OCAC’s first ever middle school performance in appreciation of Shakespeare’s writing took place on the 28th March 2024 and was a great success. Getting to the point where ELL students across three grades were able to successfully coordinate and perform different Shakespearean pieces was quite a journey.
The concept that gradually turned into this wonderful festival of Shakespeare Performances originated in a plan agreed between students and teacher in the Grade 8 ELL classroom. We wanted to focus on the play Macbeth as a performance as well as for its literary merits. Initially there were only eight students involved, but as eight more students joined the class in our Unit 2: What’s the Drama?, we realized that the original plan would need to be expanded to involve the new students.
This led to discussion with the Grade 6 ELL teacher, whose students were studying Shakespeare in their Unit 3: Is all the world a stage? It was decided that they too would prepare a performance and we decided that Shakespeare Week, a literary festival for school children in the UK, would be a very appropriate date to aim for.
Grade 6 ELL students chose to perform the courtroom scene from The Merchant of Venice. Grade 8 ELL students had already created a drastically reduced version of Macbeth as part of their Unit 2: What’s the Drama? summative assessment and had considered some of the challenges involved in performing.
As the date drew nearer, both Grade 6 and Grade 8 students spent increasing amounts of class time in the auditorium practicing their parts. For Grade 6, much of the time was spent on trying to get the students to act responses to the lines and actions in the scene they were performing. For Grade 8 students, the main challenge was to ensure students knew when to go on and off the stage to reduce the time of the performance to 20 minutes or less.
Grade 7 ELL were not so involved in this festival of Shakespeare because only three of the students in the class had studied any Shakespeare. However, as the time for the event drew near, several students said they would like to get involved. This resulted in two readings of Shakespeare’s sonnets (the students having studied the sonnet form) and a performance of a very short extract from The Tempest. These students only had one evening to prepare and one practice prior to the event so they really did a fantastic job given such short notice!
Finally, the big day arrived, and all the students achieved a personal best for their parts to carry the performances off very successfully. The audience seemed to enjoy the performances even though it is doubtful that many understood what they were listening to. As the actor who played Macbeth himself explained, “Shakespeare is Early Modern English, but I don’t understand that English.” Nevertheless, it was clear that the students learned a lot and gained in confidence through all the practice and the performance itself. Teachers learned a lot through the process too and I am already looking forward to next year’s MYP ELL Shakespeare Performances!
