So I’m finally back in the classroom after a year of maternity leave and bubbling over with excitement! This unit is super broad in it’s approach – Year 9 and essentially a taster of Shakespeare to build interest and support future learning. For this one our DQ is:

What is Shakespeare’s most powerful monologue/soliloquy? 

We’re about mid way through, we began by analysing some iconic monologues together, then students branched out into their own significant inquiry selecting their own text. This has been a challenge, whilst they’re an amazing class they seem to struggle with time management and organisation, add this to the skills to build list! This week we’ve taken a range of head shots with some very cool props as part of our curation. The images will be turned into artworks with key lines from their selected monologues artfully displayed in the background. Our audience, the local University of Third Age, are joining us next week for the official ribbon cutting of our display and a low tea (I’m told this is the correct name for a fancy tea; high tea was for the commoners. Yes, my jaw dropped too) 

What I love about this project are the student committees. An idea I played with during that long maternity leave (babies sleep a lot, nobody told me that) building ownership via student committees. For this group we have three: the Design Team, in change of taking the photos and ultimately curating the 30 images together. The Event Team, responsible for the actual event. And our Student Rep Team, responsible for making key decisions and and feeding back to the class. It’s not a perfect system, but I feel like it’s a positive step towards student ownership over learning and introducing leadership skills accessible to all. #happytobeback