Bringing your curriculum to life!
Imagine your class is deep into a new history topic when the door opens and a Roman Centurion strides in, armour gleaming, with orders from Rome and a story to tell. Or picture the moment a World War Two American GI arrives at your school, dog tags around his neck, a letter from home in his pocket, ready to share what life on the front line really felt like. Or perhaps Robin Hood himself drops into your classroom, fresh from Sherwood Forest, needing the help of your brightest and boldest to outwit the Sheriff of Nottingham.
This is what an Actor in Role Topic Buzz Day feels like. And once your children have experienced one, they will never forget it.
The Concept
An Actor in Role Topic Buzz Day is a bespoke, fully immersive drama experience in which a skilled Bigfoot educator arrives at your school in character as a figure drawn directly from your curriculum topic. They do not simply perform for your class. They work with them, talk with them, challenge them and invite them into the story. From the moment the character walks through the door, the room is transformed. The curriculum is no longer something happening on a page or a screen. It is happening right here, right now, and your children are at the very heart of it.
The programme is entirely bespoke. You tell us the topic, the year group and what you want your children to explore, and we work with you to create a character and a session that fits your school’s needs precisely. Whether you are launching a new unit of work, deepening children’s understanding of a topic already underway, or marking a special curriculum event, we will build the experience around your learning objectives and your children.
Why It Works
There is a reason that some lessons stay with children. These are often based on an experience, and how it made them feel. It is not the facts that lodge themselves in a child’s memory. It is the feeling. The moment of genuine surprise, curiosity or wonder. The sense of being trusted with something important, of having a real role to play, of mattering within a story that is bigger than themselves.
Actor in role teaching creates exactly those conditions. When a World War Two GI sits down with your class and talks about leaving his family behind to fight in a war he did not fully understand, children are not learning about the Second World War at arm’s length. They are feeling it. They are asking real questions and receiving real answers in character. They are developing empathy for a human being from another time and place in a way that no worksheet or video clip can replicate.
When a Roman Centurion puts your class through their military drills, assigns them ranks and asks for their counsel on the challenges facing the Roman Empire, children are not passive recipients of historical information. They are thinking like Romans, speaking like Romans and understanding from the inside what it meant to be part of the most powerful military force the ancient world had ever seen.
When Robin Hood enlists your class as members of his Merry Men, setting them problems to solve and decisions to make about justice, loyalty and what it means to stand up for ordinary people against those who abuse their power, children are developing critical thinking, moral reasoning and oracy skills while being wholly and joyfully absorbed in the story.
Highly Interactive, Genuinely Immersive
What sets an Actor in Role Buzz Day apart from any other visiting workshop is the quality and depth of the interaction. Our Bigfoot educators are not simply actors performing a script. They are experienced teaching artists who know how to read a room, respond to children’s ideas in the moment, build tension and release it, ask the questions that spark the richest discussions, and hold an entire class in the palm of their hand for an hour or more.
Children ask questions, challenge the character, offer advice, make choices and solve problems. They work in role themselves, taking on characters connected to the world they are exploring, using drama skills including roleplay, tableaux, improvisation and physical storytelling to bring their learning to life. The session is active from start to finish, and the learning is embedded through experience rather than instruction.
Teachers consistently tell us that Actor in Role days reveal sides of their pupils they rarely see in a normal school day. Children who are reluctant to engage in formal learning become the most animated voices in the room. Children who rarely volunteer an answer are suddenly debating, questioning and leading. The immersive, creative environment of an Actor in Role session gives every child permission to be bold, and most of them take it with both hands.
Bespoke by Design
Every Actor in Role Buzz Day is created in collaboration with you. You give us the topic. We bring the creativity, the character and the expertise to make it extraordinary. Our team will work with you to understand your learning objectives, your year group, the stage your class has reached in their topic and the outcomes you most want to achieve. We then design a character and a session built entirely around those needs, so that every moment of the day is in service of your children’s learning.
The range of topics and characters we can bring to life is genuinely limitless. We have created World War Two soldiers, ancient warriors, medieval outlaws, Tudor courtiers, Victorian inventors, historical explorers and many more. If you can imagine the character, we can bring them to life in your classroom.
To receive further information on this programme, including costings please fill out the form below. For an accurate quote please tell us the topic you’d like us to explore, how many classes you’d like us to work with and when you were thinking of inviting us into your school.
