Hollywood beckons

As a follow-up activity in one of their English lessons with Ms Zaneta, Year 9X students faced a challenging task in which they had to turn into professional scriptwriters. After reading and analysing one of the chapters of ‘The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’, the students’ goal was to create a script and act out scenes which showed their own understanding and interpretation of the relationship between Father and his 9-year-old son Bruno – the main characters of the novel.

This activity required that the boys not only understand the book well but are also able to visualise and interpret the moves. The words of the book must become actions, drama in their mind’s eye. In that way they will be able to write down the movements, gestures, expressions and dialogue, both verbal and non-verbal of the characters involved. This is essentially what is then seen by the viewer in a film or video and what the actors go on.

Clearly, the boys enjoyed the activity as they put all their efforts into the preparation stage. They also had the added difficulty of completing this tricky exercise through online communication as some of the boys are still not physically at the college.  Finally, however, the results were amazing.