Yo Ho

I have a class that contains a few budding thespians, so I was looking for an English play that they could work on. I couldn't find anything suitable - everything was either too difficult or too childish - so then I had the idea of using a film script. I found the transcribed script of the first Pirates of the Caribbean film on the internet, selected a few scenes from it, edited them a bit where the language was too esoteric, and gave them to the students to act out in groups. They went to work and soon the room was filled with cries of, "But why 'as zee rum gone?", carefully-choreographed swordfights with rulers and set squares, and students being forced to walk the plank off the tops of tables. In other words, a most successful method for waking up 17-year-olds at 8:30 am on a Thursday morning.

Before the grand performance at the end of the lesson, I did a bit of warming up to get them into character (being rather experienced when it comes to treading the boards, dontcha know...). I taught them a number of classic pirate phrases, such as 'me hearties' and 'avast, ye landlubbers', and discovered the hard way that, while there is great entertainment value in getting French teenagers to try to pronounce the word 'swashbuckling', it generally backfires when one of them asks you to explain what it means. I also learnt some French pirate phrases of my own and have since added to my staffroom reputation as the eccentric English girl (more on that in a future post) by exclaiming, "A l'abordage!" as I go off to my next lesson after the end-of-break bell.

Instead of taking a normal register, we fill out a special form noting any absences, which is normally left in a box in the staffroom at lunch and the end of the day. However, there is a separate form for the first class of the day, at 8:30 am, which is collected by whichever admin staff member is free, or has been naughty, about halfway through the lesson. Which is how the headmaster himself - who thinks I'm a retard, remember - came to open the door to my classroom, only to find the whole class on their feet and me at the front, yelling, "Yarrrrrrrr, ye scurvy dogs!" at them in my best Cap'n Barbossa accent. I'm expecting the restraining order any day now.