Welcome!
We hope that you will come on our magical journey with us! We are setting off from St.Clare's in Cavan. Our girls are leaving their comfy seats in Fifth and Sixth Class and are getting ready to travel to a new and magical land. On the journey to see the great Wizard of Oz they will encounter many exciting and wonderful things...we need to get prepared!!With many of the teachers and children in school we work hard every year to prepare and perform a school musical. This year our musical is 'The Wizard of Oz'. This year teachers and students are approaching our preparation very differently!The 'Creative Schools' project has made us look at the creative process involved rather than the final product!
We have almost 40 girls from fifth and sixth class participating in our school musical. Practice for the musical takes place after school but we have enlisted the help of some class teachers to help us with teasing out the girls' creativity in class through various projects linked to their curriculum objectives.
When examing the learning objectives that could be achieved from the project as a whole...we were amazed at how many there were... which lead to a decision of what areas we would prioritise.
The following are the 3 main projects we are focusing on:
Art:
Construction;
1:Designing and making hats for the fantastic people in the city of OZ
The girls are busy working on designs for their hats. These amazing creations will be modelled in the opening scene of the second act.
As a school, last term, we focused on procedure writing in conjunction with our First Steps Programme. To help maintain this we are getting the girls to write the procedures for how to make their hats. They will put on a fashion show for other classes and read their procedures to them. Here is a sneek peek at one of the hat designs and the detailed instructions on how to construct it!
2:Also in the Visual arts strand combined with ICT we have a very interesting project going on in one of our fifth classes!! One of our pupils has an interest and a talent for animation and she is working with her class to develop short animations based on scenes form the Wizard of Oz. But don't take my word for it...click on the link to she some of her work to date! (Scroll down the Blog to post dated 20th December for a peek!) http://room18fifthclass.blogspot.ie/
We can't wait to see what the girls create!!!
Music
Perfoming: Playing Instuments
Composing:Improvising and creating
3.Talking about and recording compositions
In St.Clares we have a Traditional Music group. These girls are working on a piece of music that they will record for the 'Twister' scene. They are combining a traditonal Polka with percussion instruments that they will choose to set the scene.
Phew! We are going to be busy munchkins!
As we said we are focusing on these 3 projects but...our creativity doesn't stop there!
The processes involved in making a script come to life will be encompassing many other subjects from the curriclum!
Drama to explore feelings, knowledge and ideas, leading to understanding
- Exploring and making drama
- Reflecting on drama
- Co-operating and communicating in making drama
- Responding to music through movement
Literacy:
Oral Language:
Discuss the meaning, effect and diversity of local words and expressions
As a school we have priortised vocabulary development as an area we would like to improve. As we are going through the script and songs we will be brainstorming alternative words/meanings for words the girls are stuggling with. This in turn will help them correctly convey the meaning of what they are saying! There will be a section on the blog where we will be challenging the girls to come up with alternative words in a fun way!
We will be posting pictures, interviews and samples of work. We are hoping to use the 'comment' facility under the posts as a forum for the girls to post ideas and thoughts about their projects!
We are hoping to publish a digital scrapbook of our adventures!
So click your heels three times whenever you would like to join us on our adventure!
