missed the last entry for both Year 3 and 4....but:

Spent this session with Year 3 and the two musicians (Djembi(?) player and saxophonist / flautist) which has been really great. The children responded really well to the visiotors and came up with some great ideas on how they could add to the existing performance.

We spent some time having a couple of run-throughs which are looking really great although we realised that the performance will have to be moved as there will be a larger audience than we were expecting. I had approached the project wanting to break some of the assumptions based around performance and to give the children an insight into the fact that performance doesn't have to be on a stage (this is my main bug-bear), but we have had to put it ont he stage to allow enough room for the audience. The children were really excited abbout the prospect of a stage performance (although I wasn't), but it's their project so who am I to suggest otherwise....!

Bobbie some time this session writing a song which was fun to watch and it's interesting to see the children's ideas of what rhymes with what and how lines can be pieced together.

The piece is short, although not as short as I feared that it might be in the beginning and the additional sound from the musicians - and Bobbie on the piano - makes a real difference to the energy in the room and the children's interest in the piece.

Ran over by 30 minutes, but hey-ho! The teachers are being really supportive and seem to be enjoying themselves too.

Year 4 from Friday afternoon: This was a great session - really good fun. The group responded really well to the ideas put to them and seemed to work as teams really effectively. The class were split in to 2 groups for the end of the session - my group doing some physical performance and Bobbie's group doing sound / music before they came back together to share their performances.

My group used words to describe home ('safe', 'fun' etc) and made similies from these ('safe as a lion', 'fun as children playing', 'comfy as a cloud') and we then though what these similies would look like before working out how we could physicalise this. The teachers were really helpful too and joined in which made the children feel very comfortable about sharing ideas and giving it a go (although they seemed fine with this anyway!).

In the sharing, the groups were very respectful of each others's performances and showed real support. I loved Bobbie's as I was unsure initially how she would get the idea of 'home' through with music, but it worked really well. I think there will be a real time issue with the project but at least the students and the teachers are very much on board.

Paganel Home Week Project

Started a 5 session project at the school today with Bobbie Gardner with the overiding theme of 'home and identity.' Worked with Year 3 first, but lost some time due to an over-running assembly. Having said that, we achieved lots of good stuff in the time available. Started with ice-breakers and a couple of games to try and get some of the children's names (which I'm rubbish at remembering) and then began sharing our thoughts of what 'home' means to us. Initally, during the planning stages, there was a bit of concern that the group would only be able to grasp literal interpretations of this, but there were some lovely ideas ('laughter' and 'food' come to mind). The children seemed to really understand what was being asked of them and even the literal ideas were thoughtlful ('stairs' and ' teddies'). We had been warned that the group could be a challenge in terms of their abilities but, fingers crossed it will continue, we felt that there was no issue with this.

The teacher and TA both involved themselves in the session which was great and splitting the group down into two smaller groups for part of the session worked really well as some of the children get a bit fidgety when listening for too long.

Bobbie and i also shared our ideas of 'home' with three items which we had each bought in (mine: grandad's medals, a book, a photo of the garden; and Bobbie': Sainsbury's bag (!), family photo and headphones) and the children seemed to respond really well to this.

We also set-up groundrules with the children which they then signed to say they agreed with and this proved useful to bring them back to when they started to get animated.

Spent a short time at the end of the session in two groups - mine visually representing someone's home story through freeze-framing, and Bobbie's doing the same through sound and rhythm.

Overall a great start to the project as, although we didn't achieve much in terms of actual performance, the time was well spent getting the children to share ideas and getting all of us to interract together. The feedback from the children was positive, although some of them struggled to identify specific things they had enjoyed (rather than the whole of the session) but the performances seemed to top the list of specifics (which is no suprise, really!)

Looking forward to next Monday!