Workshop with 2nd Year St Mary's Students on the 26th March 2009

Workshop 26th March 2009 2nd Year St Mary’s Student

Attending: Dan Williams, Mathew Stenning, Amir Alizadeh and Kathleen O’Connell

Main Aim: To give the 2nd year students an example of a workshop that we would do in a primary school.

Warm-up 1:30pm

‘Name Game’

We started to get the students to say their name and something they like doing, for example ‘my name is Dan and I like swimming’.
Then the rest of the group repeats what they say, then onto the next person.
Extension - Get the group to add an action with the thing they like doing. This adds another dimension to the game by adding in a third thing to think about.

‘Wink Murder’

To choose a murderer, get the whole class to close their eyes while you chose a murderer by touching someone on their shoulder. Then get them to look around the circle at everyone, this will help they get re-orientated after having their eyes closed.
Get them to move slowly around the space making sure that the whole space is being used. If they get killed by the murderer, they have to die dramatically but if you felt that the pupil was holding back and you think they could do better, give them loads of encouragement and they will usual give it their all. Obviously don’t push too hard for them to do better because it might upset them and you would have to work really hard to gain their trust again.
Extension – try adding in a second murderer.

‘Fruit Picking’

You have apples in the trees (up high), peaches in the bushes (waist level) and strawberries on the floor (down low).
Tell the pupils which one they have to pick and get them to move in every direction to stretch e.g. pick apples and the pupils have to reach up high to pick them off the tree, etc

Workshop 1:50pm
The stimulus I used for this workshop was taken from a lesson plan that was used from Alexander Primary School. The idea behind the lesson was to describe how to download music to your grandma.
I gave them things to think about while they were in a circle before separating into groups for example the law behind downloading, why they should download music, how they can download, etc
Now they were in groups of between three and four. Within their groups they have to discuss everything to do with downloading music and why their grandma should download.
Using the information they have discussed they had to create a TV advert.
Extension – Before they create a TV advert they could design a poster informing the grandma how to download music.

Show 2:20pm

Get the group back into a circle after creating their TV advert and talk about what they had discussed in their smaller groups.
After get them to sit as an audience and get them to perform their adverts to the rest of the class.