This past school year my students performed two plays; "Antigone," by Sophocles and "Julius Caesar," by Shakespeare. This was the start of a new agenda of bringing performance of plays related to 7th grade History to our school. In the coming year my hope is to continue with the previous two plays and add "Antony and Cleopatra," and "Henry V," both by Shakespeare.
The leaders of the play performances where; Norah, Tyton, and Kevin. Norah is very active in the theater community in the local area. Tyton is also active in the local area performing in numerous productions in local theater. Kevin is a novice with great Bravado. He has been a DJ for school dances plays basketball and is a natural performer.
My students qualify for the free breakfast and lunch program.
Students will develop skills in the following areas; public speaking, memorization, teamwork, perseverance, and problem solving. Through being involved in the 4 plays I plan on performing next year scholars will learn about the time period in a novel way by stepping back into history through reading and performing Shakespeare's plays.
In Their Own Words
Our goal is to have the students lead the plays we put on this year. During our production of Julius Caesar, we had done something similar to this, when we had Norah lead a lot of the rehearsals. However, we would like to have the students take most of the leadership, having our teacher be a supervisor.
Because we are leading the play themselves, we will be able to learn about how to work with people to achieve a certain goal, and we will be able to learn how to work with people we don't like. If the teacher is only a supervisor, the students will have to take responsibility for any mistakes and fix them. To do this, we need books to learn more about the plays and paint brushes to help with the set design.
This project is important for our school community because theater has brought us together before, and it is good for students to not only participate in after-school activities, it is important for us to take them seriously. We will be able to solve the problem of students not owning up to their mistakes, and help them make a difference because they understand how to be responsible.
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As a teacher-founded nonprofit, we're trusted by thousands of teachers and supporters across the country. This classroom request for funding was created by Mr. Cashin and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.