YEAR 7 students at Lady Lumley’s School have been busy studying William Shakespeare this term. Here’s a snapshot of what they have been up to.

Why do we still study Shakespeare?

We still study Shakespeare because of the rare quality of his work. We can still relate to his characters’ feelings, despite them being created about 400 years ago.

As well as this, Shakespeare improved the English language. He created many knew words and phrases. If you can’t find words for your emotions then Shakespeare already will have done. This means that we, as students, can read a Shakespeare play and find a different meaning behind a phrase each time.

Although the main reason for studying Shakespeare is his incredible writing ability, his plays still have relevance today. We can use and “steal” his genius to boost our own writing ability.

And that is why we still study Shakespeare.

By Jacob Head (Year 7, Lady Lumley’s)

What have we been doing in lessons?

Whilst studying Shakespeare we have had a lot of different lessons. The first lesson we did was looking into how Shakespeare writes, what it all means and how it was performed at the theatre. Then we got to know the characters of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”. That helped us to understand the story and figure out what the characters were like and a bit about their personalities.

Throughout the subject of Shakespeare we have done quite a bit of Drama and acting out the story. Also we have really looked into depth about Shakespeare’s language, why it was written in that way and what Shakespeare is trying to get across. So far the subject has been a lot of fun and incredibly interesting.

By Harriet Evans (Year 7, Lady Lumley’s)

What’s it like studying a play by William Shakespeare?

Studying Shakespeare is interesting and fun. I used to think Shakespeare would be a hard and boring subject but it’s actually quite cool. We are currently reading “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” which I thought would be a romantic story but has some humour and laughs involved.

We are doing a bit of acting too which makes it more realistic. I think Shakespeare is a great subject and I am defiantly enjoying learning about him and his plays.

By Matthew Smith (Year 7, Lady Lumley’s)

How has Home Learning helped you develop?

The Home Learning on Shakespeare has helped me to develop in the subject by giving me more of a chance to explore it.

For the first Home Learning we explored the choice of language Shakespeare had used and explained why he’d used it. We were each assigned a sentence he had written and then we had to answer multiple questions on it.

For the second piece of Shakespeare Home Learning we got to do some drama. We had to be prepared to film a fake audition for one of the characters Shakespeare created, Bottom. This helped me to know more about this character, as I had to find out if he was shy, happy, outgoing or selfish.

For both of the Home Learning tasks we learnt more about Shakespeare and how his characters would react to certain situations.

By Amelia Brown (Year 7 Lady Lumley’s)

 

Face to face with identity and ideas

A-level art student Georgie Mosley, Year 13

Here at Lady Lumley’s, students in the art department have been working hard filling up our portfolios of various themes and titles.

As an A2 student, we had the opportunity to focus on aspects of the subject that fascinate us by choosing our own topic title.

I have a particular interest in portraiture, and therefore focused on the theme “identity”.

I have been greatly inspired by many artists, especially Jenny Saville and her very expressive painting techniques, which I feel show in my own response to her work.

On the right, is an example of one of the portraits I have been working on, experimenting with the use of colour to create a rather dramatic effect.

 

AS-level art student Rhian Roberts, Year 12

AS part of our AS-level coursework, we were given the starting point “material world”.

We then had to use this project title as a base for our ideas, developing works of art through many different media and incorporating a variety of ideas related to the title “material world”.

A wide range of projects surfaced, everything from taxidermy and fashion to recycling. I decided to base my project on ideas surrounding materialism and ideologies.

My final piece as featured here, on the left, was inspired by the work of artist Alyssa Monks. It is a 5ft-wide self-portrait, in which I tried to portray a sense of hyper-realism.