Cheryl Feldgate, one of Bigfoot’s senior facilitators and trainers, spent Spring Term with teachers from Larmenier and Sacred Heart Primary School in order to support teachers in embedding creative exercises within their everyday lessons.
Two teachers from Year 3 and two from Year 4 were selected from the teaching staff to work with Cheryl once a week. Initially, Cheryl delivered half day sessions in each class whereby she demonstrated an array of appropriately themed activities which met with the teacher’s aims and objectives of the lesson and, ultimately, term. They could then see how in practice how these exercises are facilitated, and the engagement of the students, prior to trialling it themselves.
Over a term each teacher received one on one support with planning and delivering a creative alternative to usual class based activities. This meant that they felt able to experiment with their own delivery style, whilst their students received an exciting new approach to the topic they were exploring with their teachers.
Upon completion of the ‘Creative Consultancy’ Cheryl gave detailed feedback for each of the teachers going forward, a snippet of which can be seen below.
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“Ceallach has shown a sensitivity to the importance of the ‘flow’ of a drama lesson, ensuring that all activities are linked to the theme and are relevant to the literacy objective being explored. She has also taken on simple methods, such as ‘spotlighting’, which, although a small touch, gives the lesson an imaginative edge, contributing to the creative environment.”
“Rachel’s confidence and willingness to use drama in her lessons has grown enormously. She has a great clarity of voice when outlining instructions, however she could now include more modelling of activities. This can be achieved through teacher-in-role or facilitator-guided children’s demonstrations, in order to develop a greater understanding of possible outcomes for the children.”
\”Susan’s drama sessions have a good flow to them and she is beginning to use transition techniques, which is great. Now she can try to use more imaginative language when facilitating the transitions to keep the lesson creative and focus the class through ‘the game’ of the exercise. Clear performance and evaluation criteria can now be highlighted to encourage the children to view work with a constructively critical eye, which once again is another skill transferrable to their writing.\”
