certain we’re right, how do conscience and scripture differ as guides, and what happens to Brutus’s honor by the end?
3. Words, Persuasion, and Truth
Brutus appeals to reason and Antony appeals to grief, and the crowd turns from one to the other in minutes. That same crowd later tears apart Cinna the poet, a man who did nothing wrong.
What separates persuasion from manipulation? What does scripture say about truthful speech and about bearing witness?
Antony repeats “honorable men” until the words mean the opposite. How can a speaker twist words without telling an outright lie?
In the mock trial option, students argue only from the evidence in the play. Why does honest use of evidence matter, and how does a Christian use the power of words well?
Dual-Role Prosecution and Defense with Individual Evidence Compilation
Students take on two legal roles at once: prosecuting one Macbeth character and defending another. Individual evidence compilation runs alongside the reading of the play, so by the time groups meet to build a unified case, every student already has quotes, act and scene references, and analysis in hand. A structured Literary Defense Counsel packet walks the defense side through motive, mitigating circumstances, rebuttal prep, and opening and closing statements, while a rubric holds every team accountable for teamwork, delivery, logic, and courtroom demeanor.
Age-Appropriateness: Built for secondary students reading Macbeth, this project fits students who are ready to move from identifying textual evidence to constructing an argument from it.
The dual-role structure (prosecuting one character, defending another) works well for mixed-readiness classes: every student does the same foundational task, individual evidence compilation, before the harder work of group argument-building begins, so the heavier lift of legal reasoning happens collaboratively rather than solo.
The requirement that every team member speak at least once keeps the project from letting stronger personalities carry quieter students, which matters in classes with a range of confidence levels in public speaking.
Standards Overview
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.1 — Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from it.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.3 — Analyze how complex characters develop over the course of a text, interact with other characters, and advance the plot or develop the theme.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.9-10.1 — Write arguments to support claims using valid reasoning and relevant, sufficient evidence.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.9-10.1 — Initiate and participate effectively in a range of collaborative discussions, building on others' ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.9-10.4 — Present information, findings, and supporting evidence clearly, concisely, and logically, with organization, development, and style appropriate to purpose and audience.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.9-10.6 — Adapt speech to a variety of contexts and tasks, demonstrating command of formal English when indicated or appropriate.
Project Overview: The task: Students are placed on both a prosecution team for one character and a defense team for another (for example, prosecuting Macbeth while defending the Witches). They compile individual evidence throughout the reading of the play, then meet with each team to build an opening statement, select the strongest evidence, anticipate the opposition, and prepare closing remarks. A written case packet and a live courtroom presentation are both scored, the latter on teamwork, delivery, logic and use of evidence, and courtroom demeanor.
Why this works: Evidence compilation happens during reading, not after. Students are not scrambling to reread the play for quotes once the trial date is set. The habit of tagging evidence by act and scene as they go builds the same skill a strong close reader needs for any textual argument, and it removes the last-minute evidence hunt that sinks group projects.
The defense packet gives structure to a genuinely hard rhetorical move. Defending a character does not mean proving they are blameless, and the packet is explicit about that: justification, mitigating circumstances, lack of intent, and reframing the narrative are four distinct legal strategies students can choose from, so "how do I defend someone who clearly did something wrong" has a real answer instead of a blank page.
Holding two roles at once builds perspective-taking into the structure itself. A student prosecuting Macbeth while defending the Witches has to hold two opposing modes of argument in their head for the same play, which pushes past surface-level "good guy/bad guy" reading into the ambiguity Shakespeare actually built into these characters.
The rubric scores what actually makes a mock trial work. Logic and textual evidence are weighted alongside teamwork, delivery, and courtroom demeanor, so a team can't win on one strong speaker's evidence alone. The "every member speaks" expectation is backed by a real grading category, not just a classroom norm.
Rebuttal prep teaches argument as a two-sided skill. Anticipating the opposition's strongest point and preparing a response before the trial forces students to test their own case for weaknesses, which is a more rigorous form of argument construction than simply building a one-sided defense and hoping it holds.
Disclosure: I used Claude.ai to help me construct the documents for the prosecutation and defense. Claude and I sparred in order to find the best method for executing this project with my class.
For my Christian school friends, opportunities for biblical integration:
1. The Anatomy of Sin
Macbeth doesn’t become a murderer in a single moment. A "prophecy," an ambition he already carries, and a push from his wife lead him one choice at a time to a bloodied hand. According to scripture, how does sin move from desire to death? Where in the play can you mark each stage of the Anatomy of Sin, and what was the last point where Macbeth could have turned back?
Anatomy of Sin found in James 1:14-15
Lady Macbeth and the Witches both feed his desire, but only Macbeth acts. Why does the order of the stages matter, and where do we feel the same pull in our own lives?
2. Temptation, Free Will, and Responsibility
Banquo hears a prophecy too, and he walks away from it. If the Witches can’t make Macbeth act, who’s responsible for the murder? What does scripture say about where temptation comes from and who answers for a choice?
In the mock trial, the defense can argue justification, mitigating circumstances, lack of intent, or a reframed story. Which of those hold up against what scripture teaches about responsibility, and which sound like excuses?
3. Conscience, Guilt, and Judgment
After the murder, Macbeth hears that he’ll sleep no more, and Lady Macbeth later walks in her sleep, trying to wash her hands. What does scripture say about conscience and guilt, and why can’t either of them escape what they’ve done?
Both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth feel remorse, but neither repents. What’s the difference between guilt and repentance, and what would repentance have looked like?
What does the play suggest about justice at the end, and does it match what scripture teaches about judgment?