13.3.14

An Educated Start To The Year


Tin Shed Theatre Co. has had a pretty "Educational" start to the year.

Yes we've learnt a lot, as we always do, but that's not what I mean. Our workload has been almost entirely based in Education, and it looks to continue in that vein until May.

Starting off by touring of Mice and Men around Secondary Schools for year 9, 10 & 11 Students studying the text as part of their English Syllabus; Performing, Running Workshops and hosting Q&A's.


Following this we have another tour of an English Text with An Inspector Calls, followed by working closely with First Campus to deliver a host of projects from Raising Aspirations to encouraging Creative Writing in Community 1st Areas and as part of the Hay Festival.

But today was slightly different, today we ran a workshop for Teachers. Specifically Primary School teachers from schools in Newport as part of Catalyst Motivational Teacher Training Days.

I thought I'd take time out of application writing to share the outcome of this with you and just put it out their for anyone else who may find it useful.


Creating Wonderous is an "umbrella" term for an approach we've concocted when looking at studying Cross Curricula Themes Through Drama Creative Engagement.
It takes inspiration from Dorothy Heathcote's Mantle of the Expert (MoE) and some things we picked up from Thrift Music Theatre's INCREDIBLE two day creative learning seminar Make Learning Irresistible. You can read my Blog from two years ago about the two days Antonio and I spent there: http://tinshedtheatre.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/goodbye-ufton-court-hello-riverfront.html

Creating Wonderous places children/participants into groups where they are encouraged to explore, discover, familiarise and engage with a certain subject matter, then they must collaborate, converse, invent, devise and perform a "Show Back". The "Show Back" seems like the important element but it is not. Creating Wonderous doesn't focus on the techniques of performance, puppetry, film making, animating or any other platform/format, it's focus is on engagement, conversation, self discover and exploration that can be linked to almost any subject matter.

Today our group of Primary School Teachers formed Puppet Theatre Companies and made three short performances about The Amazon Rain Forest. They made some discoveries along the way and learnt some new stuff too. We hope what we did with them was helpful, so much so we've decided to share it with you.


A Plan-ish.
A Naughty Lumberjack realises the importance of the trees...

An "outsider" learns about the Beauty of the World.

We hooked up a camera and a live feed to make our puppet shows a bit easier to watch!

HANDOUT




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