Romeo and Juliet
Tuesday, February 26th by carlaIn the United States, ninth grade is often the year students are introduced to Shakespeare, and the play of choice is Romeo and Juliet. The unit is usually second only to the research paper in terms of difficulty; it’s just so hard to read the English Shakespeare crafted 400 years ago.
I tell my students that reading Shakespeare is like listening to a wonderful song on the radio as you are driving out of range of the station: you can tell it’s a great song, but the static makes it difficult to appreciate the music.
The Canadian Adaptations of Shakespeare Project has developed The Interactive Folio for Romeo and Juliet. This wonderful resource really helps break through the static. On the left is Shakespeare’s text, hyperlinked. Click on a link, and to the right you will see support — a paraphrase, an explanation, a picture, audio, or video. Students can read straight through where they feel confident. When they need help, click! It’s there.
While the interactive folio is currently the “star” in my book, don’t stop there. There are links to several projects that bring Shakespeare to 21st-century students of all ethnic backgrounds. Don’t miss the Learning Commons for ready-to-use activities.
Somewhere there is a student who thought she was going to hate Shakespeare. She’ll use this site and think, “Wow, this is cool. Shakespeare is cool!”
February 26th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
I agree that hooking the students, helping them to see that Shakespeare is cool, is #1 - it is a wonderful, wonderful thing to have happen. I look forward to checking out this website when I’m back at school with wireless (my dial-up at home takes too long, and we’re stuck home with the flu right now).
What intrigues me about this tool is that it doesn’t appear to be just the usual translation - there are actually a great deal of scholarly information available to students that really want to dig further into the text. I look forward to playing with it sometime!
February 26th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
What a wonderful website. I’ve saved it in Favorites for whenever my grandkids have their first Shakespeare assignment — which will undoubtedly be R&J!
Thanks, Carla.
M
February 27th, 2008 at 7:43 am
Wouldn’t you know? Yesterday afternoon, Austen told me his English class would be starting Romeo and Juliet on Monday! So I showed him the Interactive Folio and put the link in his Favorites. Then we wandered through the site a bit so he could figure out how to use it. He is learning to trust me (tough for a 15 year old to trust his Gramma!) about what he will and won’t like about various books and how to deal with assignments, even though he may not like them.
(He hated Animal Farm, loved The Count of Monte Cristo, and “gets” what I mean when I say there are ways to understand Shakespeare without tearing one’s hair out! So now we’ll see.)
Thank you again! Very timely!!