5 Creative Ideas to Teach The Crucible – Including Video Lessons!

With its timeless themes and suspenseful story, Arthur Miller’s 1953 play The Crucible is a classroom staple in middle and high schools.

But just because The Crucible is taught year after year doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of fresh new ways to liven up your lesson plans!

From the Edpuzzle Original video lesson playlist on The Crucible to webquests, games, and bringing scenes from the play to life, there are plenty of creative ways to make The Crucible accessible and engaging for your students.

1. Introduce students to the Puritan lifestyle

Help students explore the Puritan culture to give them more historical context for the play.

Try giving them the How Puritan Are You? quiz or doing a station rotation with stations on topics like the Puritan ethics code, Puritan belief in witchcraft, or a day in the life of a Puritan.

2. Explore ways to compare the Salem Witch Trials with McCarthyism

You can start by inviting students to watch the Edpuzzle Original video lesson on the historical background behind The Crucible including playwright Arthur Miller’s experience with McCarthyism.

The Crucible: Introduction and Historical Background

Log in and copy video.

Then try an activity like a Venn Diagram throughout the unit to have students keep track of similarities and differences between the Salem Witch Trials and the era of McCarthyism, or a webquest to gather historical information.

3. Start a conversation on the topic of mass hysteria

The above Edpuzzle Original video lesson introduces students to the idea of mass hysteria. Try playing “The Witch Hunt Game” to dive deeper into the topic. Here are the rules:

• Give every student a piece of paper that either says “witch” or “not a witch.” That’s what you’ll tell students is happening, but in reality, all students get a paper that says “not a witch.”
• Keeping their piece of paper a secret, their assignment is to form the largest group that doesn’t include a witch. They can mingle and ask questions of other students.
• At the end, ask everyone who they thought was a witch and why. Ask how they chose their group. Then ask all the witches to stand up, (but no one will). Follow up the game with a class discussion – engagement guaranteed!

4. Reimagine the play in the social media landscape

Have students write or record a social media or blog post from the perspective of one of the characters from the play or from the perspective of Arthur Miller on why he chose to write this play.

Share them together in class and allow students to like and comment on each other’s posts!

5. Stage scenes of the play and explore the stage directions

Plays are meant to be seen! Ask your students to act out a scene or scenes of the play, paying special attention to the stage directions and having students use them to make inferences about the play’s characters.

You can also record the scenes and have students give themselves self-critiques.

We hope this post has inspired you to do something different with your unit on The Crucible.

Arthur Miller reflected on the staying power of his play in a letter to The New Yorker:

I am not sure what “The Crucible” is telling people now, but I know that its paranoid center is still pumping out the same darkly attractive warning that it did in the fifties.

We can’t wait to hear about how your students are interacting with The Crucible today!