My favourite expression of deep learning is through creative and performing arts. Last Thursday Class 1 performed their play “Blend Blossom Bloom’ twice: a matinee for the school and an evening session for families and friends.
The play was created from a literacy unit about diagraphs and blend sounds. For 3 weeks the class heard stories, sang songs, spoke verses, wrote sentences, and illustrated their work with the characters and adventures told. Little did they know that learning of the play had already begun and so in the following three weeks the children designed and accessorised their costumes, they practised and enlivened their lines, they choreographed scenes, dances and movements. They sang, played their recorders, tick-tocked on the glockenspiels and tinker belled the marimbas.
They drew and painted the characters, adding further detail and care to their work. The children skateboarded, cartwheeled and juggled. The children had lines alone, in small groups and as a chorus. They took turns in leading and following and they supported each other in many, many ways – I know most of the children knew most of the words and actions better than I (and I had the script!).
After the first and last dress rehearsal I asked the children what they thought went well. The answers overwhelmingly was ALL OF IT. And when I asked what could we do even better, they confidently with joy said NOTHING! And it was true – these wonderful unique little humans had embodied all the different learnings and transformed it into a joyous festival of fun.
Finally, some wise words from Grumpy Grewy Grandfather Grinder, “Tread the trail, tranquil and true, travel the track, no tragedy will come to you.”
Kindlehill School is a K-10 Steiner School that sits on a hill above the Wentworth Falls Lake, in the Blue Mountains, NSW. We are an independant school working creatively and in a contemporary way, out of the foundation of Rudolf Steiner’s philosophy for education.
