This week we had no lecture and instead had only two workshops. The first workshop was music and it was delivered by a group of primary school pupils who all played string instruments. We were seated like an orchestra and the children all sat between us. We done lots of different exercises that the children done in class to learn how to play the instruments and the pupils took on the role of teachers, showing us how to do them. It was a really fun workshop to be a part of because it was so practical and when I was in school, I used to play the cello so it was a reminder how hard playing an instrument was! We also learned lots about the schools string project and how it works. Unfortunately, 97% of the school is on free meals so ordinarily, most of the families wouldn’t be able to afford the private tuition lessons which is why the project is such a great initiative. The children receive whole class lessons and don’t take the instruments home so although it may take longer to make progress, the children aren’t practicing mistakes at home and they actually get a chance to learn an instrument that they may never have normally had. I found this workshop really inspiring because the children all really loved playing their instruments and most of them wanted to continue playing them into high school.
Our second workshop was dance. This was our first week doing it so I wasn’t really sure what to expect. I had done a little dance when i was younger but I was little apprehensive about doing it now. We started with a dance version of Chinese whispers, to warm up, where a dance move was passed up to the top of the line and you had to see if it matched the bottom. We then done another exercise where we all danced in a line and every time the music changed, the person at the front came up with a new dance move. This was really fun and everyone really enjoyed it but this could be really difficult for children who don’t dance or who have little self confidence. You would have to know your class really well before doing something where they have to show off on their own. We also done an activity where when certain numbers were shouted, we had to get into groups of that number and form pre-arangeed shapes with our bodies. We focussed on a Scottish theme and used items like castles or the Loch Ness monster but it could be used for a variety of topics and subjects in class, for example maths. This could be really helpful for children with learning difficulties who might benefit from visual learning. Our main activity was, in groups, to come up with a move for each of the 10 basic moves of dance, which are jump, kick, roll, twist, turn, hop, gesture, reach, balance and slide. We then used these moves to create a dance routine. However, we ran out of time to show our routines so this become next weeks task.
