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Secondary education

Connect with other parents whose children are starting secondary school on this forum.

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Original poster

GCSE English Lit Shakespeare

78 replies

helpmum2003 · 20/10/2017 22:57

Just got back from Y11 parent's evening and would appreciate your experience of how Shakespare is taught.
DD is top set English in a private school in a class of 12. I queried that they haven't read the whole play (R and J) but as far as I could see fairly limited sections. The reply was that they only needed to read particular scenes that coincided with important themes.
I was shocked. I had discussed with a friend who is a teacher prior to going today and she felt it was not an appropriate approach for top set.
I would like to hear what your experience is.
Thanks!

OP posts:

DoctorDonnaNoble · 21/10/2017 17:52

Yup, in case you didn't guess OP, they NEED to look at the whole play. Even if they answer an extract question it has to relate to the text as a whole as well. One of Gove's issues with how English was being taught before was that some schools were just looking at scenes from Shakespeare (or extracts from prose) and not doing whole texts.
I would be shocked if students turned up in my A Level class having not study a whole Shakespeare. Our year 12s start with Paradise Lost and Hamlet, they would flounder if they had only done extracts before.
You are paying for this. I'd expect better for my money.

TheHobbitMum · 21/10/2017 18:01

I've got 2 doing GCSE English and are reading the whole of the play. I'd definitely get your daughter to read all of the script

LIZS · 21/10/2017 19:02

Encourage her to read the whole play, it will help her add reference to themes and context. It also is pretty short!

MaisyPops · 21/10/2017 19:03

I agree redsrule.
Most of my students really enjoyed the romeo and juliet question last year.
Social media was full of teenagers saying 'was told to revise love and relationships, fate and conflict but no we grt male aggression. Who actually did that?'

I felt for them. To me violence and gender are key in R&J. They were let dowb by lazy teaching.

bigbluedustbin · 21/10/2017 19:21

They need to read it all.

At the very very very least, they need to watch the whole play. There are great versions of Shakespeare’s plays that are of the whole text & not modified. But ideally they need to read it.

Redsrule · 21/10/2017 19:35

Buy her the Oxford RSC version, really easy to read and visually attractive . Match it with the DVD of the same performance and read each scene and then watch it. Our results were fantastic last year and that is how we covered Much Ado.

DoctorDonnaNoble · 21/10/2017 19:36

I'd say they need to both read it and see it. Romeo and Juliet is not a long play, it is a fab one though. Even when I hated Shakespeare as a teen I loved Romeo and Juliet. Exam boards often do crazy things. We can't 'second guess' them. I really would be chasing this up if it was me.
In fact, I would willingly get a reputation as 'that parent' over this issue.

CamperVamp · 21/10/2017 19:50

Dc who did GCSE English this summer read the whole of Macbeth - all the sets (a comp) did, and went to see a production.

It seems that it is possible to pass without having read the whole thing, but talk about teaching to the test - who wants their children to pass English Literature on extracts?

When I was at school we read at least one Shakespeare every year from Yr 7 onwards.

The connection between Education and Exam Results gets ever more tenuous. And yet so may parents chase the schools that get results, regardless.

Ancienchateau · 21/10/2017 19:58

That's a pretty cynical approach by the teachers and a shame not to read it (more than once in my opinion). Also get her to watch it esp a version that is verbatim (off the top of my head the Zefferelli version is one).

pointythings · 21/10/2017 21:25

Camper my DD saw a performance as well - absolutely loved it. DD2 is also doing Macbeth (there's 2 years between them) and the school do their utmost to see a performance with each year group.

YogiYoni · 21/10/2017 21:32

I’m HOD English in a comp. All classes read the whole play. They also read a whole Shakespeare in Year 7 and Year 9.

Melfish · 21/10/2017 21:34

That's pretty bad. I did R&J at GCSE (admittedly 20 odd years ago ) and from what I remember it was the only Shakespeare play we studied for GCSE (we did 2 books and a collection of war poems too). We had 2 years to learn the books inside out, so we must have read the whole play several times and watched a TV version! And this was a class of 25. If your DDs class have been poring over it for the same time then they really should have read it out loud in class.

pointythings · 21/10/2017 21:44

Mefish going through it out loud in class is one of the things my DD really enjoyed. She was Banquo a lot of the time. I am not sure what that says about her.

Melfish · 21/10/2017 23:15

Pointythings we all sniggered at the unfortunates selected to read the 'romantic' dialogue in R&J- oh the joys of being a teen!
We did a Shakespeare most years at secondary- but never Macbeth which sounds the most fun!

Piggywaspushed · 22/10/2017 07:58

Just to pick up on the 'Romeo and Juliet is not long' comment. For the first time this year , I have been struck by how interminable it actually is. My copy of R and J is a good deal thicker than my copy of Macbeth. The first half of R and J is fun to teach ; the 'downhill' part goes on foreeeeeeeever. It may be your teacher has been put on some ridiculously tight schedule to teach it?
That said a high achieving class with only 12 students in it should be able to get away with the old fashioned reading around the class/ read some at home approach pretty easily.

BeyondThePage · 22/10/2017 08:35

I think our school teaches differently to others on here (and I like it!)

DD's are top set DD16 just did her GCSE, DD15 is in the middle of hers - and they never read the whole text of anything in class. They enact key points, they are told to watch certain presentations of it (they can go to the AV room on a Friday lunchtime) and alongside this

They read at home, analyse, and back at school - present, discuss and THEN the teacher goes through the points they have all presented and adds where they need to look more deeply at the text if something has been missed.

There were 28 in DD16's class (bog-standard secondary) - 17 of the 28 got 9 for Eng lit.

pointythings · 22/10/2017 09:12

Beyond but that is sad. That is doing literature just to pass the exam. I know the Govester would approve of your stellar grades, but there's no added value in terms of love of reading at all.

MaisyPops · 22/10/2017 09:13

beyond
So they DO study the whole text, just some of it is independent study which informs class work.

When I have a good group I'll set pre-reading for homework or set certain scenes for home study and then teach as if thry've done it.

What othet posters are talking about is when schools have a culture of 'you only need to know these key scenes and kry quotations'. What hapoens then is that students don't actually know the whole text other than a summary and a film that's been thrown on.

MaisyPops · 22/10/2017 09:15

Should add, any home study is linked closely to what I've just taught.
E.g. home work - read 2nd witches scene in act 4 from Macbeth. Summarise it. Tell me how the witches are similar/different to 1.1/1.3.
Then in class I teach as if they have done the preparatory work.

pointythings · 22/10/2017 09:19

Ah, didn't pick up the bit about the self study - that's kind of how DD1's A-level class is doing Othello. They also perform scenes in class and are going to see a performance.

Piggywaspushed · 22/10/2017 09:22

I am intrigued by your definition of a 'bog standard comprehensive' if that many students got 9s!

BeyondThePage · 22/10/2017 09:23

On the contrary pointy they are being taught to analyse, not to parrot.

and yes Maisy they do study the whole text I guess, but other people are saying they read through the whole play in class!

DD spent so much of her class time being shown how all of their texts interlinked and related rather than listening to every word - their teacher had Macbeth, the conflict poems and Frankenstein - much more interesting to see the links and differences, rather than read through each by rote.

Those are the reasons they did so well as a class, not "learning to the exam".

BeyondThePage · 22/10/2017 09:25

Bog standard comprehensive - takes students from a broad area, rated good, average rates of pupil premium, slightly above average SEN.

They did better than 3 out of the 7 local grammars - at Eng lit.

Piggywaspushed · 22/10/2017 09:26

maisy does that actually save time? I'd have issues with a) 1/3 of the class not doing the homework . 1/3 doing it and saying 'they didn't get it' , 1/3 wittering about wanting to read it again. It would take me one lesson to dot hat scene anyway..

I do set home reading (for a class that does homework) if we are doing, say, a novel.

My DS did Great Expectation. The teacher's great expectations that they would read chunks at home was naïve. I think he may have read 100 pages of it. Thankfully, we went through the bit that came up in the exam the night before otherwise he would have been completely buggered .

Stupid choice of book: way too long.

Piggywaspushed · 22/10/2017 09:27

We are 'bog standard (well, outstanding actually) and got 5 9s in a year group of 400!

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