Christmas play a success!

My colleague Marja-Liisa took her 5th graders in hand and put on my play "Joulupukki eksyksissä" or "Santa Claus is Lost". She has 29 pupils and all of them wanted to be in the play. It was great! She read the play out to them several times, then the pupils wrote down what parts they wanted to play and then she divided them up. Because many wanted speaking parts, she gave each part the main actor and an understudy. This turned out to be vital, as some of the pupils did get the flu that final week. The main actors put on the play for the parents on Wednesday evening and the understudies put it on again for the pupils during Friday morning assembly.

Marja-Liisa and her husband, our school's principal, built the stage backdrop and painted it. With a Christmas tree, presents for Santa to carry around and some props that I added to the backdrop we had a very workable stage. Microphones were important and we borrowed them from the middle school for the evening performance.

This was the second time this play was performed, and I must say that it turned out just great again. Theatre is all about the performance. Even though the script is the same, it's the pupil-actors who make it real with their own skills.

Another teacher told me that she had heard the children speaking to each other using the lines of the play. So, yes, drama IS a viable means to learning English phrases, intonation and vocabulary and even some grammar! I couldn't and wouldn't teach without it!

Carnival in Venice in July

The carnival is of great importance in Venetian culture today. The weeks before the beginning of Lent are filled with parties and costume balls. After decades - even a century- of decline there has been a revival of masquerading in Venice in the last twenty years. As a tourist on the islands you can't escape the myriad of masks being sold every day of the year. You can find ornamental or traditional ones, decorative or historical ones. Those with feathers and glitter catch your eyes as you walk down the narrow streets. There are the cheap ones NOT made in Venice, not even in Italy and then the very unique ones made by craftsmen on site.

My mind is full of images and ideas. How will this inspiration be put to use in the coming months? It only remains to see if the touch of Venice I had in July will be a catalyst for new creativity.

For more information and perhaps even inspiration see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnival_of_Venice

Inspiration

Where do we find inspiration for our arts and crafts? From novels, DVDs, TV shows, non-fiction reference books, or children's stories?
Last week I spent some time with my young god-daughter and we made a trip to Viapori - Suomenlinna fortress http://www.suomenlinna.fi/index.php?lang=eng - which is just a quick 15-minute ferry ride south of Helsinki. Its construction began in 1748 and it had it's place in history during the Crimean War, is on the World Heritage List, and is a favourite place to have an outing if you are a tourist in the area. I saw part of the dramatized tour "Commandant Cronstedt — hero or traitor?" last Wednesday. What a great group of actors! And of course I looked at the costumes very closely. I hope to use some of the ideas I got that day in my new project. More on that another day!

Fairy Tale Plays

Do you enjoy watching good drama? Do you encourage playacting in your classroom teaching? Do your pupils like reading texts that have parts aloud?

The school year 2007-2008 was important to me, since I broke through the unseen bonds of "keeping to the curriculum" the textbooks dictate and wrote four plays specifically for pupils in four classes. Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and "Annabella's Pearl" taken from Zacharias Topelius's fairy tale called "Adalmiinan Helmi" in Finnish. My colleagues at Takalo School who teach textiles came into the project with me and got their students to sew their own costumes. A total of 38 pupils made dresses with hoops, crinolines, lacy puffy sleeves and even one boy remade a suit jacket into a uniform fit for a prince. The other costumes were made by myself or my fellow colleague.

Have you done anything similar to this? I have written several plays for Christmas and put them on at the Roikola village school. This is the first time I "came public" so to say. I am slowly realizing that the innovative things we do as teachers have to come into the public eye in order to gain recognition for our pupils' talents. If we are too shy - their expertise is never known. I am very proud of all 80 pupils involved!!!