Confident Creators – St John’s Angell Town Primary

On Friday our drama practitioner Simon Batchelor, made his second visit to St John’s to support their Year 3 and Year 4 teachers. Year 4 began their new topic ‘ Is it better to be a child now or in the past’. The teacher very effectively narrated some of her own childhood recollections which the children acted out as they listened, including writing and posting letters to relatives abroad, phoning friends, listening to records, climbing trees and going shopping. The children then made their own group pieces showing these actions and fast forwarding to their own today. The children’s work showed a lot of thought both on content and acting quality. The teacher is now thinking she can teach the majority of this topic through drama going forward. In the afternoon year 3 worked on their new book for the term, The Day I swopped my Dad for 2 Goldfish by Neil Gaiman. The plan is that the children will translate this book into a playscript over the next few weeks, so using drama to produce dialogue for the scripts was an excellent start. Children worked in partners to ‘sculpt’ characters and create their thoughts as they reacted to each other. Both lessons were led by their class teachers, with Simon giving some direction and showed how skilled the teachers are becoming at leading drama in their classrooms. In addition to their main activities, the teachers are now using a range of drama games that support focus and working collaboratively, setting them up for getting the most out of the sessions. The photo shows children working together on a 10 second object of a spaceship!