Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet': diary and narrative writing
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Why this why now
This unit builds on pupils' understanding of how Shakespeare develops character, a concept introduced in the Year 5 unit, 'Shakespeare's 'Macbeth': narrative and soliloquy writing'. Pupils develop empathy skills to write a compelling diary entry from a character's perspective, varying tense and language structures to suit its purpose. Climactic writing devices are developed to build tension in the writing of a duel scene, including short sentence structures, dialogue to move action forward and precise verbs and adverbs. This unit prepares pupils for further Shakespeare study at KS3 level.
Prior knowledge requirements
- William Shakespeare was a renowned English playwright, poet and actor.
- Shakespeare lived from 1564 to 1616.
- Queen Elizabeth I then King James I were the reigning English monarchs when Shakespeare was writing plays and poetry.
- Shakespeare wrote a total of 38 plays that can broadly be grouped into tragedies, comedies and historical plays.
- Shakespeare's plays were written at a time when the theatre was an important form of entertainment.
- The Globe Theatre in London was where Shakespeare's plays were most often performed during his lifetime.
- Shakespeare is widely regarded as a master of the English language and an important figure in the history of literature.
- Shakespeare's plays centre around complex themes and intricate plot structures.
- Deep meanings and messages are often conveyed in Shakespeare's plays.
- Shakespeare was particularly interested in the human condition.
Threads
Why this why now
This unit builds on pupils' understanding of how Shakespeare develops character, a concept introduced in the Year 5 unit, 'Shakespeare's 'Macbeth': narrative and soliloquy writing'. Pupils develop empathy skills to write a compelling diary entry from a character's perspective, varying tense and language structures to suit its purpose. Climactic writing devices are developed to build tension in the writing of a duel scene, including short sentence structures, dialogue to move action forward and precise verbs and adverbs. This unit prepares pupils for further Shakespeare study at KS3 level.
Prior knowledge requirements
- William Shakespeare was a renowned English playwright, poet and actor.
- Shakespeare lived from 1564 to 1616.
- Queen Elizabeth I then King James I were the reigning English monarchs when Shakespeare was writing plays and poetry.
- Shakespeare wrote a total of 38 plays that can broadly be grouped into tragedies, comedies and historical plays.
- Shakespeare's plays were written at a time when the theatre was an important form of entertainment.
- The Globe Theatre in London was where Shakespeare's plays were most often performed during his lifetime.
- Shakespeare is widely regarded as a master of the English language and an important figure in the history of literature.
- Shakespeare's plays centre around complex themes and intricate plot structures.
- Deep meanings and messages are often conveyed in Shakespeare's plays.
- Shakespeare was particularly interested in the human condition.
Reading, writing & oracy
Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet': diary and narrative writing
In this unit, pupils learn to empathise with and understand different characters in one of Shakespeare's iconic plays. They write a diary entry from Juliet's perspective, a climactic narrative scene based on the duel scene and begin to debate around a key question raised from the play.
12 lessons in unit
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