This morning the Upper School class took part in a debate to decide who was responsible for the death of Romeo and Juliet. The children were already in two groups- the feuding families-the Montagues and the Capulets and they had already prepared their arguments last week. Now all they had to do was persuade the Prince of Verona aka Mrs Hurley. The classroom was set out like the House of Commons and the children took turns to put their point across to the house. The arguments they put forward were so well thought through and used lots of logical thinking. We heard Oliver telling the Montagues that they should have got a grip of Romeo’s behaviour as he should never have been at the Capulets party in the first place! Claire made the valid point that if Juliet had been loved properly by her parents, she would have been allowed to marry Romeo and none of this would have happened…Ted came forward to say that he thought that Mercutio was provocative in his actions and caused the death of Tybalt by Romeo. Evie decided that it was the fault of the Capulets security since they didn’t stop Romeo entering the party or from getting into their garden to see Juliet. However, they all agreed that if the friar had made it to Romeo with the letter explaining that Juliet was just pretending to die so they could escape from their families, then both of them would have lived to tell the tale. Oscar made this very good point. In the end, I decided that it was indeed neither families fault and the letter was the key to it all ending badly. Of course, the good thing that came out of the death of Romeo and Juliet was that the two families shook hands and agreed a truce. 
The next step of our English lessons will be for the class to come up with their own versions of the story so tomorrow we will be looking at alternative versions on screen such as Nomeo and Juliet.

Romeo and Juliet -Debate