LEARNING NARRATIVE: THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE

Andrew Wilkens, Year nine, male, student in a low socioeconomic school.

This is a cut down and edited copy of his student blog for the unit of work

Section 1

I dont like Shakespeare, its old, something my mum watches. Why do we have to learn all this news
stuff it too hard. I dont want to look up some dead old guy who cant speak proper.

Shakespeare got to make up his own words and he talks funny cause they didnt want to write out
the pages lots sir said they made it rhyme and stuff so its easy for the actors to read but I recken its
harder.

I was looking at him in google and they also dress funny.

In Shakespeare times, there were no girl actors so the boys had to kiss the boys. A lot of people were
poor and couldnt read and went to the plays like it was t.v.

He was lucky in old times there was no copywriter stuff, he could just make stuff up steal it off
others and say it was his. Miss said we cant do that

Why study Shakespeare? Because old people like him and cause he wrote a bunch of stuff which is
real good. I liked his r&j movie with the guns and drugs, but it still sounded weird.

Is Shakespeare relevant to me in todays times? I dont think so, old guys arent allowed to have sex
with young girls n we dont really do that stuff anymore. If I want to talk to someone I just call their
mobile, not throw rocks at her window.

Section 2

The story is about a bloke who gets the hots for a young chick but her parents dont want him
hanging around her so he sneaks over to hers when they are having a party and chats her up and
then he keeps trying to see her and decides to run away with her. They get married but he has to get
out of town cause her cuz is trying to kill him so Juliet pretends to die so she can get away from her
parents then Romeo thinks she is dead and takes poison but she wakes up and kills herself for real.

Matt got in trouble because he was making the characters have sex on the board, but they do have
sex so he shouldnt in trouble. The game was fun, there are lots of people in the play, lots of cousins
someone said it was like Burrages family cause he has lots of cousins, and then we talked about how
its different cultures and that cause the doctors were not good, lots of people died so people had
lots of kids cause they kept dying. I got a bunch of words to look up for class, sir said I can use
google and print out the answers. But he said that I have to think about where I get them from like
Wikipedia is bad because people change stuff so its wrong. We talked about trump and his fake
news about how people just make stuff up and stick in on the internet.

We put the words we looked up together in a sentence some of it sounded stupid but some sound
more like normal talk. Miss said we have to do this when we are doing the play so that we know
what we are saying.

Section 3

I like how lots of people die and the fights, I dont get why he kills himself at the end or why they
dont just run away. There is this place on the internet that tells us what is happening in the play, I
used it to help work out what my part said.

We got an assignment; we have to send emails from Romeo and Juliet in our own language. I wanted
it to be texts but sir said it needs to be emails and no pictures or anagrams or text speech.

Section 4

Because people were poor and there was no t.v., people went to plays so Shakespeare is like a
Hollywood star. He wrote about far off places where people didnt get to go, because he could make
up stories and no one knew if they were true on not.

People liked violence so there is lots of killing in his plays. They all have love stories in them, which is
weird because they are all men actors. He even put on plays for the queen at the place.

10

We did one of the fights from the play, it was hard to remember the lines an i felt stupid pretending
to have a sword so we made it a proper fight and sir showed us diffrent ways to make punches to
look real and how to fall down.

11

We did the fight scene again but this time we did it real slow. The way we said things didnt sound
right and we did it faster and it felt more like a real fight. I think when there is lots of action
happening that the words need to be said quickly, and in the boarding bits you can slow down.
We learnt tat this is called timing and that how you say the words changes how the scene goes. That
if we stress words it changes the meaning and if we say some quietly it changes the play. And those
words can be said different ways so they mean different things.

12

What is a sonnet? Its like a poem that does not make sense. He uses a thing called iambic
pentameter that is suppose to make it easier to remember and say. The words are put in a special
order so they fit.

We watched a video of a pirate walking in iambic pentameter.

13

Doing assignment email : in mine Romeo is up for it but Juliet is like go away you skank, but she
actually really likes it

14

Working on assignment in class, it has to many words

Section 5

15

I didnt know there were so many movies based on Shakespeare plays. Some of them you cant even
tell. We looked at there only being 7 stories in the whole world and that all stories like movies are
made up of these seven stories.

We got given our assignment we have to make a 5 minute play in normal language based on a scene
from Romeo and Juliet. We have to set it in a place we know.

16

We have decided on a location for our scene, we got given the part where the cousin is looking for
Romeo but he finds Romeos cousin and kills him and he puts a curse on him. Sir said he will set the
projector up with a background and we can act in front of it like we are on location, it can even have
movement and sound.

17

Working on play

18

We have written a script its hard to remember all the lines ......

19

We put on our show today, I forgot some of my lines and Burrage didnt want to do it but he did.
It was fun, and we got good feedback from the class when we were done. Most people liked it,
someone said we should have had less fighting and could have made how he died funny