Tuesday 18th March:
So today was our Shakespeare workshop. At first I wasn't too confident in leading this workshop, as one of our year 12 members had injured themselves as so we were one member down. However, we did have Susanna in with us incase anything went wrong. I wasn't expecting the children to know too much about Shakespeare and on some level they didn't, however it turned out they did know quite a number of the plays he had written.
When the children first entered they were really quiet and when we began the workshop I felt like they were quite scared and Darius was just talking. I thought perhaps they might not be enjoying themselves, however, when we began the warm up game they seemed really engaged and into what we wanted them to do. I thought Francis's explanation could have been a bit clearer, but he did tell me before we began that he didn't really know how to explain the game, and I just reassured him that if he wasn't clear, me or Darius would reiterate it to the children.
When I began to explain the Shakespeare Map game, I thought I gave a clear explanation to the children and I made sure they knew what wall was what play. Once I got them to walk around the room, Shannon (year 12) said to me that I had forgotten to add in the fact that we were going to add actions to each wall, however I had deliberately not included this information as I wanted to make sure that the children knew exactly what to do before adding onto the game. The first time we played this I said 'The Tempest', 'Romeo and Juliet' and then 'A Midsummer Nights Dream', and so I heard some of the children saying that it was going to be 'Macbeth' next and so I noticed a lot of the children hovering near that wall, and so I decided to say 'The Tempest' again just they understood that they couldn't guess what was going to come next. Once they'd gotten the hang of the game, that was when I added another level, asking the children how they thought a villain (Macbeth), hero (Rome & Juliet) and king/queen (A Midsummer Nights Dream) might stand (also, for The Tempest, I told them that it was set on a island and asked them what the weather might be like, and so the action was pretending to be hot). We played this for what seemed like a long time, and so once I'd checked with the others, who agreed, we finished the game. However then Susanna said that we had to add another level, in which we would call out character's names and they had to strike a pose as that character e.g. 'Bottom' they all became donkeys. Once we'd played this for a bit, I chose one girl to give her the chance to shout out one of the plays/characters for the others to run to/be. At first I thought this was a good idea, however once I'd given the chance to one person, a lot more of the children wanted to choose a play.
Once we'd finished playing this game, we moved onto the 'staging of the whole play'. Now, as we were down one team member we hadn't gone through how we were going to change this section, and so when it came to it we weren't prepared, and so I was thankful when Susanna stepped in. I thought she was only going to introduce it, however she seemed to lead most of this section. We each stayed to a group to help them create a still image. I was working with group 3 (Act 3). So the children chose which characters they wanted to be and we created an image. As an extension we added words and actions. We then shared to the rest of the class. This was one of the children's favourite parts of the workshop.
The final discussion which I lead, involved asking the children what they enjoyed and what they learnt. This was when I asked them what other plays they knew Shakespeare had written. One boy said 'Antony and Cleopatra' and another said 'Othello' and I was very proud of this as I'm sure I didn't know of these two plays at their age......
I thought overall our group did a good job at leading this Shakespeare workshop, and I was rather confident when delivering my section which I'm not usually. I felt that Susanna interjected a lot throughout our workshop. Sometimes I thought it was necessary, and sometimes it wasn't. I understand that she has more experience than us, but I thought one of the reasons we were leading these workshops was for us to gain more confidence in leading workshops. Having said that, she did help when we needed it, but overall we still did a good job in my opinion.
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