Getting to watch everyone’s final project was a cool moment to end this journey. I think as we all worked on our individual acts, we became so engulfed in making sure that we were reaching goals. In the end, it was nice to see all of our projects come together and create one big piece of work. I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on the process of explaining the plot of the play to each of our students, and what they were able to help us create based on that. One of the most enjoyable parts for me was seeing the way the kids threw typical ideas of Shakespeare to the wind and used whatever dialogue, action figures, drawings, or pictures that they saw fit to represent their story. Starting the semester with Much Ado and finishing it with our own adaptation was a great way to come full circle

Our final meeting with the students was very enjoyable! We got to look over the script one more time with them and asked them what sections they would like to read. Two of the students were very excited and read almost all of the third party narration for the act. We had already recorded some of the narration but they were at the ends of each scene so it was easy to go in and replace them. We were also able to get all of the pictures sent over and create an introduction with the students where they introduced themselves. It was a little upsetting that it was our last meeting but it was a genuine connection that we had with the students, and one that helped us create a very fun project!

This was another very productive meeting with our students. To start the meeting, the teacher pulled several of the students aside and finished up the backgrounds for most of our settings. While they were doing that, we were able to work on the script a little bit more and finish some things up. After they came back, we got one of the students to read the script, and he did an amazing job, with some great dramatization. The students gave some feedback on the script that we’re going to take into the next meeting. We also offered the students a chance to incorporate some tik tok dances into the script/visualization because of their constant singing of tik tok songs in class and they were on board. We feel really good about where we’re at and we’re excited to start putting this whole thing together.

This was one of our most successful meetings yet! We were able to get good communication going with the teacher, and she was able to organize the students to finish the remaining pictures we had for our scenes. Unfortunately, they were doing this off-camera so we didn’t get to interact much with the kids. However, while they were doing that we got to work on the script and split up what each of us is going to do. We worked through a good outline of what the script is going to be, and we’re looking forward to getting some input from the students next time. We are going to ask them what they like, and what they want to change about the script so we can make sure they’re fully engaged in each step!

Week 4 was a very productive meeting for us. We were missing some of our regular students, but the 3 boys that were there were very active. It took a little while to get them under control and attentive but once we did, we began to make a lot of progress. They had all the action figures and we were able to assign each character to a corresponding action figure. They also had finished a lot of the background images for the scenes, which was very promising! We started figuring out the positioning for the action figures and they started taking pictures of the characters in front of the backgrounds! For the next meeting, we want to compile a list of the pictures that we want, so we could get all of that done on Thursday, and focus on the script!

Our 3rd meeting was marred by technological issues. We weren’t on the call for a very long time because they kept cutting out, and eventually didn’t join again. However, they did tell us that they were planning on getting their action figures for the next meeting so we could start taking pictures for the backgrounds of our scenes. Jack was able to get in touch with our point person to tell the students to keep working on their drawings. We wish we could have had a more productive meeting but we feel that given the circumstances and how far along we were, that we were not as concerned about the meeting. We think as long as the kids can finish the scene drawings by the next meeting we’ll be in a very good place and will have made up for lost time.

Week 2 with our students was a blast! One of the most important things that we decided on was how we were going to visualize our scene. After some discussion, it was decided that the students will draw different backgrounds for the scenes and then use action figures to depict the characters. Of our 4 students, each of them chooses a scene they would like to draw the setting for and a couple of them will be working together to accomplish this. We also gave them an opportunity to draw more than one background in the event that more than one student wanted to draw. There did seem to be some contention around Borachio’s name as it caused unbridled laughter every time it was uttered, so we might have to talk about that. Our group is planning to meet again before next Thursday to come up with a list of decisions we want our students to make for the next meeting.

In our first meeting on Thursday, we got to meet the group of students we were working with. It was a handful of them on the call with their teacher. We got to introduce ourselves and give them an overall idea of the play. We also explained how Act 2 plays out and they showed some interest in some of the plot lines and characters. They are a great group of students and have a lot of energy, so we’re gonna try and find a way to make things a bit more controlled next time. We want to put them in a position next time where they are the ones actively making decisions about how they want things to get done so we can have some more structure in the meeting.