What Caroline got up to in weeks 2 and 3 (Part Two)

tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16133771.post-1131033389387116642005-11-03T15:55:00.000Z2006-01-15T16:34:38.976ZWhat Caroline got up to in weeks 2 and 3 (Part Two)Following on from my previous post, here's a summary of the work I did with the other three classes in Weeks 2 and 3 (between 19th and 30th September). MRS PARKER'S Y4/5 : Focus - Jabberwocky's Early Life At the end of the storymaking worksop in Week 1, this group arrived at Jabberwocky's home and decided that they'd also travelled back in time so that Jabberwocky was still alive. This led to an exploration of Jabberwocky's past and the creation of 'flashbacks' from his early life. The first sessions with this class were drama based and included initial skills work on characterisation and group collaboration. Then I asked the children to think of a strong memory from their own lives and shared this with a partner. This helped us to identify different kinds of memory: happy, sad, embarassing, frightening etc Next the children worked in groups to invent one of Jabberwocky's 'memories' and created a freeze frame to show a key moment from that memory. Short scenes were developed from the freeze frames using action and dialogue. This gave us me the opportunity to work on performance skills and on structuring the drama to give a clear opening and a clean ending. During a further session in the classroom I focused on turning the improvised scenes into short scripts. We looked at the difference between Narration and Dialogue then the groups worked collaboratively to write the script of their scene. This is a very difficult writing exercise - made even more challenging by having to work as a group - but the children rose to the challenge. There wasn't time for them to finish in my final session but they've been polishing their scripts in the mean time and I'm looking forward to reading them. MR BARBER'S Y5/6 Session 1: Exploring Jabberwocky's Pont of View I began with a characterisation exercise using three basic emotions: happy, sad, frightened which allowed the children to explore the language (verbal and non-verbal) of emotion. This led to the creation of a Word Bank for feelings/emotions/qualities : nervous excited angry brave mischievous thoughtful etc After a group re-cap of 'the story so far' we were back at Jabberwocky's home. We thought about who we might we see there - Jabberwocky's mother, father, brother, friend etc In role as members of Jabberwocky's family, the children heard the news that Jabberwocky had been killed and explored how they felt. Then using my own example as a 'frame' they wrote short poems in Jabberwocky's memory. The idea was to recall a happy memory of Jabberwocky and their relationship with him. Here are a few examples: My brother is gone - I miss my brother. I remember the day When me and my brother went hunting - The trees were waving, The wind was blowing, The stones were rolling, My brother was with me. My brother is gone - I miss my brother. Billy My dad is gone - I miss my dad. I remember the day My dad took me to the restaurant - The sky was dull, The weather was cold, My father laughed, I felt giddy inside. My dad is gone - I miss my dad. Danielle My cousin is gone - I miss my cousin. I remember the day My cousin was born - The moon was shining, My mum was singing, I was dancing With him by my side. My cousin is gone - I miss my cousin Elliot My best friend is gone - I miss my best friend. I remember the day When my best friend went on holiday with me - The sun was shining, The water was roasting, My best friend dived into the pool, I felt like I was going to melt. My best friend is gone - I miss my best friend. Stacey Session 2: Riddles I ran a short session on Wednesday morning exploring a range of different riddle poems - some very old Anglo-Saxon ones, others more recent. The group gradually got the idea of the extended metaphors in the Anglo-Saxon ones and had a go at writing some of their own, using objects or creatures form the natural world or everyday objects around the home. The follow-up took place on Friday afternoon - and I was put on the spot trying to decipher the riddles they'd written! Next we returned to the idea of writing riddles as 'clues' to help someone find their way - we'd experienced these at Forbidden Corner. After returning in our minds to the 'twisting turning path' we'd explored in Week 1, the children drew maps of a short section of the path. They had to include at least two places where a traveller would have to make a choice and then write a riddle to help the traveller. I also asked them to label their maps descriptively, for example, not just 'A Cave' but 'A Gloomy Cavern, full of moving shadows, where water oozes from the walls' . Each section of the map has entrance and exit points along the edges and these are of a fixed width to enable the sections to be joined together into one enormous 'domino map'. MRS ELSTONE'S Y6 : Who is Jabberwocky and where does he come from? Session 1: The Hall was available for 45 minutes this morning so we began with a short drama session which focused on developing group skills using a physical theatre exercise (creating 'living scenery'). In their Literacy work this group are starting to focus on audience and purpose in their written work so I was able to use the drama work to initiate a discussion about the different registers and language functions they'd used to work successfully as a group. Using various role play situations we explored some of these e.g. persuading, negotiating, demanding, questioning etc Mrs Elstone was keen to focus on the world of Jabberwocky and to develop the background to the poem. Back in the classroom we started to work on 'back story'. I described the methods I use to develop characters and plots - basically asking questions and making up the answers! - then in pairs the children devised a set of questions they felt needed answering about Jabberwocky and his world. Their questions were brilliant and very wide ranging. (Where did J. come from? Is there just one Jabberwocky? How do Jabberwocky's reproduce? What conditions do they need in order to survive? How do they communicate? etc) Session 2: In role as 'Jabberwocky experts' - scientists and environmentalists who had made the Jabberwocky the subject of their research - the children interviewed each other to try and find answers to their questions. We then held a conference - The 95th Annual Conference on the Jabberwocky - which I chaired. Mrs Elstone took minutes and the children stayed in role as delegates. Each delegate presented his or her research findings and issues were debated thoroughly. This was a fantastic session. I was impressed by the way in which the children adopted the slightly formal tone which I established at the start of the conference and as each delegate - completely unprepared and unrehearsed - stood to present their findings, the level of language used became more and more sophisticated. They were also astonishingly good at debating - sticking to their guns in the teeth of opposition - and they sustained the 'fiction' for the rest of the morning (well over an hour). Although the majority were very conservation-minded and took the attitude that Jabberwocky is an endangered creature who must be tolerated, understood and protected, a small number felt that the Jabberwocky is dangerous, cannot possibly co-exist with human beings and should be hunted down and destroyed. I left them with two possible writing tasks: the script of an interview with one or more experts for a serious TV discussion programme, or a speech to be given to a government board of enquiry, arguing for or against the destruction of all Jabberwocks. davidnoreply@blogger.com