“Show me a family of readers, and I will show you the people who move the world.”
– Napoléon Bonaparte
Budling reading skills and cultivating a love for reading early in life is one of the defining factors in becoming a happy and successful individual.
Reading helps children in so many ways: it helps them learn about our world, acquire new skills, feeds imagination, enhances focus and concentration, improves memory, and builds communication skills, just to list a few. That’s why when students read, teacher (and parents) are happy.
This is one of the reasons why the parents’ excitement was evident at Plato Academy of St. Petersburg this week during a series of Shakespearean plays performed by 5th graders under the guidance of their teachers Ms. Harrison and Ms. Pampena.
Why Shakespeare?
Although it has been more than 400 years since the famous English playwright and bard William Shakespeare lived, his work (37 plays and 154 sonnets) is still studied today. This literature heritage is considered among the most important ever written (most famous being “Romeo and Juliet”, “Hamlet”, and “Macbeth”). Many expressions we use today are attributed to him (“Brave new world”, “It’s Greek to me”, “To be or not to be” are just a few among many).
The students worked with excitement, they decorated the stage, created the costumes and altered the play in a way that would engage the audience! For example, parents were chosen by the actors to read from the script or even get up and join them in the play on the stage. This was a memorable experience for everyone.
