Fourth session plan and exercises

First session: summing up the project and preparing for assembly

The warm-up will include games to warm up the voice and think about being a performer – and being a good audience. Then:

1. Introduce the book and blog.

2. Children make name labels on luggage tags for the book – in which they have ‘travelled through time’.

3. Children decide on poems, stories and self-portraits to be read aloud in assembly. And on a mime to be performed: they can vote for these using the voting buttons if appropriate.

4. Practise in groups: each group makes a short presentation of one of the following:

a.an overall intro to the project, and introducing the book and the blog.
b. an intro to what it was like to be a poor child in 1840, a poverty poem and a ‘poor child’ poem
c. a bit of information about children at work and a mime
d. a bit of information about children at work and a story mountain story
e. a bit of information about Victorian schools and a self-portrait

5. Practise performances to the class. The class gives feedback on performances and readings – could be in the form of voting and/or suggestions for improvement.

6. If time left before assembly: work on decorating their name labels and front cover / title page / section headings of book.

**Assembly**

Second session (after assembly): class poem
My idea is that this session can include any of the exercises we have used before that you would like to, and that we put the results together into a class poem. A rough idea could be (the two parts could be in either order – whatever you prefer):

1. (30 minutes) Each child shows an object that they have brought in from home (or chosen from around the classroom) that they feel says something about them (or their school). They then follow the self-portrait model:
1. mind-map of description of the object
2. underline words that could also describe you
3. self-portrait using those words, and beginning with ‘My name is….’
These are ‘miniature’ self-portraits. Each child is given a line-limit of say four lines so that all their self-portraits can fit together into a long poem. We could do this by asking them to write on small slips of paper or cards.

2. (10 – 15 minutes) Whole class poem. based on the ‘what do the objects say’ model. Class mindmaps ideas for what different parts of the classroom say, e.g.

Our classroom door says ‘please come in, I’m lonely’, or ‘go away, we’re busy’, or ‘amazing things happen on the other side of me’. Class then votes on their favourite line and goes on to the next:
The floor of our classroom says …
The windows say …
The whiteboard says… / The desks / The chairs / The ceiling
?The teaching assistants! / ? The teacher!

ending ‘And class 14 says… ‘

3. The whole class poem can then be put together with all the individual self-portrait poems to make a detailed and personal self-portrait of the class and all its pupils.

4. I’d like to end with a discussion of the project, what everyone thought of it: what was hardest, what they are most proud of or enjoyed most etc. and ideas for what to do next.