Subject assignment ("Ontwerpopdracht") nr. 4: West Side Story "graffiti-board"

The following assignment is something I am working on now with my havo 3 class at Laar en Berg.
I am devoting a thirteen-week "class-block" to the musical West Side Story. I chose this musical because it satisfies my personal need for integrating "classical music values" within a school music curriculum, while the subject matter (teenagers, street gangs, young love, feeling misunderstood) also very much appeals to a teenage sensibility.
On the very first day, the class walked in to the music room and saw the following terms scrawled on the whiteboard, drawn very freely in no particular order, and made to look like "graffiti":
West Side Story
Romeo en Julia
Broadway
Leonard Bernstein
William Shakespeare
Steven Sondheim
Gangs (bendes)
Musical
Puerto Rico
Polish-Americans
“Cool”
1950s
Upper West Side, New York City
Tieners
Mambo
Ballet
Juvenile delinquency (jeugd criminalitiet)
I use this workform to introduce the important subjects pertaining to West Side Story. Pretending to pick words from the board at random, I start off with musicals, then I move on to West Side Story, then how it was a modern version of Romeo and Juliet, etc.
After showing the film to the class, we have embarked on two parallel projects in which I divide the class in two sections. The first project involves the class forming groups and together practicing and playing the song America in three parts. For the second project, groups of two are formed. I send the students to the library (under the supervision of teaching assistants), and give each group two terms to research from the "graffiti-board." During the class, each group must make an essay about each term which can include encyclopedia definitions, images, web sites, and whatever else they find relevant. At the end of the project I will have compiled all these essays in a special West Side Story-folder.