MADD

This week I've decided to come home to do a weeks work experience at St Francis, the school I helped out during my time at 6th form and also my own primary school. 

MADD is music, art, dance and drama combined into one and the school uses this to create a musical every other year where each class is involved. The teacher is devoted to just teaching MADD across the whole school and unfortunately told me she fears it may be scrapped in the future due to lack of money.

This years production will be Disney's "The Little Mermaid". The teacher started the lesson by getting the children to play "Just Dance" on the Wii as a warm up. This was done in a similar way to what I saw at St Johns but with year 6 children instead of KS1. I was a little surprised that every child joined in as I was expected the boys to just cower in the corner. I was told that they have been brought up through school doing things like this so that they are used to it which I think is great as it helps to develop their confidence, I don't think I would have joined in when I was in year 6. 

Next the children were given verbs such as "crumble", "creep" and "float" for them to move around the room to their interpretation of the word. This was followed by watching YouTube videos of other peoples production of the musical which the children compared and discussed. They then split off into their groups to create a sequence of dance moves to the music. The teacher explained to me that the art comes in when they make props and costumes, some of the children will be fish while others will be jellyfish and turtles. 

This lesson was great to watch and all the children seemed to be enjoying it! I will certainly be looking to compare with lessons like this done in other schools and to do some more of my own research into MADD.