Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet

            Most 9^th graders have the same boring routine of taking a week out of their school year to read The Tragedy Romeo and Juliet.  However, acting out the actual play helped the students understand a real life experience of The Tragedy Romeo and Juliet.  Four things that the students learned were the different technology and collaboration. This project also developed memories and showed the students why this book has value.  Although there are many ways to learn the language, and style of Shakespeare, nothing teaches the students as much acting out the play.   

            The different technology played a huge part in this project. One tool that the students relied on the most was wiki.  Wiki was the tool that let the students check the filming schedule and the progress made during the project. Another tool that was just as important was blogger. With blogger, the students had to keep a blog on the progress they made.  For example, a video advertiser would have to post a video that was made on that student’s blog.  This allowed the rest of the class to see the progress. Although the technology played a huge part in his project, nothing was as important as the memories.

During this project, the students developed many memories. To most of the students, making memories was the best part of this project. The best memories of the Romeo and Juliet project were meeting at each other’s houses to film.  The students will remember this most just because of how fun it was to become friends and get to know each other. The memories from this project is going to be to be the only thing the students will remember while looking back at it ten years from now.  Although the memories were the most memorable part of the Romeo and Juliet project, all the students needed to know how to collaborate with the Van Meter kids.

In the Romeo and Juliet project, the students split the acts with a school in Van Meter. Van Meter had scenes two, four, and six while South had scenes one, three, and five. In order to be on the same page as Van Meter, it took a lot of collaboration.  In order to collaborate with Van Meter, the class used Skype. With Skype the students were able to come face to face with Van Meter and share ideas. The students were able to collaborate with Van Meter and the outcome was huge.  Although collaboration was important to make sure Van Meter was on the same page as South, the one and only point of this project was to make sure the students understood the style and language of Shakespeare.

The style and language of Shakespeare is a very important thing to know as a freshman in high school. This is important because it teaches the students about the time of Shakespeare. It shows the students how the rich lived and what kind of entertainment the poor would go see. Although reading the book helps learn about that timeframe, acting out the play was a lot more helpful. When the students were acting out the play, memorizing the actual line was very useful. Also, not just for the actors but the cameraman, prop master, and advertisers were all involved in the filming as much as everyone else.  These people probably heard the lines from the plays one hundred times so it helped them understand the language of Shakespeare.

In this project the students had to learn many different types of technology. The two tools that played a huge part in this project were Wiki and Blogger. Although the different technology was important, the memories are going to be the only thing the students will remember while looking back on ten years from now. Just like the different technology tools, collaboration was one of the most important things.  Collaboration was mostly seen when the students were Skyping with Van Meter. Lastly, the whole point of this project was to learn and understand the language of Shakespeare. Although there are many ways to learn the language, and style of Shakespeare, nothing teaches the students as much acting out the play.