 So the Olympics have started in London! Hooray, we are full of pride for our Great British athletes! Hopefully it will be a great way of persuading the great British public to become healthier. As much fun as we have performing “Meal or No Meal”, our healthy eating drama workshops in primary schools we know they have a serious message behind it.
Recent statistics from a large-scale survey in the UK show that as many as 25 percent of boys and 33 percent of girls aged between two and 19 years are overweight or obese. Unsurprisingly, most health experts agree one of the most important factors in the fight against childhood obesity is to encourage healthy eating habits from an early age.
Here’s a great game you can use with your class to teach them all about Healthy Eating.
Which Food Goes Where? (Suitable for Years 1 – 4)
Make up 5 food category signs
- Bread, other cereals and potatoes
- Fruit and Vegetables
- Milk and Dairy Foods
- Meat, Fish, beans, nuts and tofu.
- Fats and Sugars
Make some laminated pictures of food. Make two of each picture. You can either get the pictures off the internet or get the class to help you with drawing the pictures of the food. Here are some suggestions:
Apple x 2 (Fruit and Veg), Carrot x 2 (Fruit and veg), Bottle of Milk x 2 (Milk and Dairy), Tin of Tuna x 2 (Meat and Fish), Sausage x 2 (Meat and Fish), Nuts x2 (Meat and Fish), Slice of Bread x 2 (Bread, Cereals and potatoes), Oven chips x 2 (Bread, cereals and potatoes), Chocolate bar x 2 (Fats and sugar), Bottle of oil x 2 (Fats and sugar)
This game needs lots of space so use the hall!
- Make sure that you have two pictures of each of the foods. Split them into two separate piles so that each group has the same pictures. If you want to make it so they are competing put different coloured stickers on the pictures, e.g. red for one team and green for the other.
- Get five chairs or use a blank wall.
- Stick the 5 food category signs either on the back of 5 chairs or on a blank wall. Spread them out.
- Split the class into two teams and sit them on mats facing the chairs/wall.
- Get three volunteers from each team up to the front of the mats. Volunteer 1 from each team will be in charge of holding up the pictures of the food. Volunteers 2/3 from each team will run to put the food with the right sign.
- Tell the teams that the volunteer holding the food pictures will hold them up one picture at a time. Each team has to decide under which food category they go.
- Once they have decided (majority rules!) volunteer 2 will run and put the food picture under the food category sign (Either on the chair, or sticking it to the blank wall) they think it goes with. Once volunteer 2 returns the next picture is held up and volunteer 3 runs to put it under the right category and so on.
- Say that you will give the children one minute to complete the game, just to make them go quicker – this makes it more exciting for them – it’s up to you whether you actually time them or not!
- Play the game!
- When they have finished you can look to see if all the foods are in the right category. This can lead to explaining how each food group helps our bodies and how to be especially healthy we should have a balance of all the foods every day, saving the fats and sugars as a special treat.
- To make the game more difficult or last longer, you can add more food or more unusual or difficult to categorise food, vegetables like butternut squash, avocadoes, lentils, tofu, crisps or a bowl of cereal.
We hope you and your pupils enjoy this game and find it useful to start introducing your class to healthy eating. If would like to know more creative ways to teach your children about healthy eating, or if you would like to book a day of healthy eating drama workshops, do get in touch using the quick enquiry form to the right and we’ll be happy to help.
 Role Play As young people grow older, they are faced with some challenging decisions, some are simple but some involve serious moral questions. Its human nature for them to listen to other people in their age group, and peers influence their life, even if they don’t realize it, and is all peer pressure bad?
Positive peer pressure can happen – for example, if one student is excited about their new favorite book, and gets everyone into reading it. However, quite often peers influence each other in negative ways, young people want to do what they know is right but they don’t want to be the one who stands out. Or they simply want to try something that “everybody else” is doing.
So how you work with your class on the topic of peer pressure using drama?
Role Play
Role playing can be a really useful classroom activity, allowing students to understand the effects of peer pressure and can lead into to a great group discussion on the topic.
- Divide the classroom into smaller groups of up to 5.
- Either ask them to think of an incident of peer pressure or give them cards with prompt words on.
- Ask for volunteers in each group to act out their scenarios. Then give them a short amount of time to rehearse. (5 minutes is plenty)
- Ask them to show their scenarios to the rest of the group.
- Have a group discussion on each scenario about what was going on, who was pressuring who, was it positive or negative pressure. Ask them what were their reactions and feelings about the scenario, how would they react if it was happening to them?
- If you have a good group who you think are able to work well, try hot seating, allow the characters to be questioned by their classmates about why they behaved the way they did, and what their feelings were.
- After the role-playing, return to the normal classroom format and open it up to a general discussion on the effects of peer pressure.
P.S. Don’t forget its anti-bullying week on the 14th – 18thNovember, so get in touch if you would like us to help you with an anti-bullying drama workshop!
 - Stop and think – words can hurt
Yes, we know it seems a long way away at the moment as you have just started on your summer holidays, but we already have bookings from much organised teachers wanting our services for 2011’s anti- bullying week so this is just a reminder for you to get in quick!
The theme for anti-bullying week this year is “Stop and think – words can hurt” which ties in nicely to what we can offer schools for anti-bullying week. As all schools are different we offer a number of different options for you, and hope that one of these workshops will meet your needs.
1. Anti-Bullying Play in a Day – This is a great way to introduce or conclude a topic, to promote inclusion and help with revision. Play in a Day is suitable for KS2; the facilitator can work with one class at a time (Up to approx 35 children). The class works with a facilitator starting at the beginning of the school day, and working around your break and lunch times for the day, perform the play for an invited audience of their peers (and parents should you wish to invite them) at the end of the day. The play performed is a 10-15 minute ensemble piece using inventive theatre techniques such as choral speech, stylised movement and mime. This usually takes place at either 2.30pm or 2.45pm.
2. Anti – Bullying Forum Theatre Workshop - Our Happy, Safe and Confident Workshops for Key Stages 1, 2 and 3 pupils aims to raise awareness of bullying and its effects, by using forum theatre techniques to explore the roles of bully, victim and bystander, how bullying makes us feel, and how we can deal with it by developing assertiveness and coping strategies. The workshops for KS 1 and 2 is for one class at a time and for KS3 a maximum of two classes at a time. Workshops last for 30 minutes – 1 hour 15 mins (dependent on age group) and require the use of a school hall or gymnasium. We can do up to a maximum of four workshops in one day.
3. Respect Drama Day – Suitable for KS 1 and 2 we work with 3 or 4 classes throughout the day, each class works with a drama facilitator for 45 minutes – 1 hour to produce a short play/presentation on the theme of anti bullying. When they are not working with the facilitator they are working with their class to create their “Kingdom of Respect”. This includes having a name for their Kingdom and ten rules to live by amongst other things. The classes present their work to the other classes and any other audience you would like to invite at the end of the day. The schedule for the day is dependent on your timetable.
Please get in touch if you would like more information and costs for each drama workshop. There is a discount for two or more days booked together. Enjoy your holidays everyone!
This week we have mainly been thinking about the issue of Friendship. Here are some games that you can play with your KS 1 or 2 classes:
 Friendship Games Musical Friends
A friendly version of musical chairs – and everyone wins! Play musical chairs as usual, but when the music stops, instead of taking away a chair and getting a child has to sit out, just take away a chair. By the end of the game, the whole class has to cooperate to fit everyone on one chair. Children love this game!
I like friends who……
Arrange the class in a circle. One after the other they say “I like friends who…” then give their answer. On the first round they are allowed repetitions. One the second go they all have to say something different. On the third go they have to add an action to go with their statement.
I’m Your Friend
The pupils sit together on the floor. One pupil sits in a chair with their back to the group, eyes should closed and their hands covering eyes. The facilitator/teacher points at one of the group and that person tiptoes up to the chair, taps the child sitting in it on the back, and in a disguised or funny voice says, “Do you know me? I’m your friend.” The mystery child then rejoins the group and the guessing begins! The child in the chair uncovers his/her eyes,turns around, and tries to guess the name of the friend who tapped and talked. After three guesses, a new child takes the chair and gets a turn.
Human Knot
Form groups – this works best with groups of 6 to 10 members. They stand shoulder-to-shoulder in a circle, facing each other. The first group member reach across the circle with one hand and take the hand of another group member (not be the person next to them). That person then takes someone else’s hand and so on until they are all holding hands.
Ask them to try and untangle the human knot! They can duck under each other’s arms, squat down while someone steps over their arm. Get them to move slowly, one person at a time. Ask them to talk to each other and work together. Some members may end up facing outward instead of inward and that is allowed. Try it a second time and see if they can untangle faster than the first.
This is great for teaching them to work together as a team.
Guess Who?
The teacher/facilitator begins by describing one of the children in the class. When the children think they know who has been described, they raise their hands. The teacher selects someone, who makes a guess. If the child guesses correctly, he or she will get to describe the next person. The easy version of this game is to just describe the person’s clothes, the harder version is to just describe positively what they are good at and all the things you like about this person.
We hope our drama games are useful for you, if you would like us to come and do a friendship drama day for your school, please get in touch.
 Forum Theatre We often talk about forum theatre and its benefits but have realised that others may not have our knowledge of this theatre strategy, so here is a short explanation of what forum theatre is. Forum theatre was created by the innovative and influential practitioner Augusto Boal as part of his “Theatre of the Oppressed.” Originally the technique was developed by Boal as a tool for political change but since then it has been widely adapted and used in educational contexts.
A scene is shown, usually containing some kind of oppression, for example Act On Info would show a scene during an anti-bullying drama or smoking prevention workshop showing someone being bullied or pressured by their peers. We would show this scene twice. During the replay, with younger pupils, we ask them to put up their hands when they see behaviour that they do not like, or if they see something they would not like to happen to them and the facilitator would shout stop. With older pupils they can shout stop themselves. The actors freeze at this point, we describe it like pressing pause on a DVD. We use these freezes to take a deeper look at what is going on in the scene, the facial expressions, body language and emotions of the characters in the scene.
The facilitator would then ask for suggestions as to how the pupils would change the characters behaviour, and invite the pupils to take the role of the characters to see how effective their suggestions are. Different suggestions can be tried out by different pupils showing how they could change the situation to create a different outcome. This way of working breaks down barriers between the pupils and the situation – it puts them in the action. It is a great tool to enable pupils to try out different courses of actions in a safe environment that they can then apply to their own lives.
 Whilst working on drugs awareness this week we had a look at the latest in depth study done by the NHS in 2009. This is what they found:
- In 2009, more than half (56%) of 15 year olds were offered drugs.
The pupils we worked with were shocked as actually they would have considered it to be more of them.
Out of that 56%
- 80% of pupils who had ever been offered drugs had refused them at least once and only 22% of pupils reported having taken drugs.
This again surprised the pupils as they would have thought it was more, it was really good to be able to demonstrate to the pupils that not as many young people take drugs as they think and in fact if they say no to drugs, they are in the majority rather than the minority.
- Pupils were most likely to have got the first drugs they took from a friend of the same age.
We had some answers from pupils that ranged from you have to go down a dark alley to get drugs, you get them off adults, you have to find a dealer. Again it was a surprise that they were most likely to get them off friends.
It was slightly shocking in some way how little knowledge the pupils had about drugs, it is worrying that the majority of facts they have about drugs are misrepresented facts from their friends, how do we expect young people to be able to make informed choices if they are not armed with as much information as possible? If you would like to book Act On Info drug awareness workshops or assemblies for your PSHE lessons next term, please contact us using the quick enquiry form.
It is New York fashion week this week and for the first time in its history, plus-sized models will feature. By plus-sized the industry means anyone size UK 16 or over, which accounts for the majority of both the American and UK markets. The question is: whether this is a positive step toward embracing the different shapes and sizes we humans come in, or is it encouraging us to accept our rising obesity levels as normal? Its a sticky subject. While we all struggle with the ideas of a perfect body image, we can’t ignore the fact that our average waist size is increasing quicker than you can say “all you can eat buffet”. What is important is that we don’t fall into the trap of believing that we should all fit some unrealistic image and that we do celebrate our diversity. It is our self-confidence which needs protecting as well as our arteries. Here at Act on Info Towers we have drama workshops for schools which cover the issues of healthy eating and activity. We believe it is crucial for our young people to understand the importance of a healthy and balanced diet and to enjoy regular activities. If we learn this information early on then it is easier to keep healthy later on in life. To book our Healthy Eating Drama Workshop or Play in a Day send us an email or make a quick enquiry (see right).
It seems we here in Greater Manchester could lead the way with the minimum-price-per-unit-of-alcohol scheme. PM David Cameron has apparently backed local council plans to discourage binge drinking, by calling time on cheap booze deals.  The idea being that we can’t all ‘get off our heads’ before heading out for the night. (Surely the scheme has to be nationwide or else off-licences and supermarkets sitting just over the borders, in West Yorkshire or Lancashire say, will be thriving!) Thankfully though, the Department of Health are still considering the wider implications of our drinking culture and agreeing that as well as legislation we need to look at the “psychology behind why different groups of people drink alcohol to excess”. And that’s where we here at Act on Info Theatre in Education Company come in. From our years of experience working with young people and health issues we believe that education is key to helping us make healthier decisions. We also know from first hand experience that allowing our young people a platform to discuss their attitudes and fears in a non-judgmental manner helps to understand these attitudes and fears and to combat much more complex problems such as peer pressure, bullying and anti-social behaviour, all of which are linked to our fixation with excessive drinking. So come on Department of Health – put your money where your mouth is and get Alcohol Awareness Drama Workshops out there in our schools. You never know you might all just learn something.
Apparently more than a third of all our pet dogs are overweight. The PDSA have been researching our canine friends’ weight issues and are warning that many of them will suffer health problems.  The number of obese pets has risen considerably over the past few years so it seems we are not being particularly loving to our best friends. Here at Act on Info Theatre in Education Company we offer Drama Workshops covering many health topics including Healthy Eating and Activity. It seems that what we all need, man and beast alike, is more education with regard to how to stay healthy. So why not book a class workshop, assembly or Play in a Day for your school and give our young people all the info. Then maybe they can pass it on to their families and pets.
So our alcohol consumption is front page news once more. Watchdog NICE has backed the campaign to introduce a minimum price per unit. This would mean an end to the cheap offers we are currently bombarded with in off-licences and supermarkets.  However, with the statistics for alcohol related deaths increasing every year it seems we need to address our love of booze. Here at Act on Info we have been running Health Drama Workshops for the past 10 years and we stick firm to our beliefs that education is the best form of attack. This is particularly true when it comes to young people. We offer assemblies, 1 hour drama workshops and Play in a Day workshops covering alcohol, drugs, smoking and healthy eating. Send us an email or make a quick enquiry (see right) to make a booking.
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Saturday, May 18, 10:59 am
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