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This activity aims to expand student vocabulary, increase common grammatical knowledge, and allow students a better understanding of important textual features within classical texts. The before mentioned features of this activity will allow students to connect with the chosen text via a relatable pedagogical approach. Allowing students to use the language of the Shakespearean period. It will demystify the language and allow students to become actively engaged with the text.

Content Descriptors:

Analyse and evaluate text structures and language features of literary texts and make relevant thematic and intertextual connections with other texts (ACELT1774 - Scootle).

Choose a reading technique and reading path appropriate for the type of text, to retrieve and connect ideas within and between texts (ACELY1753 - Scootle )

Create literary texts that reflect an emerging sense of personal style and evaluate the effectiveness of these texts (ACELT1814 - Scootle )

Learning Experience: Familiarize the students with the language of Shakespeare and encourage the use of unfamiliar and technical vocabulary.

Teaching Strategies:

Insult Game

·         Have the students in groups analyse scenes from Romeo and Juliet, with the task of finding as many insults as possible.

·         In groups, get the students to devise some of their own insults using the language of Shakespeare.

·         In teams, have the students’ duel using the insults they have created.

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The aim of this unit is to allow students to analyse and uncover different interpretations of the classic Shakespearean text, ‘Romeo and Juliet’.  The unit is designed in such a way to connect students to the core themes presented the text, promoting learning via imaginative application and practical learning. This will help the students develop a unique understanding and interpretation of the text.  The unit aligns with the 3 unified strands of the year 10 English curriculum, literacy, literature and language, and is focused on enhancing student knowledge, understanding and skills in listening, reading, viewing, speaking, writing and creating. This will achieve this through complex, challenging and unpredictable plot sequence as well explore themes of human experience and interpersonal dilemmas.

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Thug notes offers a contemporary spin on literary works.

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Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare) - Thug Notes Summary and Analysis

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This activity aims to improve student fluency in terms of listening to, reading, viewing, and creating various texts designed for different purposes and contexts. Innovation is also targeted, with the goal of achieving an imaginative interpretation of the text.

Content Descriptors:

Create imaginative texts that make relevant thematic and intertextual connections with other texts (ACELT1644 - Scootle).

Learning Experience: Have the students recreate a scene from Romeo and Juliet into the same scene from an alternate time like (e.g. contemporary time period). This idea of a modern translation seeks to capture the attention of the students, better connecting them to the original text. This activity will help make meaning of the text and will connect to following activity that tasks the students with comprehending the thematic elements to the text.

Teaching Strategies:

·         Students in groups will choose a scene from Romeo and Juliet and modernise it. There should be a focus on language and setting. For example; act 1 scene 1 the Capulets and Montagues have a conflict at the local shopping centre. Students can use an online Shakespeare translator such as schmoop.com to translate their scene.

·         Students will then in groups perform their scene to the class.

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This activity aims to teach students the skill and disposition needed to analyse and understand the philosophical, moral, political and aesthetic bases on which many texts are built.

Content descriptors:

·         Identify and analyse implicit or explicit values, beliefs and assumptions in texts and how these are influenced by purposes and likely audiences (ACELY1752 - Scootle)

·         Analyse and evaluate text structures and language features of literary texts and make relevant thematic and intertextual connections with other texts (ACELT1774 - Scootle)

Learning Experience: Students are to identify some of the more discrete themes within the chosen text of Romeo and Juliet. As the themes that are to be identified are not the primary themes of the text, students will have to exercise identification skills. Furthermore, this activity promotes student learning in terms of the aesthetic and moral bases of the text, as they seek to uncover these hidden themes.

Teaching Strategies:

•             Reading through the script and identifying key themes. Task students with replacing these themes within the text and discussing how the change in themes would alter the story/audience. Once the students have identified some key themes, task the students with creating a short film using either iMovie or Vine to illustrating their chosen theme. (Prompt students with suggested themes)

•             Task students with identifying themes within other forms of media. Task students with identifying the same themes within Romeo and Juliet. Discuss how the meaning/effect of the themes differ across contexts/genres. For example,

-          students can discuss gender roles in the play. Tybalt’s masculinity Vs Romeo’s masculinity. Was Romeo masculine?

-          Students can discuss symbolism. What killed Romeo? The poison OR the feud?

-          Students can search for example in the text that reflect Values and doubleness. E.g “Within a flower, lies both poison and medicine”, “My only love sprung from my only hate”

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An interest in expanding the range of materials listened to, viewed and read, and in experimenting with ways of expressing increasingly subtle and complex ideas to create effective and innovative text.

Content descriptors:

·         Identify and explore the purposes and effects of different text structures and language features of spoken texts, and use this knowledge to create purposeful texts that inform, persuade and engage (ACELY1750 - Scootle)

·         Use comprehension strategies to compare and contrast information within and between texts, identifying and analysing embedded perspectives, and evaluating supporting evidence (ACELY1754 - Scootle)

Learning Experience: Compare Baz Luhrmann’s film version with Shakespeare’s original text. Identify symbolisms within the movie Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 film.

Teaching Strategies:

·         task students with altering the traditional texts in some way to allow them to understand the purposes and effects of different structures and language.

·          Consider the text from the perspective from a character other than the protagonist. How does this effect the purpose/effects of the structure?

·         Develop a persuasive essay outlying reasons Baz Lurhman’s version was effective/ineffective. E.g One critic suggest Baz Lurhman’s modern day interpretation distracts from the original text and Shakespeare would be rolling in his grave.