Year 9 students explore Romeo and Juliet through viewing and choral readings of the play. They develop their understanding of context, character and Shakespeare's use of figurative language through character and scene analyses, understanding connotation and denotation, and performances of scenes in different contexts.
Context, Character, Connotation, Analysis
Australian Curriculum Year 9 Achievement Standard
Receptive modes (listening, reading and viewing)
By the end of Year 9, students analyse the ways that text structures can be manipulated for effect. They analyse and explain how images, vocabulary choices and language features distinguish the work of individual authors.
They evaluate and integrate ideas and information from texts to form their own interpretations. They select evidence from texts to analyse and explain how language choices and conventions are used to influence an audience. They listen for ways texts position an audience.
Productive modes (speaking, writing and creating)
Students understand how to use a variety of language features to create different levels of meaning. They understand how interpretations can vary by comparing their responses to texts to the responses of others. In creating texts, students demonstrate how manipulating language features and images can create innovative texts.
Students create texts that respond to issues, interpreting and integrating ideas from other texts. They make presentations and contribute actively to class and group discussions, comparing and evaluating responses to ideas and issues. They edit for effect, selecting vocabulary and grammar that contribute to the precision and persuasiveness of texts and using accurate spelling and punctuation.
English Textual Concepts (Stage 5)
Context: Students understand how the complexity of their own and of other contexts shape composition and response to texts. Students learn that:
Character : Students understand that characters can represent types of people, ideas and values. Students learn that:
Representation: Students understand that representation embeds attitudes, beliefs and values. Students learn that:
Learning Intention: To explore where you stand on a range of issues.
Success Criteria:
Reflect on where you stood in the Cross the Line activity:
Comment: Write a reflection addressing the following points and comment on 1-3 comments of other students:
Possible Comment Starters:
Purpose: To engage students in the unit through an active learning strategy.
Teaching Tips:
Cross the Line
Reflections
Reflections are included in a CGScholar learning module through comments so that students share their ideas, collaborate with others, write for a real audience, and are active knowledge makers who contribute knowledge to the learning community and who develop deep understanding of the concepts being studied
Learning intention: To understand that our own context shapes our responses to a text.
Success Criteria:
Look at posters of various productions of Romeo and Juliet. What do you see? How are the ideas in the play represented? Consider characters, actions and interactions, symbols, colours, shots and angles of the images, and layout.
Which poster would be most popular in:
Comment: Which one was your favourite poster? Which production would interest you most? Explain why by referring to how the ideas, characters and setting are represented. Why do people in different times respond differently?
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Possible Comment Starters:
Purpose: To engage students further through a range of images/production posters of the play and to introduce the concept of context.
Teaching Tips
Refer to the concept of representation as students respond to and interpret the ideas, characters and settings in the posters. Students will understand the concept of representation from other units of study.
Use Think-Pair-Shares to scaffold thinking before students post their comments.
Learning Intention: To develop an understanding of the characters, setting and action in Romeo and Juliet.
Success Criteria:
As you listen to the plot summary read by your teacher, put the Theme Cards into an order that matches the plot summary. Everyone’s order may be different. Take a photo of your theme cards.
Think-Pair-Share: How is your order of cards the same or different?
Think-Pair-Square: How is your order of cards the same or different?
Reflect: Post an update where you share the photo of your order of theme cards. Write a comment where you discuss:
Then comment on 1-3 updates posted by other students.
Purpose: This activity focuses students on listening to a summary of the play and at the same time, thinking about the action, setting, characters and themes of the play.
Teaching Tips:
There is no correct answer. Students will organise the cards differently. Stop at various times for students to place some cards down or to rearrange their cards.
The Royal Shakespeare Company: Plot summary
Learning Intention: To understand and discuss that characters may be a medium through which ideas and societal attitudes and values are conveyed.
Success Criteria:
Your teacher will choose a character for you to analyse. Describe the character at three different points in the play. Include quotes. Does the character change? Why/why not? What does the character’s actions and attitudes tell us about the society of Verona’s attitudes and its values at these three points?
Consider attitudes to violence, women, the law, sex, love, marriage, religion, and power.
Purpose: This enables students to demonstrate their understanding of character through a peer reviewed writing activity.
Teaching Tips:
Set a short timeframe for the completion of the project - e.g. 2 days to write and then start peer review on the third day.
Learning Intention: To understand that texts may be responded to and composed differently in different contexts.
In groups you are a small acting/directing team. You have been asked to perform a scene from Romeo and Juliet. Different groups have been asked to perform the scene in different contexts.
Comment: How did the context affect your performance.? What did your audience respond to? What is important to you as the composer in this context?
Read other students' comments and comment on 1-3, explaining similarities and differences between your performances.
Purpose: Students deepen their understanding of the concept of context.
Learning Intention: To understand the difference between denotation and connotation.
Success Criteria:
Connotation: all the social, cultural, and historical meanings that are added to a sign's literal meaning such as a broken relationship, a childhood memory (e.g. cricket in the backyard and breaking a window), being bullied (throwing stones).
Choose any image that appeals to or you think is important.
Create an update with the image. Explain its denotation and your connotations.
Look at the updates of 1-3 other students and comment by adding other connotations that you have for their image.
Purpose: This update deepens students' understanding of the concept of connotation through active knowledge making. Students select an image that is important or has particular connotations for them.
Learning Intention: To understand how connotation and denotation add to the characters, setting and/or action of the play.
Success Criteria:
Favourite Lines Analysis
Now that you understand what figurative language is:
Here is an example:
Quote: II. iv. 90-95
[Enter Nurse and PETER]
MERCUTIO: A sail, a sail!
BENVOLIO: Two, two; a shirt and a smock.
NURSE: Peter!
PETER: Anon!
NURSE: My fan, Peter.
MERCUTIO: Good Peter, to hide her face; for her fan's the fairer face.
Denotation: In this scene, the nurse and her servant, Peter, are looking for Romeo to tell him to meet Juliet that afternoon to be married secretly. Mercutio calls out "A sail, a sail" to make fun of the nurse and her voluminous clothing. He also makes fun of her looks by saying the fan is more attractive than her face.
Connotation: Mercutio uses sail as a metaphor to suggest the nurse's clothing is like a ship's sail blowing in the wind. There is alliteration in the three words starting with "s" - sail, shirt and smock, and in the three words starting with "f" - fan, fairer, face. The nurse is a comedic character here and Benvolio and Mercutio make fun of her through the langauge in their jokes.
Characterisation: The scene shows a lot about character as Benvolio and Mercutio like to joke around and can even be cruel in how they mock the nurse. The nurse jokes back with them but she is also loyal to Juliet and is determined to give her message to Romeo.
Action of the Play: The scene is also important to the action of the play as the message to Romeo is crucial for the wedding of Romeo and Juliet to take place which in turn creates further complications in the plot.
Setting: The setting is in the streets of Verona where the young people hang out and get themselves into mischief by antagonising people or getting into fights. The scene, then, reveals more about the volatile atmosphere of Verona.
Final comment: The metapho of a ship's sail does add humour to the scene and humour does engage the audience. The way that Benvolio and Mercutio mock the nurse also reveals attitudes of the upper class to lower class people and also negative attitudes to women.
Purpose: To reflect on understanding of denotation and connotation and how it contributes to the action, characters and/or setting.
Teaching Tips:
The prompt has a number of questions so the student comments should be quite long, including a quote from the play. Images are not required. Students may create an update or write their analysis in the comment box.
Title: Surreal image of Romeo and Juliet by Frank Kortan - Wikimedia Creative Commons (Source); Fig. 1: Where do you stand? (Source); Fig. 1.2: By Francesco Hayez - The Yorck Project (2002) 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei (DVD-ROM), distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH. ISBN: 3936122202., Public Domain (Source); Fig. 2.1: Reconciliation at the end of the play (Source); Fig. 3: Verona (Source); Fig. 4: Shakespeare's stage (Source); 5.1: Broken glass (Source); 5.2: The Nurse, Peter, Benvolio, Romeo and Mercutio (Source).