Winter break was just coming to an end. With two days before school was supposed to start my dad got tested for COVID but he never thought he would actually get it. Unfortunately he did. Then my sister got it a few days later, meaning that me and my mom had to quarantine for around 3 weeks. I knew it would mean I would miss the start of our PLP project but I also knew ms Willemse would give me plenty of other work to do from home. So let me tell you all about what I learned from my work in quarantine and out of quarantine and how I demonstrated my curricular competency’s. And of course my answer to our driving question! 

In class I knew that my piers were reading Romeo and Juliet and this is exactly what I did at home. The more I read through the more my ability to understand and enjoy Shakespeare also improved. That’s not all I had to do though, I also wrote 3 blog posts about different parts of the story. This is where I think that I most demonstrated one of the curricular competency’s. Analyzing text, Have I expressed an understanding of how texts use literary devices, context, and language to enhance both meaning and impact the reader? I think I demonstrated this very well especially in my final post where I answered the question of who was to blame for romeos and Juliets death. I really drew information from the text and went deeper than I think some people would have. Overall I think my three blog posts at the start were really good.

Where we read the play.

As a group when I joined all I had to do was help make a modern radio play version of Romeo and Juliet. I was put in the producer group where we had to help structure what other groups were doing, communicate with everyone and also do other tasks. This really helped my group members and I improve our communication and teamwork skills. Trying to be helpful but not annoying is really challenging. You have to know when to communicate and when to just let groups do their jobs. Although I struggled with this at the start by the end we were definitely getting better. This is also the time when I best demonstrated the competency Innovative Designer: How might I design a solution to a problem, process, or challenge? this is because we had to design many different systems to overcome the problems of teamwork and communication we were facing. After that I played a small part in our play as I was Benvolio, I though this role fit me well because I also wrote a whole blog post around him and Tybalt.

Benvolio as seen in the 1964 Romeo and Juliet.

Unfortunately because I missed so much at the start of the project I didn’t get to demonstrate the final competency as much as I hoped. This is the competency Take Historical Perspectives: How can we overcome our current concerns, beliefs, and values to understand those of people in the past? Although arguably I did demonstrate this somewhat as I had to understand the people in the play, I never had to really overcome anything like my piers did while making their co hosted podcasts which I imagine were extremely challenging. I will look to another future project to show I am accomplished in regards to this competency. 

Our driving question for this project was How can we present a live audio story that makes an audience appreciate the relevance of Shakespeare? I think we answered this by doing it. Using sound effects, modern humour and the most important lines in the story we put on a play that did just that. 

In conclusion this was a very interesting and extremely challenging at times project. It’s to bad I missed so much of it because of COVID 19. I feel like over all the competency’s I demonstrated an accomplished level of work. I can’t wait to make some more podcasts, and I will see you I. The next project!