Sweet shops, monsters, aliens, clock towers and time travel.
I’ve just got back from St Johns where I have been finding out how Lisa (drama) and Martin (storyteller) have been working with the classes. I met pupils from year 3 and 4 and met Mrs Williams, Mrs Lyons and Mrs Jordan the teachers from the year 3, 4 and 5 classes, although I didn’t meet the year 5 class because they are doing their session this afternoon, but there will be plenty of opportunity later on this term to work with them.
Martin told a great story about the King’s ears where he had donkey ears, but he was very embarassed and only the King’s hairdresser knew about them. The hairdresser had to keep it secret which made him ill, but to stop getting ill he told the secret to a tree, but then a musician made a flute from a branch of the tree and when the musician played the flute, the music from the flute told everyone the King’s secret about his ears. In the end the King didn’t punish the hairdresser and he ended up being very proud of his ears.
I liked this particular story because it involved music and trees. Trees are significant in the Forest after all! Today I learnt that trees can also be a very useful tool in drama exercises as Lisa and Martin encouraged the pupils to take a walk in the forest (the school hall), then to freeze for a moment as a tree before sharing their imagination with the rest of the group.
It was obvious that stories like these engage the imagination of the pupils enables them to collectively build a story from their own ideas. So far it involves a Magical Sweet Shop, the clocktower in Coleford and possibly time travel.
Lisa led acting exercises where the pupils had to recreate still frame scenes and worked on 30 second dramas in small groups without dialogue.
I then had an chance at break time, in between classes to schedule with Lisa and Martin how I am to integrate music into the performance in keeping with the emerging stories the children are building for the performance.
Next week I’ll be visiting again on Tuesday where a bunch of pupils will be coming to listen to the efforts of the new music group and on Friday Dan the songwriter (who also works for Creative Partnerships) will be accompanying me into the classroom to work on some lyric and songwriting with pupils. Then it looks like I’ll be spending the following week composing themes and songs while the pupils are doing their SAT exams.
