Working Together Brings Shakespeare to Life

April 2014

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Crook Primary School pupils delivered an excellent workshop to our Year 7's

Our Year 7 students have been working alongside Year 5's at Crook Primary School on a collaborative Royal Shakespeare Company project called "Shakespeare Flash Mob'. The project aims to promote the enjoyment of Shakespeare and to encourage schools to work together and be mentors to each other.

Initially, our Year 7 students visited Crook Primary and performed the opening scene of Macbeth, which they then taught to the Year 5's during an afternoon workshop. Together, they then gave a fantastic performance to primary pupil parents in the playground at Crook.

Crook Primary students then visited King James and performed As You Like It, pictured here, after which they delivered a workshop to our Year 7's. This enabled another successful collaborative performance in an assembly for the whole of Year 7.

The project has created some wonderful working relationships between students of different age groups and it has been inspiring to see students have fun with, and be engaged by Shakespeare, as it is often seen as challenging and inaccessible. The atmosphere on both days was extremely positive and there was a real sense of pride and achievement from both groups of students.

Mrs Dawson, one of our English teachers who co-ordinated the project, is delighted with the response from students. She said, "The way they have since dealt with difficult themes such as power and mortality, shows great maturity. Thanks to the project our students are now analysing Macbeth at a very sophisticated level without realising they are doing it. This is all because they have engaged with the play and this will benefit them greatly."

This was a fantastic learning opportunity, organised by the specialist Shakespeare teacher at Crook Primary School, Barbara Gentles. A cluster of 10 schools across the county were involved in the project, however King James was the only secondary school. We are proud to have taken part.