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.
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