Windham School Department, Windham Maine

TEACHER PAGE

ROMEO AND JULIET:

A webquest for 9th grade English/Language Arts

DESIGNED BY SARAH M. BRAIK

sbraik@psouth.net

Introduction

Learners

Standards

Process

Resources

Evaluation

References

Credits

INTRODUCTION

This webquest was developed as the final project of a unit on Romeo and Juliet that was begun by 9th grade teacher Rick Lawson and completed by student intern Sarah M. Braik, Extended Teacher Education Program, Department of Education and Human Resource Development, University of Southern Maine.

The principal purpose of the project is for students to participate in the same process of literary adaptation that Shakespeare used in creating Romeo and Juliet in order to adapt and/or translate the play for a twenty-first-century audience.

Students will need rudimentary computer skills and access to a computer, at least for the beginning of the project. They will also need to have been exposed to the myth of Pyramus and Thisbe and at least the prologue of Arthur Brooke's The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet. Prior to the webquest, students should have completed reading the play and/or seen a stage version that is faithful to the original. They should also view several other versions of the play from various eras: in this instance they saw Baz Luhrmann's 1996 film adaptation in its entirety and portions of the 1968 Franco Zeffirelli film version and Leonard Bernstein's and Jerome Robbins's West Side Story.

CURRICULUM STANDARDS

MAINE LEARNING RESULTS IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS:

Make abstract connections between their own lives and the characters, events, and circumstances represented in various works (B3)
Reflect on, revise, and edit a sequence of drafts to improve and polish finished work (E2)
Write pieces that achieve distinct purposes (G5)

CRITICAL SKILLS developed by this lesson include an understanding of the processes of historical change and continuity, imagination and creativity, peer revision, and collaboration. Depending on the student's choice of topic, other skills developed may include perspective-taking, empathy, knowledge, description, comprehension, analysis, application, and synthesis. The lesson has been differentiated according to interest and cognitive complexity.

PROCESS

The student's first step is to choose one of the following topics. They are organized by level of complexity, #1 being the least complex and #4 the most complex. I have listed the skills required for each topic, and recommend that students be provided with assistance to select a topic that will appropriately challenge them. To choose a topic and get more detailed instructions, the student clicks on the icon beneath it.

1. You have just seen the first production of Romeo and Juliet at the Globe Theater. You write a letter to your great-great-great-great-great-great- grandchildren describing your experience. (knowledge/description/comprehension)

2. You are a journalist writing a newspaper article comparing and contrasting the feud between the Montagues and the Capulets with the feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys. You conclude with your assessment of the relationship, if any, between feuds, street/school violence, war, or another contemporary form of fighting. (comprehension/analysis/application)

3. You are a television scriptwriter with a terrific idea for adapting the story of Romeo and Juliet to the setting of one of your favorite TV shows. You write a persuasive proposal to the producer outlining your ideas. (application/synthesis)

4. You are a playwright and have just been commissioned to rewrite the ending of Romeo and Juliet. (application/synthesis)

Detailed instructions and recommended web sites are on a separate page for each project. It requires a full eighty- or ninety-minute block to present the webquest to the students and help them select an appropriate task. I required that most of the work on the project be done outside of class time, but that could easily be altered. This lesson has been designed to focus on the writing process, but it could easily be altered for another focus.

Although several students are working in pairs, to produce a four- to eight-page written piece, most are expected to work on individual projects. They will participate in two small-group peer-evaluation sessions and one editing sessions, each of which will be heavily structured and modeled beforehand by the teacher. Students have been given approximately three weeks from start to finish.

I divided students randomly into groups, in order to achieve mixed ability levels and obviate complaints about who is grouped with whom, but this project could easily be adapted for base groupings or other kinds of differentiated cooperative groupings.

I found it useful to provide hard copies of the web pages to students who wished them, in particular those without internet access at home or with difficulties with verbal processing or organization. Some students may require much assistance understanding and/or choosing from among the tasks. It is also a good idea to review students' prewriting and first drafts to ensure they understand the topic properly and are including all of the required elements.

This lesson does not necessarily require an experienced teacher, although the teacher must be able to tolerate a noisy and active classroom. The teacher should circulate among the peer revision groups to monitor and provide guidance. The presence of an additional teacher or paraprofessional would be useful when students are meeting in groups, but it is not essential.

RESOURCES NEEDED

Class sets of Romeo and Juliet
"Pyramus and Thisbe"
Arthur Brooke's "The Tragical History of Romeo and Juliet"
Romeo and Juliet. Dir. Franco Zeffirelli. Paramount, 1968.
West Side Story. Dir. Jerome Robbins. Metro Goldwyn Mayer, 1961.
William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet. Dir. Baz Luhrmann. Twentieth Century Fox, 1997
LCD Projector and screen
Laptops or Computer Lab
VCR/DVD Player

EVALUATION

Evaluation of students' written piece will focus on the writing process.They must complete and hand in prewriting/planning, first and second drafts, and their final piece. Students are graded on how well they use feedback from peers and teachers to improve their piece. Each of the four tasks will be reviewed by teacher and peers by somewhat different criteria, which are listed on separate peer revision sheets. There should be a noticeable difference between drafts.

Click here to view the rubric by which they will be graded.

Click here to view the list of criteria for reviewing each project.

REFERENCES

Webquest contains links to the following websites:

CREDITS

Please see main page for graphics credits.

Thanks to Bob Asselin for helping me set up this website.

Permission is granted for other educators to copy this Webquest, update or otherwise modify it, and post it elsewhere provided that the graphics are not included and the original author's name is retained along with a link back to the original URL of this webquest.

Last updated March 21, 2005

Based on a template from The WebQuest Page:

http://webquest.sdsu.edu/designpatterns/BEYOND/t-webquest.htm