28 Mar 10
Learning about Shakespeare with my daugther
Sunday brings Shakespeare to my world!
The youngest has a school project to complete.
They had to choose a notable from history to research and learn about. Once they did this have to do a practice run by presenting to the class. Next term they will have a night of the notables parents evening where they dress up as their notable and present to a hall full of parents and students.
Good opportunity for me to learn about the man we have heard so much about but to be honest I knew next to nothing about him aside from seeing a few plays.
All his plays were in 5 acts so we decided to make her presentation in 5 acts as well.
- The beginning
- Love & Marriage
- Chasing a dream
- The final years
- What the world be like without him.
She was: "Don't tell me what to do, Dad" for most of the past few days but today as it started to fall in place, she understood the value of how powerful a good picture is, standardising font's and using a style guide for presentation. This was also a chance for me to share with her how to sharpen her presentation skills by using good Flickr Creative Commons pictures as well as how to show credits for the pictures.
I learnt a lot too..
I had no idea that "Wherefore art thou Romeo" does not mean "Where are you, Romeo?" or how much propaganda he had to write. I was amazed to learn how he was very clever with manipulating historical events to adapt them for his plays and also that he never went to Uni.
It was also a good history lesson into the times of Tudor England, for example because he married young, he was not eligible to go to University. In the old English system you had to be a bachelor (women had to learn at home) to go to Uni or Tafe (undertake an apprenticeship). Now I know why we still use Bachelors of xx when giving out a degree!
Tips for parents:
Try not to let your kids loose on the internet to do their research initially, they will waste a lot of time going through useless information. Take them to the local library and get them a few books and make them read them before getting stuck into the project. Also get a draft bullet point plan for content and presentation based on outcomes required first then let them loose to put content in and research more on the Internet..
School projects can be fun :)
2 comments
Mar 27, 2010
beyondbeeton said...
For a quick primer on Shakespeare in 140 characters or less you may want to take a look at http://www.reducedshakespeare.com/wp/?p=322 :)
Mar 27, 2010
Ashul Shah said...
haha nice find :) - I love it, per example:HENRY IV, 1
Same as The Lion King: Princes have to grow up. Also, hakuna matata
