Romeo And Juliet Essay

Romeo and Juliet Project Classroom Values
Some people believe that doing a project on a book holds no value in the
classroom at all, but do they actually know what they are talking about? These
people think that the only effective way of teaching a lesson on a book is to sit
down and read it page for page. The Romeo and Juliet film project done in Mr.
Provenzano’s Freshman English class is almost the exact opposite. During this
project the students learned firsthand what it takes to make a film like this. They
also learned how to improve, change, and collaborate ideas with students from Van
Meter, Iowa who are also doing this project with the students from Grosse Pointe
South. Some students learned how to used different internet tools like Glogs, blogs,wiki,
social media sites, Skype, etc. to create their weekly blogs. Lastly, the students
took on a number of responsibilities when they were assigned their jobs. If the
students did not do the job they were assigned correctly, and on time, the film could not be produced.
The first example that was presented was that the students had hands on experience in creating this project. This means that in the future if they are assigned another project similar to this one, they will have experience and know-how and will go into the project with confidence. An example of the hands on experience these students learned would be during the filming of the movie. They did not know what to expect going into it. They did make mistakes, whether it was shaking the camera too much, or forgetting a line or two, they did learn from them and corrected it the second chance they got. The students also got to experience how hard it is, and how long it takes to create a movie. This holds value in the classroom by not simply reading some lines out of a book, they got to actually experience the book, no matter what the students job was.
An interesting element in this project is that Grosse Pointe South students got a chance to work with students from another state, and combine their ideas. Occasionally Mr. Provenzano would arrange Skype meetings with Van Meter in his classroom before or after school. This is a great idea because it allows students to express their opinions visually, as well as verbally. These meetings are mostly where the setting and plot of the movie were agreed on, which involves sharing ideas, and in the end collaborating the film with each other. This is also a great idea because for some students, it was a new experience.
One of the most important values that this project introduced into the classroom was responsibility. This was introduced because depending on the job, each student was required to update a blog once, or maybe twice a week. The site that was used was blogspot.com. Any one that was part of this project could access these blogs via the class’s Wikipedia. The Wikipedia was a very helpful and successful tool to use for this project, because it is very organized. Some of the tools that students learned to use are glogster.com, the class wiki, blogspot.com, Skype, and many others. This is valuable in the classroom because student have learned how to navigate through these sites and know how to use them for possible future jobs.
In conclusion, this project has many values in the classroom. It gave the students hands on experience, it taught them how to collaborate with other students about their ideas, and finally the students were taught about responsibility and completing their jobs.