Encounters Cultural Festival 2012
encounters brochure – schools 2
Introducing you to the schools brochure for the Encounters Cultural Festival 2012. Booking opens on Monday 10th September and is open to educational establishments within North Lanarkshire. There is a huge variety of cultural and creative events which your pupils could attend – from author sessions, to dance events, to making your own comic book or drawing your own manga character, to watching film shorts, to hearing stories. All the events have curricular links to enable you to make the most out of these sessions.
World War 2 Drama Workshop
Hopscotch Theatre Company visited Glencryan School to deliver a WW2 workshop. They presented a wartime sketch to the children then got them involved in a range of drama activities including hot seating, mime and group presentations. The children thought the workshop was fun and enjoyed consolidating their knowledge of WW2. The teachers were pleasantly surprised by the level of understanding and engagement of many of the children involved. The workshop linked very well with the class topic.
Thank you Hopscotch!
Hopscotch Theatre Company at Glencryan School
Hopscotch Theatre Company visited Glencryan School as part of Eco Day. They presented a short sketch to the children followed by child-led activities including freeze framing, mime and taking part in an Eco chat show. The children thouroughly enjoyed the workshop and learned about a range of Eco-related issues in a fun, interactive way.
Creative Dance at Thornlie Primary
Creative Dance at Thornlie Primary
The children of Thornlie Primary welcomed the wonderful Rosina Bonsu for two days of creative dance workshops. All of the children participated in dance workshops and Primary 3 and Primary 5/6 worked closely with Rosina to choreograph a dance to raise awareness of Fairtrade. The dance was put together with drama and music and was performed for the whole school at our Fairtrade assembly.
Gerry Durkin Training Events
Kirk O’Shotts Primary School was visited by storyteller, Gerry Durkin on Monday 30 April who ran separate staff and parent workshops. Both workshops received positive feedback. Gerry gave a number of useful pointers for developing storytelling for children of all ages. A few of these will be listed below, underneath the following picture gallery:
Tips for storytelling:
- storytelling is particularly beneficial for ‘hard to reach’ children and those that are visual learners
- you may use books as a visual stimulus, but adapt the story or make up your own
- children love to join in, so choose stories with lots of repetition
- settle children into a storytelling session with a familiar song, rhyme or piece of music that they can join in with
- be imaginative when choosing your storytelling environment, try to make it different from the norm if possible, i.e. outside, multi-purpose room, etc.
- use different pace and noise level of stories to energise and then calm children down again
- sourcing stories can be done via Google, going to hear another storyteller, your own experiences, adapting existing stories
- bring in a social or behavioural aspect to your stories to provoke meaningful discussion at the end of the story
- don’t over-use props as they may just distract from the story… allow pupils to use their imagination and create pictures and images in their minds
- prepare your stories in advance so that you can tell them confidently to your children
- relax and enjoy the experience
Book Launch
After such success with Ruth. It was decided to invite a storyteller to our official book launch to share with parents. Although Ruth couldn’t make it herself she recommended Ron to us, who came along and did a great job! 
Pictures of Ruth with different classes telling stories.
Story Teller Visits St Mary’s
It has been a very exciting time here in St Mary’s. Each year children are given the opportunity to create a book which is written and illustrated independently. This programme runs for 4 weeks and is an intense process for all involved! This year to inspire the children and highlight the importance of stories we worked with a storyteller. Ruth worked with each class telling traditional stories which related to our Easter or Spring time theme.
