Concordia Grade 8A Language Arts students acted out and filmed scenes from Shakespeare’s famous play, Romeo and Juliet, as part of their unit on the playwrite. 
The Bolt spoke to students about what they learned. 

“During this unit, we focused on the book Romeo and Juliet and did a project based on scenarios from the book. After acting out the scenes, I was able to read more confidently and also learned how to use text evidence to support my answers. I also learned many old English words from the book. I really enjoyed working with my teammates and editing the video. Our group worked really well together and I think we did really well on the project. I also enjoyed editing our video even though it took me a week to put everything together. I think our video turned out great. Something I learned about myself is that I have pretty good acting skills when no one is around. Overall, I had fun doing this unit,” said Bao Linh. 

“Overall, I enjoyed communicating with the group the most through the activity. When I first heard about the project, I was at a loss for what to do, but I was able to come up with various ideas by communicating with the group, giving my opinions, and listening to others' thoughts. While acting, my group and I often made mistakes and laughed, and there were many fun things. I discovered that, though difficult, that the activities I did while learning were worth it,” said Yul.

“I definitely learned a lot from this unit. We focused and worked on different acts and scenes from Shakespeare's play. One of his most famous plays was Romeo and Juliet and we had a lot of fun acting it out and filming it. I can say for sure I learned how to portray and act out the character's emotions. I also had the chance to learn the language of Shakespeare, which really challenged me to understand more about his way of speech. Most importantly, we learned how to work together. Without teamwork and group effort, I know for sure we could've never made it. It was genuinely fun to work with such good peers and I'm really grateful to be in such a great community like Concordia. Overall, this unit taught me a lot and we had a lot of fun doing it!” said Bach.

“I think this unit was fascinating because it revolved around love, which is not my expertise. Personally, the unit started out a bit rough with the public speeches, but as it went on, I enjoyed classes where we acted out the story, especially before COVID. Classes do get more tedious in Home Learning, but it was still enjoyable talking during the online class time. My favorite activity of the course was the production for the live performance. The filming sessions were very satisfying — a bunch of friends meeting up, having a good time, and working together on the film as a side. With that in mind, I think, as a learner, I was happy with acting out characters, although not in front of a crowd. From this experience, I believe that I am more successful in tasks that have a balance between writing and other forms of learning,” said Hung.