By Anna Guido
Enquirer contributor

McAuley High School English teacher Suzanne Raque (left) and student Kara Speed model Roman togas. Students are learning about ancient Rome before reading Julius Caesar. Photo provided

COLLEGE HILL - Rome wasn't built in a day, but Suzanne Raque's 10th-grade English students at McAuley High School are out to prove that it can be done in a week.

To spice up a unit on Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, students transformed their classroom Tuesday into the center of the Roman Empire, complete with a wall-sized drawing of the Coliseum.

The ancient Roman sports arena is most known for its gladiator fights. During the staged fights, thousands of slaves, prisoners and Christians were killed.

McAuley student Emily Staubach, 15, helped research the Coliseum for the first-time class project. She said she was intrigued to learn that lions were kept under trap doors in the Coliseum floor.

Katie Eiser, 15, researched food and diet common to ancient Rome, and helped prepare the day's menu of bread, grapes, olives, dried fruits and nuts.

"They ate with their hands because they had no utensils; and there was no refrigeration, so they preserved a lot of their foods with salt," Eiser said.

The English project will culminate with the study of Julius Caesar for 48 students in Raque's two sophomore English classes.

By allowing students to bring the Roman culture to life, Raque's goal is to improve their understanding of the play and its heavy political content, and to help students grasp the influence of Roman culture on society today.

"I didn't want them to dread every day; I wanted them to get excited about it," Raque said. "Shakespeare can be fun."

The hands-on project is among an increasing number of similar educational approaches being taken at McAuley, Principal Cheryl Sucher said.

"It's one thing to read classic literature, but quite another for students to channel their energies and talents to make it come alive," Sucher said.

McAuley, an all-girls Catholic school, has 820 students in grades 9-12.

E-mail annag376@aol.com