Author(s): gfh

Study Guides

Designed to introduce students to Shakespeare in a novel, entertaining way, with the added bonus of providing a script for a possible school or class production, Shakespeare's Global Sevens is ideal for Years 9 to 11. Two jesters take you on an enlightening journey through the 'Seven Ages of Man' (birth through to death) in extracts from seven Shakespeare plays set in seven different locations, providing a lavish visual feast as well as an entertaining story. The text includes a variety of local references familiar to most teenagers, as well as slang, rap, rhyming couplets, puns, and Elizabethan insults. The carefully edited extracts cover a wide range of themes -particularly the universal aspects of love and death. There are class notes and activities on language, themes and ideas, dramatisation, and Shakespeare and his times. Because of the large range of speaking parts, the full text could be used as part of a production unit, with groups of students each having responsibility for a different age and/ or set of extracts. This provides them with the scope to explore the text as an entity for study while also bringing individual interpretations in terms of character, costume, set, lighting, props and so on within each extract. The accompanying Teacher's Guide includes extensive teaching notes, production ideas, task sheets and resources related to the major text, as well as assessment links to the NCEA requirements. The text would be best suited to: .Levels 5,6 and 7 of the Visual Strand of the New Zealand English Curriculum (Years 9 to 11) -viewing and presenting; .Level 1 of the NCEA for Year 11 English: 1.3 'Read, study and understand an extended written text' and 1.8 'Produce a media or dramatic presentation'; the drama strand of the Arts Curriculum; .Level 1 of the NCEA for Year 11 Drama: 1.1 techniques' , 1.4 'Perform an acting role' and 1.6 'Understand and reflect on drama processes and performance' .