Summary for lesson 3:

What did we cover
– Reflected on last week’s lesson
– Summarised the first half of the play
– Discussed important context (i.e. the belief in Fate, Italy in Shakespeare’s time, the
significance of marriage)
– Worked through the questions for the first half of Romeo and Juliet
– Debated essay questions (i.e. ‘why did Shakespeare add the character of Mercutio to
the play’)

Class report
It was lovely to see the students again today and get started on our second text together,Romeo and Juliet. The excitement that they showed at the prospect of working on this text
was wonderful, and I am very keen to see what wonderful ideas they come up with in the coming lessons.
We began by discussing some key context and finding out how much the students knew about the story already. Many of the pupils had an impressive existing knowledge, and they
all engaged really well in our conversation about key oncepts such as Fate, Love, and Conflict.
This lesson marked a step up from the last, as we discussed material beyond the VIPERS questions in far greater detail; the students coped very well with this, and I hope that they
found it even more stimulating and interesting.
We worked through the questions and all the students (even those who are slightly less confident) gave some wonderful answers. Throughout this section, we stopped to dive deeper
into some questions; this gave the students a great opportunity to push themselves, and the
responses they came out with were excellent.
We finished off by debating why Shakespeare added the character of Mercutio; I was very impressed by the level of thought and sophistication that the students demonstrated at this point, and they clearly are growing both as thinkers and analysts.
I would also like to mention how pleased I was with their homeworks from last week; the students produced some stunning pieces of creative writing, and their summaries were both concise and detailed enough to paint a clear, vivid picture.

Home work for lesson 3:

Choose either Romeo OR Juliet: write a love letter to the other person. Think about what they
would say, how they would want to present themselves, whether they would ask for

anything in the letter.
OR

Summarise the first half of the play in 4 sentences (one short paragraph).

VIPERS questions for lesson 3 to be discussed on Thur