By TARA HETTINGER
Tara.Hettinger@newsandtribune.com
JEFFERSONVILLE — A classroom filled with fifth-graders at Riverside Elementary School listened intently as fellow classmates took turns reading each line aloud from the William Shakespeare play “Twelfth Night” on Monday.
“Enough no more,” a student read from the script.
“Stop! Quit playing that stupid music!” Keith McGill, teaching artist with the Kentucky Shakespeare festival, said to explain the line.
The readings are part of the traveling Kentucky Shakespeare Festival, which is visiting nine schools in Greater Clark County Schools — affecting 2,200 kids in all — as part of two grants from Indiana Arts Council and PNC Bank, totaling $15,000.
Each participating class gets a representative from the festival to visit all week. That person breaks down a Shakespeare play to allow the students by the end of the week to perform it.
“This program is to make Shakespeare available to everyone and to show that anyone can do Shakespeare,” McGill said. “We break it down. They get the actual language and we go through what they don’t understand.”
The program is going on at six elementary schools and three of the district’s middle schools. Susan Stewart, advanced program teacher, said it’s open to all skill levels, adding that it helps each student learn more than before.
“We’re moving beyond just comprehension to also analysis and critical thinking skills,” Stewart said. “We want the depth of knowledge and to expose all kids to the upper-thinking skills so that they aren’t intimated [by learning that way] later.”
Students said they are up for the challenge.
“It’s sweet!” 11-year-old Alec Oakes said. “It’s a little bit confusing at times, but he just breaks everything up.”
“It’s fun, because you learn different things that you never learned before,” Nichole Money, 11, said. “Sometimes it’s hard. [Shakespeare] has big words and you have to sound them out.”
Money is paying close attention to the lessons to prepare for later.
“I want to remember it so that in high school I can do a play of Shakespeare’s,” she said.
Katelyn Justice, 10, is one of many students who is in her second year of doing the lesson. Last year, she got to act in the classroom play that’s performed at the end of the week-long lesson.
“It’s pretty cool, because I like to watch plays and I like to act in plays,” she said. “It’s great, because in high school we will already know some Shakespeare, so it’ll be easier to learn it.”
Fifth-grade teacher David Shreve said getting kids exposed to Shakespeare earlier than they normally would in school will help them in the long run.
“It’s going to give them a love for literature, especially classical literature,” he said. “If they can enjoy the experience of literature, it will help them later on. If your first experience is positive, you are going to want to explore it more.”
As for whether this is too much depth for such young students, he said there is no limit.
“They can do it,” Shreve said. “Kids are capable of anything if we give them the opportunity to do it.”
SO YOU KNOW
• Elementary schools participating in the Shakespeare lessons are: Riverside, Utica, Thomas Jefferson, Spring Hill, Wilson and New Washington. Parkview, River Valley and Charlestown middle schools also are involved.
