Lesson video

Hello and welcome to the final lesson of Oak National Academy's Unit one on Julius Caesar.

My name is Mr. James and I will be teaching you today's lesson.

Before we begin, let's have a look at what we will be learning about today.

First of all, we're going to ask what makes a good leader? Second of all, we're going to investigate weakness and strength.

Third, we're going to meet a character called Casca.

Fourth, we're going to read the text, and last but not least, we're going to answer some questions on the text we have read.

But before we do that, in this lesson you will need, number one, a pen, number two, some paper and number three, your brain, but hopefully your brain looks a little bit better than the brain on this guy over here.

So if you don't have a pen, a paper, hold your brain, pause the video now, go and get what you need and come back when you are done.

Okay, welcome back.

So the first thing I would like you to do, now that you have your equipment, is take your pen and your paper and write down today's title, which is now on the screen.

Pause the video and come back when you're done.

The first question we're going to investigate in today's lesson is what makes a good leader? Now, there are a few qualities or characteristics that make a good leader.

We're going to have a look at three of them.

The first one we're going to have a look at is empathy.

Now empathy is the ability to understand how other people feel.

And you can see Barack Obama in this picture empathising with a woman he is talking to.

You get the sense he understands her and perhaps even understands how she feels.

The second quality is charisma.

Now charisma is that kind of magnetism that some people have.

Some people just have a kind of X factor that makes other people want to be around them or makes other people want to listen to them.

And we call this quality charisma, it's an X factor or a magnetism.

And finally, the last quality we're going to look at is strength.

Now strengthen a leader means being decisive and being able to make decisions and do the things that you want to do.

And of the three qualities we're most interested in today, strength is the one that we're going to look at.

Because it's most relevant to Julius Caesar.

So, let's have a look at what makes a leader strong.

Now one thing that makes a leader strong is being confident because this makes them seem like they know what they're doing.

Another thing that makes a leader strong is being articulate.

Now being articulate means being able to express your ideas.

So it means being able to speak well and clearly.

The third quality that makes a leader strong is being decisive.

Now, if you are decisive, that means you make decisions.

And once you've made the decision, you are confidence in them and you carry it through.

You don't spend time thinking oh is that the right thing to do? I'm not too sure.

Obviously a good leader will think through their decisions, but when they make the decision, they will make them decisively and they will go with what they think.

And finally, the last quality that makes a strong leader is physically healthy, them being physically healthy.

Now of course, it's very difficult to be a good leader if you've got bad health and you're in a hospital bed.

So being physically healthy is another quality that makes a leader seem strong.

So the next question is why do we like strong leaders? What is it about strong leaders that we like? Well the first thing is, they give the impression of being in control, and of course we like that.

We wouldn't want to be led by someone we thought wasn't in control of the things they were doing or the decisions they were making, because that would make us feel a little bit anxious probably.

The second thing is it gives us reassurance.

It means we think we don't need to worry about things because our leaders have got things under control.

We feel reassured and we feel like we can leave them to get on with leading the country, or leading whatever it is they happen to be leading.

And the final thing is inspiration.

If someone's strong, they can inspire us.

They can make us believe in the things that they believe, and we therefore want to follow them in whatever it is that they want to do.

So these are kinds of things or these are reasons why we like strong leaders.

What about the other side though? Why don't we like weak leaders? Well weak leaders tend to blame other people for their mistakes.

And that's really not something we admire in people.

If someone blames someone else after they've made a mistake themselves, we don't think that's a good quality.

And it certainly isn't what we're looking for in someone who's going to lead us.

Number two, they often make bad decisions.

A weak leader will make a bad decision, or more accurately, someone who makes bad decisions will be seen as a weak leader because people won't have any trust in them, people won't have any confidence in them.

And also weak leaders tend to lose control of situations.

Often if they're making bad decisions, other people around them will see the decisions are bad, and they won't want to follow them into making those decisions.

So before you know it, the leader hasn't got control of the situation and they often or obviously appear weak if they don't have that control.

So what are some of the traits of weak leaders? Well, the often unconfident, the opposite of a good leader, instead of believe it in themselves, they don't believe in themselves.

And that means they find it difficult to make the decisions because they're not too confident in the decisions they make.

Secondly, they're quiet or inarticulate.

If you imagine a president or a prime minister and they're on TV or they're speaking in a rally to thousands of people, well you don't really want them to be quiet or bad at speaking inarticulate they are also qualities of weak leaders because good leaders, strong leaders need to be able to express themselves clearly.

They're often indecisive.

Now that's the opposite of decisive.

So indecisive leaders will often take a long time to make decisions, and they'll never be truly sure whether they've made a good decision or not.

And last but not least that unhealthy like the guy on the right here, really.

Again, as we've already said, if you you're unhealthy it's quite hard to be seen as a strong leader, because you need to be physically capable to be a leader a lot of the time because a lot is required of you, and if your body isn't up to that, it's quite hard to be seen as a strong leader.

So let's just go back to something we learned earlier in the lesson.

There's three qualities that we said make a good leader.

What I want you to do is pause the video and see if you can remember those three qualities and write them down on your paper.

Off you go.

Okay, welcome back.

Did you get the answers? Let's have a look, here they are.

Number one is empathy, number two is charisma, and number three is strength.

And of course strength is the one that we're mostly interested in today.

So what I would now like you to do is pause the video again and make two columns on your paper.

Label one of the columns strong, and label the other column weak.

Then I'd like you to look at the characteristics in the box in the middle of the screen and put the characteristics of a strong leader in the strong column and the characteristics of a weak leader in the weak column.

Pause the video I come back when you're done.

Off you go.

Okay, welcome back.

So let's have a look at how you did.

Well in a strong column, you should have confident, articulate, physically healthy and decisive, and the weak column you should have unconfident, quiet, unhealthy and that should say indecisive, not decisive.

I've somehow managed to get decisive in both columns.

So hopefully you have done better at this task than I have.

That's definitely a mark against Mr. James.

Moving on, just before we finish looking at leaders and leadership, we're going to have a look at two concepts.

One is authenticity and the other is performance.

Now being authentic means being your true self, and essentially it means being honest.

Performing, now performing means lots of things but here we mean performing in terms of being something that is different to who you really are.

So the opposite of authentic, inauthentic if you like.

So on the one hand, we've got authenticity, being honest and being true to yourself, and on the other hand we've got performance or trying to perform a role trying to perform as someone who is different from who you are.

Now, how does this relate to leadership? Well, we prefer leaders who are authentic or who have authenticity because they tell the truth.

They do what they believe is right, that means they will do what's right even if it's not popular, sometimes those things are different.

They are less concerned with their popularity, so that allows them to do things that are right.

And they make decisions carefully, they try to do what is correct.

And they think through their decisions and then make them decisively.

Now on the opposite side, leaders who are more performative or interested in performance are mostly concerned about looking good.

Now, obviously that isn't a quality we really want in a leader.

We do want to lead it to look good, but we want to lead this look good because they make good decisions or because they do good things.

Not because they're just really concerned about looking good, slightly different thing.

They also, these kinds of leaders who are more interested in performance, they tend to do what they think will make them popular, not necessarily what is right.

So you can see why we prefer leaders who are authentic rather than leaders who are performative and interested in popularity.

Now we'll come back to this concept later on in the lesson.

So next up let's ask the question of why leadership is important in Julius Caesar.

Well is because of the character of Caesar himself.

Let's have a look, What kind of leader is he? Well, we've already said, he's suspicious because he looks at Cassius and he seems afraid of him.

He seems worried about losing power.

We've also said he's perhaps a bit cowardly because he does seem afraid of Cassius, doesn't he? So perhaps he's slightly cowardly, but he pretends he's not afraid of Cassius.

Another thing that would be interesting to look at is whether we think Caesar is a strong leader or a weak leader.

And that's one of the things we're going to be looking at in today's extract.

So, let's have a look at the character of Casca.

Now I said at the beginning, we're going to meet a character called Casca.

Now I'm not going to spend too long talking about Casca because he's not too important, but he does pop up in today's scene.

So Casca is another Roman Senator.

And Casca is friends with Cassius and Brutus and that is why he becomes relevant in today's lesson.

If you remember Casca is the person that Cassius said, "Let's grab him," as Caesar's train walks past in yesterday's or the previous lesson that you watched.

So Casca is going to give some opinions of his own on Caesar today.

So it's now time to look at the play itself.

But just before we do, we're going to do a quick recap of some of the things we've already learned so that we know we're in the best position possible to understand today's extract.

So what I would like you to do is read the three sentences on the screen now and use the word at the bottom of the screen in order to fill in the gaps.

So write the sentences down on your paper, filling in the gaps, pause the video, come back when you're done.

Off you go.

Hello and welcome back.

So let's see what answers you got.

Well, sentence number one should say, Caesar is in Rome for celebrations following his military victory.

Well done, if you got that one right.

Number two, the crowd loves Caesar because he brings home loot.

Did you get that one right? I'm sure you did, well done.

And number three, Brutus is concerned that Caesar is becoming like a King.

I'm sure you did really well and got all three of them right.

So moving on, let's have a look at what will happen in today's scene.

Firstly, Brutus and Cassius speak to Casca.

Secondly, Casca tells them he attended the celebrations, and then he says that the crowd offered Caesar a crown.

Now obviously that is going to make Brutus concerned because he thinks Caesar is becoming like a King.

Then Casca says Caesar turned down the crown.

He refused to be given to accept the crown to the crowd were giving him.

And last but not least Caesar fainted, which seems slightly random, but that's what happens at the end.

So let's move on and read the scene.

First of all, the first thing we need to be aware of is that we're not doing this in modern English before going into Shakespeare's original version.

We're going straight in to the Shakespearian language in today's extract.

So we need to read really carefully and make sure we're paying 100% attention, so we understand everything that's going on.

So the scene opens with Casca saying to Brutus and Cassius, "You pull'd me by the cloak; would you speak with me?" And Brutus replies, "Ay Casca, tell us what hath chanced today.

That sees a looked so sad." So Brutus is remembering that Caesar looked unhappy, he looked angry and he says, "Tell us what happened at the celebrations," to which Casca replies, there was a crown offered him, and being offered him, he put it by with a back of his hand, thus, So when he says thus he's doing the action that Caesar was doing.

He's saying he waved his hand to wave away the crown and didn't accept it.

"And then the people fell ashouting thrice.

So what he's saying here is that three times Caesar refused the crown that was offered to him and thrice means three times, which is interesting because Brutus thinks Caesar wants to be like a King, but he's refusing a crown when the crowd, the Roman people are offering it to him, three times he refused it.

Brutus says and quite surprised, "Was the crown offered him thrice?" Casca replies, "Ay, marry, wast," that means it was.

"And he put it by thrice, every time gentler than the other and at every putting by mine honest neighbours shouted." So here Casca's saying yes three times he refused it.

And three times every time his honest neighbours, the people around him shouted more and more.

They were getting more angry because Caesar was refusing the crown.

And then Cassius says, "Who offered him the crown?" Casca says "Why, Antony." Hmm.

Which is interesting it's Caesar's great friend, his most loyal person who's offering him the crown and Caesar is refusing it.

I wonder if anything seems a little bit fishy about that.

Brutus says, "Tell us the manner of it, gentle Casca." So Brutus is saying tell us how this all occurred.

Tell us actually what happened.

So Casca says, "I saw Mark Antony offer him a crown.

And as I told you, he put it by once." He refused it once, but then Casca says, "But for all that, to my thinking, he would fain have had it." So Casca is saying here that he thinks Caesar really wishes he could have taken the crown.

But if he wanted to, it's interesting why he didn't.

We'll think about that more later.

So Casca continues, "Then he offered it to him again.

" So Antony offers Caesar the crown again, "and he put it by again, but to my thinking, he was very loath to lay his fingers off it." Again he said, I think Caesar would have rather have taken the crown.

If you're loath to do something, it means you don't want to do something.

So he was saying he didn't want to lay his fingers off it, he was loath to lay his fingers off it.

Casca continues, "And then he offered it the third time, he put it the third time by, and still as he refused it, the rabblement hooted and clapped their chopped hands and threw up that sweaty nightcaps and uttered such a deal of great stinking breath because Caesar refused the crown, that it had almost choked Caesar, for he swooned and fell down at it.

This is very interesting.

So the rabblement is a kind of offensive word for the general people of Rome, the normal people, the poor people.

And he says after the third time that people hooted and clapped their chopped hands, he said and they were really shouting.

They threw up their sweaty nightcaps and they actually got a great deal of stinking breath because they're shouting so the breath is coming out of their mouth.

So he's saying they were really angry that Caesar refused the crown.

And then he says and he makes a bit of a joke.

He says, Caesar at this point, swooned and fell down, meaning he fainted on Casca makes a joke saying he probably swooned and fell down.

He probably fainted because the breadth of the poor people in Rome is so smelly essentially.

And then Casca continues.

"And for my own part, I durst not laugh for fear of opening my lips and receiving the bad air.

So again he just makes a bit of a joke.

He says, I dare not laugh at Caesar fainting because I'd have to smell the stinky breath of the Roman people.

So here Casca is suggesting that Caesar is acting or performing, the opposite of being authentic.

He's performing and manipulating the crowd because what Casca is suggesting is that he didn't really want to give up the crown.

He didn't want to refuse the crown, but he's trying to make it seem to the crowd as if he doesn't want to be the King.

And he's making them beg for him to be King.

So eventually he can say, okay since you so badly want me to be King, I will accept the crown.

So Casca is saying that Caesar is performing.

He does really want the crown, but he's trying to manipulate the crowd so that eventually he can pretend that he's only accepting it because the Roman people the crowd are desperate for him to have it.

So Cassius reply to this he says, "But, soft, I pray you, what did Cesar swoon." Why did he fall over? Casca says "He fell down in the marketplace and foamed at the mouth and was speechless." And this is a reference to epilepsy.

That's not too important, but I'll just tell you that.

Brutus, "'Tis very like.

He hath the falling sickness." So Brutus says yes that's like Caesar because he does have epilepsy, which he calls the falling sickness.

And then Cassius does a little bit of wordplay here.

He says, "No, Cesar hath it not," meaning Caesar does not have the falling sickness, "but you, and I, and honest Casca, we have the falling sickness" and the wordplay is on the word falling sickness, meaning we have a sickness, Brutus, you and I have a sickness Cassius is saying, because we have fallen from power.

We have the falling sickness because we've fallen from power.

We've allowed Cesar to become too powerful at the expense of the Senate.

So Cassius is always taking every opportunity to try and manipulate Brutus, to try and bring him in to the conspiracy.

We've read the extract.

So now let's have a look at some questions and quotations.

Now the first thing I would like you to do is dead straightforward.

I just want you to answer the three questions that are on screen now.

So take your pen and your paper, pause the video, answer the questions and come back when you're done, off you go.

Okay, welcome back.

So let's have a look at the kind of thing you might have written for your answers.

Now question one says, according to Casca, what does Antony offer to Caesar? Well, let's have a look.

You might have something like, according to Casca Antony offered Caesar a crown.

And if you wanted to improve that in any way, you might add something like that Caesar refused, and that would just improve our answer a little bit.

Number two says, what do the people feel about Caesar being King? Now the kind of thing you might've written to answer that is the people seem to want Cesar to become King.

That'd be a perfectly acceptable answer.

And if we wanted to improve it, we could say because they 'hooted and clapped' to encourage Caesar to wear the crown.

So we're given the reason, we're using that word because I'm explaining the reason why we know or how we know that the crowd wanted Cesar to become a King.

And we use what we call an embedded quotation in our sentence, the embedded quotation here is hooted and clapped.

And it's when our quotation just simply forms part of the sentence we are writing.

Now question three says what happens to Caesar in the marketplace? So the kind of thing you might have written to answer question three is in the marketplace, Caesar 'swooned and fell down'.

And you can see I've got another embedded quotation in my answer.

And again if we wanted to improve it, I might just add on the end, meaning he had an epileptic fit to show that I know what that quote swooned and fell down really means.

So let's have a look at the next question.

And again we have a quote from Casca this time, he says, "but to my thinking, he was very loath to lay his fingers off it." Now, he in this quotation means Caesar, loath means didn't want to and it means the crown.

So, but to my thinking, Caesar didn't want to lay his fingers off the crown.

And the question says, what is Casca suggesting about Caesar? So let's investigate this quote a little bit before you answer your question.

So, first off, we're going to have a look at, to my thinking.

And here Casca is simply saying in my opinion, that's what he means when he says to my thinking.

So but to my thinking, in my opinion, he was very loath to let his fingers off it.

Meaning Cesar wanted to keep the crown, or at least in Casca's opinion, Cesar wanted to keep the crown.

And the reason he was doing this is because he wanted to manipulate the crowd.

That is why he didn't take the crown and wear it.

It was just a performance.

It was not authentic, he was manipulating the crowd.

He did want to wear the crown really.

So use the information that's on the screen to answer the question, What is Casca suggesting about Caesar? And if possible, try to use the word manipulate and performing or performance in your answer.

Pause the video, off you go, come back when you're done.

Okay, welcome back.

And let's have a look at the kind of thing you might have written in your answer.

So a good answer might read something like this.

Casca says that Caesar doesn't really want to refuse crown.

He suggests that the only reason Caesar refuses it is because he is performing in order to manipulate the crowd.

That would be a good answer.

And we get both those words performing and manipulate in there.

But if we wanted a great answer, we might say something like this.

Casca says that Caesar doesn't really want to refuse the crown.

Casca is suggesting that Cesar only refuses the crown so that the crowd will think that he meaning Caesar is the kind of leader who is not interested in having power for himself.

Casca thinks that Caesar wants to give the impression that he is honourable rather than ambitious and is doing what is best for Rome.

Casca is implying that Caesar is performing in order to manipulate the crowd.

And we can see how that answer is fuller.

We can see it's talking about how he's trying to manipulate the crowd, where he's talking about giving the impression of himself as a leader who's not interested actually in having power for himself.

And we can see we use some vocabulary we've learned earlier in the unit.

Honourable, which we were thinking about in terms of Brutus, and ambitious, which we were thinking about in terms of Cassius.

You can see how Caesar himself is using these ideas to perform and give a particular impression of himself, which might not be the true one, which might not be the authentic one.

So let's have a look at this question.

We've got another quote from Casca.

It says he fell down in the marketplace and foamed at the mouth.

He says, answer the following question using the quotation above.

Think back to what we have learned about strong leaders.

Does this quotation suggest Caesar is a strong or a weak leader? And then there's a little bit of advice at the bottom.

It says to make your answer even better, think about what you know about Julius Caesar, for example he commands an army, and also what you know about honour in ancient Rome, the fact that winning military victories was very honourable.

So have a go at answering this question, pause the video, come back when you're done.

Okay, welcome back.

And let's have a look at the kind of thing you might have written.

So a good answer to this question would say this quotation suggest that Caesar might become a weak leader because strong leaders are usually physically healthy.

And Julius Caesar seems like he has some health issues.

Hmm, that'd be a good answer.

A great answer, might read something more like this.

This quotation suggests Caesar might become a weak leader because strong leaders are usually physically healthy, and Julius Caesar seems like he has some health issues.

And then we use this word, furthermore, that we've already talked about.

Furthermore, Julius Caesar is supposed to be a great military commander, but he might find it difficult to command an army if he regularly faints.

This would stop him winning military victories in the future which was considered honourable in ancient Rome.

And we can see how we're feeding that knowledge that we learned earlier in the unit, into our answer here to make it from a good answer, into a great answer.

Now if you need to make any improvements to yours, pause the video now and write the improvements on your paper.

And lastly, we're going to look at one more question.

This question says, what does Cassius mean when he says we have the falling sickness? And we get the quote above.

It says, no, Caesar hath it not, but you, and I, and honest Casca, we have the falling sickness.

So let's just really quickly run through this quotation.

It's this bit at the end we're most interested in, we have the falling sickness and this is a wordplay.

He means that we have a sickness that is causing us to fall from power.

And he's referring back to his comment earlier in the play about being underlings.

He's reminding Brutus and Casca that the Senate has had their power taken away from them because Caesar ignores them.

And he calls them underlings earlier in the play, to suggest they're people without any power, underlings or people who have no power, remember.

So use this information to answer the question, what does Cassius mean when he says 'We have the falling sickness'? Pause the video and come back when you're done.

Okay, great work.

Now let's have a look at the kind of thing you might have written.

A good answer would say when he says 'we have the falling sickness', Cassius means that the senators such as himself and Brutus have not stood up to Caesar and allowed to take all their power.

But a great answer would say, when he says 'we have the falling sickness,' Cassius is engaging in wordplay.

He means the senators such as himself and Brutus have developed a sickness in their minds that has meant they have allowed Caesar to ignore them and take all the power for himself.

This links back to his earlier comment, when he compared himself and Brutus to 'underlings' because they had allowed Caesar to take all the power for himself.

He's using this as another opportunity to persuade Brutus to join his assassination plot.

And yet again, in the great answer you can see how I'm bringing in all the knowledge that we learned earlier in the unit to try and write a great answer here at the end of it.

Now, the only thing left for me to do is just quickly recap everything we've learned in this unit guys, because you've learned so much.

We've learned about ancient Rome, we learned about the Senate.

We learned about Julius Caesar.

We learned about honour and we've learned about military victories and why they're important to ancient Rome.

We've learned vocab.

We've learned the word tyrant, suspicious, honour, ambition, coward amongst other words, even some we've learned today, but haven't included here.

We've learned about the character of Brutus, we've learned about Cassius, we've learned about Caesar and we've learned about Antony also we met Casca today.

We've learned so much guys and you've done really, really well.

We've learned that Cassius is manipulating Brutus and trying to take part from him.

But Brutus is concerned Caesar is too powerful and concerned for ancient Rome.

Then Caesar is scared that Cassius is trying to take his power from him.

And Antony is telling Caesar he has nothing to worry about.

So with all this going on, we know that unit two act two, is going to be really, really exciting.

So guys you've done really well yet again today, and you've done really well all through this unit.

I've been really privileged to be able to teach it to you, and I'm really hoping you'll join me for unit two, of act two of Julius Caesar in the next set of lessons.

There's just a couple of things left for me to remind you of.

First of all I just want to remind you, to share some of the great work you've done during this unit with Oak National.

And you can share your work with Oak National online.

If you'd like to, please ask your parent or carer to share your work on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter, tagging @OakNational and #learnwithOak.

And last but not least the only thing to remind you to do is the recap quiz sorry the end of lesson quiz, which you can find down below the video to check everything you have learned in today's lesson.

Guys, it's been a privilege to teach you and I'll see you in unit two, Julius Caesar.