Visit 2

Friday 9th first session-

Martha Nick Harmony Sam 

• Name game - ball toss one in possession of the ball as they say there name and a hobby before passing to someone else. (Ran by Harmony)

• Warm up - walk around slowly, then gaining speed, introduce jump, clap, freeze and touch the floor maybe also use opposites if appropriate. (Ran by Sam)

• Warm up - Shaking the body from hands and legs starting at 8 down to 1. (Ran by Sam)

•  Game - Sardines. Call out numbers and the participants need to get into groups of that number. Groups must be made of the exact number given and any left are out. These participants that are out should help the person leading the activity rather than just sitting out so that their focus isn't lost. (Ran by Harmony)

  

• Cool down - spine roll and loose shake to calm the participants and get them to focus for the next activity which is less physical (Ran by Harmony)

• Activity - Discussion about what the participants want to change in the world. This task should be led by the leaders who should give their own examples in order to encourage the participants to also do so. (Introduced by Martha and carried out by all)

• Activity - Writing task. Participants should now write what they've been discussing. A good way to do this could be spoken word or rap and can be carried out individually or in groups. (Introduced by Martha and carried out by all)

• Game - Guessing the rhythm. Someone leaves the room, The remainder are in a circle and someone else gets chosen to lead a rhythm. Everyone else copies this chosen person. When the person that left the room returns they have to guess who is leading and changing the rhythm right in front of their very eyes. (Ran by Martha)

• Game - Palm Trees. An extended version of splat in which physical images are created such as the 'James bond' one. Instead of saying 'splat', the person in the middle would say 'James Bond' to one of the participants. Then instead of ducking, the participant poses with a gun and the two either side swoon over him and say 'oh James' instead of shooting each other. The slowest one is then out. There are also other additions such as 'elephant' in which the middle person makes a trunk with their arm and the two either side make the elephants ears with their arms. More can be found online. (Ran by Nick)

During today's session we ran our own workshop with the Beckmead boys and led the activities. First we did a name game which was ran by me. Originally we planned to incorporate a ball to pass around as we said our names and something we liked. The reason we changed this was because the boys told us that they didn't really like when they did drama workshops and they had to play ball games. This was fine though because removing the ball didn't really affect the game. We also played splat at the start of the lesson in the hopes that more boys would show up but they didn't.

The rest of the lesson plan ran fine however we had catered it with a larger class in mind. This week most of the boys from the previous week were absent and we had about 5 students and 5 leaders. This was a shame because there was defiantly less energy and ideas being received by us because of the absence of participants. We managed to overcome this by participating ourselves more and including teachers. Also, because the workshop was largely writing based, being in a small group worked quite well however there would have been a much higher potential of ideas if more people were there.

Another factor hat has come to our attention is the performance. We are slightly worried considering that we were planning to teach the boys a short dance. With a variation of boy coming in each week and us only spending 1 hr 40 with them, it makes it very difficult to teach them something that they're going to remember. A solution that I may have come up with would be having the boys all create posters which express something that they feel strongly about (if there's no time for this, we could easily print off some posters, attach them to cardboard and a stick). Then the boys could be split onto two teams in which they march, slow mo protest to each other and then the audience in between different performances. Most performances will probably consist of spoken work however it would be nice to add a small acting scene and some live music if anyone's okay with performing their music. I would also really like to use some of the music that the boys have previously produced at the school to perhaps be in the background between transitions or whilst the audience fill the auditorium.

During the workshop the spinal roll that I leaded didn't go amazing. Some of the boys did it properly but others didn't. This was okay because obviously the boys don't do them as regularly as we do. It's also something that you have to commit to because you do feel a little silly doing it. On our next session I will attempt the spinal roll again and compare my success rate to this visit.

Furthermore the discussions and writing task went really well. The boys were creative and although not many ideas were put forwards, the ones that were were very good and in depth. I worked with a boy names Alfie who is dyslexic, in order to help him we first discussed what he felt strongly about and what needed to be changes. He really had a passion for fighting crime and justice. We also spoke about the recent devastation with the Grenfell Tower and how the fire could have been avoided and many more lives could have been saved. Then, together we made a spoken word piece. He gave me words and ideas and put them into sentences and rhymes.

This exercise was brilliant and the other group were defiantly surprised by how good Alfie's spoken word piece was and how much of it there was. The other group did a rap piece that was also very good however it was a lot shorter which made me feel as though working in smaller groups or 1 to 1 which we could have done in that session, allowed us to extract more content then being in a group. This was because there was too much talking in the larger group and not enough focus on the task. Although this wasn't a terrible thing because the larger group bonded a lot over the task however it is important to stay on task and do what needs to be done (especially so close to the performance day).

We then rewarded the group for their hard work by playing another game of splat. We attempted playing Nick's extended version of splat which was planned however, it was a bit too complicated and there wasn't that many of us to do a substantial game. We also didn't do the rhythm game which Martha was supposed to run because of the lack of participants.