I've been teaching history for four years, and I aim to provide lessons that are ready to go with minimal tweaking just to personalise the resource to your class and their prior learning. I'm a big fan of paired discussion, group work, debates, living graphs and hot seating, and I provide a variety of tasks in each lesson to ensure learning happens at a pace and that all learning styles are catered for. All feedback gratefully received.
I've been teaching history for four years, and I aim to provide lessons that are ready to go with minimal tweaking just to personalise the resource to your class and their prior learning. I'm a big fan of paired discussion, group work, debates, living graphs and hot seating, and I provide a variety of tasks in each lesson to ensure learning happens at a pace and that all learning styles are catered for. All feedback gratefully received.
It was the end of term, my lovely year 7 asked me for a drama lesson, so I wrote this play. We rehearsed and performed it within just one lesson, minimum props needed.
The play is several very short chunks that allows up to 32 students to have a named part. Each scene is written for between 2 and 5 students and there are 10 'scenes' so lots of people get to be Henry and lots more get to be various wives. I provided yellow cardboard crowns and some cardboard swords and we used our imagination for the rest.
After each group had had 15 minutes to rehearse, to plan their entrances and props and actions etc, I gathered them all into an arena shape with a half circle of chairs in front, several tables behind so all could sit and all could see. The groups performed the scenes in order as I called them, it was a beautiful farce that was lots of fun, and lots of clapping. The most memorable part was when a group of boys enacted Jane Seymour giving birth.. lots of ad libbing!
I hope you enjoy this as much as we did, I will definitely be using this again.
NB I wrote it with a mixed ability class in mind so the reading isn't too challenging. To beef it up you could have a selection of keywords, or historical terms on the board and give points for groups that include them.