On the 2nd October, Mrs O’Shea, Mrs Golding and I took a trip to Stratford Upon Avon to begin our training with RSC Practitioners, Miles Tandy and Rachel Gartside. All extremely excited, we couldn’t wait to arrive at the RSC Clore learning centre early Friday morning. The first play we looked at approaching was Love’s Labour’s Won(Much Ado About Nothing.) The active learning strategies were great fun and we loved working with the teachers from other Hub schools. On Friday evening, we were able to see the preview performance of Love’s Labour’s Won at the RSC Theatre which was set in Warwickshire in 1918. It was a fantastic performance and by seeing the play live, we developed a much better understanding of characters, plot and themes. Saturday morning we begun with reviewing the play that we had seen and discussing the moments we remembered, just as students would do. We then begun to look at ways of approaching Two Gentlemen of Verona, activities included: creating tableaus for key quotations, listening to music to set the scene, chasing a dog around a table and exploring themes of the play.
We learnt so much in the two days with the RSC and all 3 of us are looking forward to implementing these active approaches into all English and Drama lessons so that students can really benefit from actively approaching Shakespeare’s work. We want all of our students to have as much fun as we did!
Look out! There’s lots of exciting things happening next month with the RSC Project:
• Our very own RSC project blog for teachers and students to share all of their experiences with you.
• Monday 10th November we have Miles Tandy from the RSC coming to give an INSET Day on The Tempest for our English and Drama staff.
• Thursday 13th November the whole of year 9 will be taken to the Marlowe Theatre to see Henry VI Part 1 ready for their studying of the play in Drama.
• Thursday 20th November a live broadcast of Two Gentleman of Verona for our year 8 students.