On Friday 25June, 34 Year 7 & 8 students, accompanied by 4 Year 10 GCSE Drama students and 4 members of staff, travelled to a centre on the borders of Herefordshire and Gloucestershire to take part in a four day Performing Arts residential.
The students all took part in workshops in Music (singing), Drama and Dance. These were led by Ridgeway teachers and staff from the charity Active Training and Education and focused on promoting vertical learning, which means learning across the year groups.
Drama and Dance had a theme of ‘School’. In Dance, the students were taught the choreography to the famous song by Pink Floyd called ‘Another Brick in the Wall’. They added sections of their own choreography as well as some Drama skills such as ‘tableau’ to the routine.
In Drama, students worked on a poem by the Liverpool poet, Roger McGough. It was about a student new to a school and so this work was linked to the transition period when a student starts ‘big school’ in Year 7 and then how they feel at the end of their first year. The students learnt key Drama forms such as essence machine, dramatic pause, physical theatre, sound-scape. They were expected to devise their own adaptation of the poem into a performance using these skills as well as ones they had learnt in school.
In the Music sessions, they were taught 6 songs that promoted singing in parts and harmonies. All our documentary materials (photos and films) will be uploaded to the school network over the next week and a prize is being offered for the best short film using these resources! In addition, the students will be given CDs of the 6 songs that they learnt.
The Year 10 students each had a small group of Year 7s or Year 8s they helped to lead/look after, in order to develop leadership skills and to model the vertical learning idea to the younger students.
Back at school, 5 of the Year 8 students have now, as part of this ongoing process, taught their groups the new skills. Hopefully, this will raise their attainment in this final Drama assessment of the year.
Click on the link below to view some photographs from the trip.
