Mr Mullard explains the idea of the Y6 Production

From a recent letter to parents:

Unlike most Junior Schools, our Y6 Production is not a unit of work unrelated to the curriculum and designed solely to allow the children to end their time in junior school on “a high”. We hope our production does this, of course, but we require it to do far more and this is because the production is an essential part of our Y6 curriculum.

The production is the outcome of the final Integrated Learning Unit of the year called Making Sense of it All and I have attached the plans for this work to this letter. The unit of work challenge pupils to confront and explore difficult changes in personal relationships, both fictional and real-life, so that they can reflect more effectively upon their own circumstances and beliefs.

This allows us to examine the way different faiths make sense of the purpose of life and the significance of death. The children are encouraged to express their thoughts in a variety of ways.

Moving on to secondary school may be a very challenging time for many children and our transition work is an important part of the unit, allowing us to help the children see it as an exciting opportunity. The unit also allows us to further develop relationship education, the effects of peer group pressure and to promote opportunities for the children to reflect upon the sort of person they want to be.

Each year, different additional themes are explored for example, last year it was street children and this year it is the theme of sustainability as reflected in daily decisions with both local and global environmental consequences. These themes have been explored at great length in our English curriculum in Exploratory Talk, Reading and Writing activities and also in the recent homework tasks.

The production is essentially a play with dance. The playscript has been written by over twenty children working with myself in after-school sessions which started in February. The storyline shows children making sense of a web of challenging relationships in their lives and it highlights our chosen issues of sustainability in what we hope becomes a gripping adventure story. This year the production will also include animated films which will be created by the children working with an “artist in residence”. The dances are created from the children’s own ideas.

The production is not just about the performers on stage. We firmly believe that all pupils should have a strong sense of ownership of the work and there are many ways in which those that do not wish to take a prominent role can contribute. These include stage design, face painting and costumes, logistical work to do with invitations, ticketing and programme design. Many prefer to be involved with the technical side of the performance and there are roles in lighting and audio-visual presentation. Just as with the performing roles, these and many more tasks promote teamwork skills and provide opportunities for the children to work independently.
In addition to this, there are many other activities taking place alongside tasks more closely related to the performance. Maths, French, English, DT and ICT work is still actively pursued.

This schools Integrated Learning Units have been very highly praised by inspectors and our Making Sense of it All unit is often identified as an exceptional showcase of cross curricular work which offers real depth and challenge to the pupils. The quality of the children’s acting and dance has been described as outstanding by visitors from local secondary schools and a county inspector for English has even asked to be invited to a performance!

As you can probably tell, we are very proud of our Y6 curriculum and its final manifestation in the Y6 production. In recent years, it has been a wonderful experience for the pupils and one I am sure many of them will remember for a very long time. We very much look forward to sharing the children’s work with parents and guests in a few weeks time.

What are the dances ?

Monkey Man
Orang-utans have fun and show their serious side too.

Layla
Layla struts her stuff with her girls. They think she’s so cool . . . just don’t mess with her if you know what’s good for you.

La luna en Tu Mirada
Ghostly Barn Owls sweep and float.

Drive Back
Blake and the others won’t leave him alone so Seth hates it here and wants away.

Back to Black
Layla faces the truth – she hates her life or is it herself?

American Beauty
Kate’s nightmare: Barn Owls and Orangs are in big trouble.

Superstition
Seth is a thief . . . isn’t he? They crowd around to accuse him.

Michael's interview with Mrs B about the dances

I interviewed Mrs Branscombe about the dances.

“Are you enjoying teaching some of the dancing this year?” we asked

“I’m loving leading the dancing. They are really enthusiastic.” She replied.

Our next question was, “How is the dancing going?”

She replied, “The moves are more or less completed.” She explained. “We just need to practise the timings. There is one more dance to plan.”

A few words from Michael

Yr 6 Production Update:

The Production is now only weeks away. We can’t wait!
The actors are practising everyday and I have been in to watch some of the rehearsal and it looks good.

Every child in yr 6 has to do something for the Production. Some are designing sets, props and tickets. We are all very busy!

Coming soon ………………………….. interviews with some of the cast.

Mulberry the barn owl visits Y6

Our Y6 production this year has sustainability as an important theme. The story involves both orangutans and barn owls and the Hawk Conservancy Trust visited us this week so that we could learn more about barn owls. Amazingly, our visitor, called Paul, has spent 6 months working on orangutan projects in Borneo in Indonesia and he was able to tell us about the problems facing both species.

The Hawk Conservancy Trust is based in Andover and they are cloesely involved in projects which hope to safeguard barn owls and to increase their numbers in this country. Their website is well worth a look at:

http://www.hawk-conservancy.org/

The script is finished!

This week, the last two scenes of A Tangled Web were completed. We started work on 6 March and over the weeks, 23 pupils have been staying behind after school writing the 23 scenes of the playscript.

Be prepared . . . . at 91 pages, it's the longest of all the plays that have been written by Y6 in the last 4 years. But don't worry - you won't need your sleeping bag because this story is very exciting and you will be on the edge of your seats as the story approaches its climax.

More details will follow in the next few days and we hope that you will call in again as work on the production starts in a big way in two weeks time as you will be able to see our day to day progress.

The SATs are over !

We thought we would record some of our thoughts once the SATs were over:

It was OK. Some tests were hard and some were easy. I was nervous but I had fun and I managed.

It was easy. It was weird at the beginning of the week but I got the hang of it.

Stressful and horrible at first but further on in the week I was more comfortable with it. The Science was the easiest.

Some tests were rather challenging but I completed every one. I know I haven't got every question right, but I'm quite pleased with myself.

Annoyed and relieved because all the fuss was for something that wasn't so hard!

I felt nervous before the tests, I felt I was under pressure. It got easier as theweek went on and afterwards I felt relaxed and satisfied with my work.

The SATs were not too hard and there was no pressure on any of us - there was no need to worry.

Boring!!!

Really quite easy.

Very quiet!

Fun, interesting but sometimes a bit boring.