Feuds: Skills vs. Content, Montagues vs. Capulets

I'm beginning Romeo and Juliet tomorrow. I haven't written the unit plan yet, because I need to turn it over in my head a little bit. I'm partially following the Shakespeare Set Free Romeo and Juliet unit - one of my joys this summer at the Teaching Shakespeare Institute was working with that unit's author, Sue Biondo-Hench - but need to add some writing components.

My big goal, though, is something that I had an epiphany about in the first or second day of the institute: I need to make sure my students take from this unit the skills to approach their next Shakespeare. It's not about them knowing the story of Romeo and Juliet; it's about them gaining the skills of comprehending the language of Shakespeare (or anything else tough they encounter).