I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house down!

Yesterday was my last day at St John's C of E School delivering drama sessions as part of their "Arts Week".

I spent the morning working with Reception 1 doing lots of games and drama about "The 3 Little Pigs". The group were very enthusiastic and worked really hard. I was particularly impressed by their "active listening".

After playing lots of different games the class took it in turns around the circle to tell me the story of the 3 little pigs before having the chance to get up on stage and act it out.

I have thoroughly enjoyed the time I have spent at St John's this week and I'm looking forward to starting a new project with them on Wednesday afternoons after half term when I will be working with year 5/6 on World War II.

Who Ate the Gingerbread Man?

What a productive day I had at St John's today! In three hours a group of 13 Year 5 students managed to pull together their own version of a fairytale whodunit called "Who Ate the Gingerbread Man".

The students worked tirelessly in sweltering heat (we were in the conservatory with the sun beating through the roof and windows!) to put together a play that lasted between 10 and 15 minutes. At afternoon assembly the cast of 13 presented their work to the whole school who lapped it up and laughed in all the right places.

Every single member of the group did a fantastic job and they created some really fantastic interpretations of well known fairytale characters as well as a few new creations of their own!

In the end it turned out to be the Ugly Sisters who had committed the crime while the other suspects - Little Red Ridinghood, The Wolf, The Beast and Pinnochio - names were cleared.

It's been a crazy, busy and tiring day but I think everyone involved in Play in a Day today will agree it was worth every second!

Where the Wild Things Are

Over the past few weeks my sessions with Red Class at Oak View School have been based on "Where the Wild Things Are" by Maurice Sendak. The pupils have been doing fantastically well and we have been seeing some great characters coming out in these sessions.

The class teacher has started to compile pictures from these sessions into a book so that the class will have their own version of the book with themselves as all the characters and illustrations. It looks really fantastic and I can't wait to see more of the pictures!

After half term we are also going to have a look at another book called "Giraffes Can't Dance" by Giles Andreae and Guy Parker-Rees. We are going to see if we can join these two stories together to make a new story.
As always I will keep you posted!

St. John's Arts Week

This week I'm being kept on my toes delivering lots of drama workshops at St John's School in Buckhurst Hill as part of their Arts Week programme.

All the children are spending the week taking part in lots of different arts activities and what's even better is that they don't need to do any of their normal lessons!

So far I have worked with a Year 6 group on Improvisation and Devising and also with 2 Year 2 classes on Jack and the Beanstalk. We also had a group of Year 10 students, along with Mr Thorn, perform two of their GCSE devised fairytales at a whole school assembly this morning before take a group of Year 4's for a post-show workshop. Mr Thorn tells me that the students from RVHS were an absolute credit to themselves and the school.

Tomorrow I will be working with a group of Year 5's all day to create a play that we will present at afternoon assembly to the whole school. It is going to be a really busy and probably stressful day but I'm sure it will be worth it and I will let you know how it all goes and hopefully have some pictures to put up too!

Rome wasn't built in a day

Thursday afternoon was the last of my Roman Buildings Collage Sessions at Staples Road Junior School. I was working with Class 5 and their teacher Mrs Howarth this week and we tried experimenting with different colours for our buildings. The results were really fab!

Five weeks ago I embarked on this project feeling a little unsure about how it was going to turn out but now lots of PVA, magazine clipping and a Roman City's worth of buildings later, I have to say I'm thrilled with the results!


Now, having worked with the five classes in the lower school (years 3 and 4), I shall be spending our last Thursday afternoon slot before half term assembling the buildings into a display on the wall. The display will also have lots of photos from the sessions.

The Three R's

This week I spent some time in Chigwell Row Infant School working with the children on their "Eco Week". On Wednesday I worked with four groups doing drama based on the countryside code and the three R's "reduce, reuse, recycle". All the pupils did really well and seemed to have fun.

On Thursday morning I worked with the children again but this time on collage. We recapped all that we had learned the day before and used our three R's for our collage. The children's work was fantastic and I went back to the school this morning to take some pictures of the finished pieces now that they have been displayed on the wall in the school hall.

I really enjoyed working with the children and staff at this tiny school and I'm looking forward to working with them again in the future!

Arts Award Careers Convention

This morning we were lucky enough to have a group of professional arts practitioners in to work with our Year 9s to help them with their Silver Arts Award.

As part of their work on the Silver Award the students have to meet and find out about an arts professional, with so many students undertaking the award Miss Harvey and I worked to get as many practitioners as possible in to hold an Arts Careers Convention. The practitioners we got were:

• Philip Melling - Artist/Designer/Maker and Workshop Leader http://www.philipmelling.co.uk/


• Tomorrow's Warriors - The education branch of the Dune Music Label http://www.tomorrowswarriors.org/

• Sandrine Anterrion - Designer/Artist/Singer/Dancer http://www.redglasssky.com/


• Ian Black - Musical and Community Theatre


• Jen Smith - RVHS Community Arts Co-ordinator

The students were split (as far as possible!) so that everyone was in a group with a speaker that worked in the area that they were learning about for their project, with the exception of some photographers in my group for which I can only apologise!

The morning seemed to go really well and we are looking forward to working with these artists again in the future. It was really fantastic to have such experienced professionals volunteer to come in and work with us for free! So thanks to you all!!!

If you would like to find out more about Arts Award you can visit http://www.artsaward.org.uk/

Jen

Photos from the Talent Show

West Hatch High School's "That's Right" (above) and Amy Berlyn (below)

Prudence Snellgrove from Debden Park High School singing and playing Kelly Clarkson's Because of You

Paige Wilkey from Roding Valley High School playing and singing (along with her sister Joely) Time of your Life

Jessica Powell from Debden Park High School dances to Pirates of the Carribean

Lauren Haines from Debden Park High School performs her winning monologue

John Wilding from West Hatch High School sings Heaven

Roding Valley's very own "Day Glo Freaks"

Photos by Gareth Davies at Debden Park

Public Performance well received

Our second event as part of the Loughton Festival took place on Saturday 3rd May. 7 students from years 7 and 8 again did the school proud as they conducted themselves professionally in a performance at Loughton Methodist Church.

The group met in the Drama Studio here at RVHS for a last rehearsal before walking up to the church to present their devised piece. The audience was made up of friends and family as well as members of the public who were there to hear talks about George Granville Barker (a local-born poet) and James Hilton (author of Goodbye Mr Chips and Lost Horizon).

Debden Park kicked off the performance section with a stylised interpretation of Barker's poem "Channel Crossing" before we took the stage with our devised piece based on themes from Hilton's novel "Lost Horizon". The group, who were initially brought together during our Easter "Play in a Day" workshop, worked on the idea that "one man's paradise is another man's nightmare". The piece followed two characters journey's as a plane crash-landed on a remote, tribe-inhabited island and was received well by the audience.

Again, pictures will follow from this event.

Jen

And the winners are...

Well after all the stress in the lead up to Friday's final of the Inter-School Talent Show, it went (fairly) smoothly! After a mad rush to get the hall ready when school finished, we had a fantastic programme of performers from each of the three schools and I'm glad I didn't have the job of picking the winners!

The winners were:

• Drama: Lauren Haines from Debden Park High School


• Music: John Wilding from West Hatch High School


• Dance: Ellen Cameron from Roding Valley High School

Everyone who performed on Friday really did their schools proud and were a shining example of the vast amounts of talent we have among us in the Epping Forest District. These young people have also shown a great amount of dedication and commitment as it was abundantly clear to the audience how much effort and rehearsal each act had put in to their performance. From Roding Valley, it seems only fitting to make mention of Jake Lee (10Q) who learned to accompany himself on the piano for Friday's final.

Jen