Wishing for the big picture

Day three went pretty well. There was a flurry of planning between the four of us right up to the last minute. My colleagues wanted to spend the majority of the time on Romeo and Juliet so we needed to re-arrange things. The last minute rush is because of how hard it is to find time to plan together. The teachers get to see each other all day and find moments to share ideas as they adjust our lessons for each class. We shared a wish to have a solid length of time to plan the big picture of what we are doing together.

The mini-lesson built on recent anti-immigration sentiment. Students were pretty vocal about their feelings about unfair it was. I tried to connect their feelings to how Native American might feel, but it seemed to go nowhere. We connected this hatred to the hatred between families in the play. I'm still not sure they see the connections, but just because I don't see it doesn't mean they don't. It could all come together later anyway.

We spent over 40 minutes doing a dramatic reading of the end of Act I. It's truly amazing to watch teachers with deep content knowledge work. They basically have the play memorized so when they perform it, the words flow out seamlessly. They do character voices too. Students take turns at playing either Romeo or Juliet. Watching Dicaprio's version on film brings it all together.