 Spring has Sprung! With tighter school budgets than ever Act On Info Theatre Company would like to offer your school an exclusive offer on a block booking of four drama workshops that you can use anytime throughout the new financial year. Our offer includes Play in a Day, our Topic Based Drama Days or General Drama Workshops.
Play in a Day is a great way to introduce or conclude a topic, to promote inclusion and help with revision. Act On Info start work with a class at the beginning of the day and at the end of the day the class perform a 10-15 minute play in front of the rest of the school and parents. We offer a number of Play in a Day’s around different subjects.
Topic Based Drama Days are based around a topic of your choice including History, PSHE, Literacy and Science. This drama workshop brings the topic to life and is a great way to get your pupils engaged with the subject. This workshop is either one hour long with four workshops within one school day or we can spend a half day with two classes.
Our General Drama Workshop includes drama games and exercises, creative play, songs and basic rhythm exercises. Staff can gain from the workshop examples of how to engage with their pupils creatively as well as how to link creative work with different areas of the curriculum. This workshop is either one hour long and we can do four workshops within one school day or we can spend a half day with two classes.
All our workshops are designed to enhance language skills, build confidence and encourage team work and creativity. We are quite flexible in terms of how you can use your four drama days.
Example 1: Book a literacy topic based drama workshop for World Book Day, a bullying Play in a Day for anti-bullying week, a general drama workshop for anytime within the year and a Pantomime in a Day For Christmas.
Example 2: Book a WW2 Play in a Day for KS2, a Tudors Topic Based Drama Day for KS2, an Aesop’s Fables Play in a Day for KS1, and a General Drama Day for KS1.
Generally Act On info charge £280 a day for these workshops, but we are currently offering you the chance to purchase four days of workshops for the cut price of £1000*. Please see our website or get in touch if you would like more information or would like to make a booking.
*Travel costs may be additional dependent on if we have a facilitator in your area, we will always make you aware of this at the time of booking.
 The Orange prize long list has been announced and out of the 20 books there are nine debut novelists on the list.
The prize was created to celebrate “excellence, originality and accessibility in women’s writing throughout the world”, and is now in its 16th year. It seems there is no shortage of aspiring writers out there. So why is it that whilst in a primary school recently I heard the pupils of one Yr 5 class take the news that they would be doing literacy in the afternoon as if the teacher had said all the Xbox’s on the planet had exploded? It’s important that we bring literacy to life for students, and as we all know, particularly with boys one great way of stimulating them is a bit of healthy competition. There are some great competitions for pupils running at the moment that will inspire enthusiasm instead of dread:
The Imperial War Museums Once upon a Wartime competition is open to 11-14 year old students. Get your students writing book reviews this week and submit them to this competition – open until 25th March.
The Foyle Young Poets of the Year competition for 11-17 year olds will be judged by Imtiaz Dharker and Glyn Maxwell and closes on 31st July. Teachers can send in whole class sets of entries.
As part of their ongoing work to support schools, the National Literacy Trust in partnership with the WWE® are running the Voice it! competition. To help develop pupils’ speaking and communication skills they are asking students to submit a film of themselves saying why they feel passionate about a certain topic. The prize is a trip to a WWE® UK event!
If you would like to bring literacy to life for your pupils and inspire them to do more reading and writing, a great way to do this is to ask us here at Act On Info to come into your school and do a drama workshop or Play in a Day. We have a number of drama workshops for schools based around traditional tales, Shakespeare, myths and legends and much more which can help to improve speaking, listening and communication skills for your KS1 and 2 children as well as inspiring imaginations and enhancing creativity. For more details do get in touch using our quick enquiry form to the right.
We were happy to read last week that five poems will feature around the London 2012 Olympic complex to inspire the Olympic and Paralympics Athletes.
“To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield”
This line from Ulysses, an Alfred Tennyson poem will be engraved in the centre of the Olympic Village. It will be seen by the athletes and officials living and working in the Olympic Village every day during the 2012 Games.
Comments such as “it sums up the courage needed to live life to the full” were given as reasons for nominating the Tennyson line. Lines from Robert Browning, Langston Hughes, Denise Levertov and Sean O’Brien poems were also selected from public nominations.
We here at Act On Info think it’s fantastic that the powers that be are using great literature to inspire people – as adults we find it easy to get inspired by great lines such as this. But for children it is much more difficult. They find lines such as this flat and uninteresting with no relevance to their own life.
When we do drama workshops or Play in a Day in schools we bring literature to life for pupils by getting the children to act out the stories they are studying using movement, language, sound effects and much more. Our drama workshops for schools encourage pupils to think about how the characters are feeling, why they are acting the way they are and if they have ever felt that way themselves so they gain an emotional connection to the work. It’s a great moment for us when we see pupils getting excited about a book, story or topic they found uninteresting before. It’s also a great springboard for them to then go into the classroom and write their own stories and inspiring to teachers as well who are nervous about creative ways of working.
If we can help you to bring literature to life for your pupil by bringing a drama workshop or Play in a Day to your school do get in touch using the quick enquiry form to the right. We look forward to hearing from you.
 Cash for your school! There are lots of competitions out there at the moment for teachers and pupils which could bag you or your school a lot of cash to spend on what you want!
Jamie Oliver is inviting teachers to tell him about ways they inspire their students whilst teaching tough subjects. He’s asking teachers to make educational videos for his latest project Britain’s Dream Teachers. Create a video of yourself and submit it to the site by 5th April for a chance to win £3000 for yourself and £7000 for your school.
The seventh Tapestry of Bronze poetry contest closes on 30th April. If you are exploring Greek myths in your classroom and your students prepare poems about Apollo, the God of Music, Light, Prophecy and Healing, send them in to the competition and win a cash prize!
In terms of inspiring students to do more writing we offer a number of drama workshops that can improve the literacy skills of your pupils – we also do a great Play in a Day about Ancient Greeks and Myths and Legends among other topics. Feel free to have a look around our website at our different drama workshops and get in touch if we can help you.
 Shakespeare Play in a Day Ben Jonson, playwright and friend of Shakespeare said “He was not of an age but for all time!” Having recently had a fantastic time working with primary school pupils on a Macbeth Play in a Day we couldn’t agree more! The Department for Education has recently produced a booklet entitled “Shakespeare for All Ages and Stages” stating how important Shakespeare is to creatively inspire schoolchildren. The booklet states that a significant experiences for KS2 would be to:
- Read or watch an abridged version of a Shakespeare play
- Read, perform and talk about lines taken from scenes or speeches from Shakespeare’s plays
- Work, if possible, with arts educators such as theatre-in-education groups
- Experience, if possible, some learning outside of the classroom, such as a visit to a theatre or a relevant site
- Use dramatic approaches to explore some of Shakespeare’s scenes
If you would like to follow this advice by working with us, Act On Infos Shakespeare Play in a Day is a great way to introduce or enhance your existing work on Shakespeare. Your class create a 15 minute modern condensed version of a Shakespeare play exploring the main characters, their motivations and the themes of the play. The most pertinent original lines from the play are kept in for authenticity, allowing the pupils to work with the traditional language, but not overloading them. The play can be shown to the rest of the school and parents at the end of the day. We have a number of Play in a Day’s to choose from – if you would like more information or to make a booking for your school please use the quick enquiry form to the right. Don’t forget to keep an eye out for our new KS2 and 3 Shakespeare workshops currently in development!
Sat 29th Jan – Sat 5th Feb
It’s National Storytelling week from the 29th January. One of the best memories I have of being a child is of my sister reading me a story before we went to sleep. She would have her fingers in her mouth (her equivalent of sucking her thumb) and I was probably the only person in the world who could understand what she was saying – but for two siblings who declared war on each other 5 times a day, it was a magical time that cemented our relationship.
Stories are embedded everywhere at the heart of our societies and culture. Before writing was invented, people had to listen to learn and a good memory was a very important tool. The person who could tell a good story could always find an audience as well as respect, a good meal and place to sleep. People travelled with their stories, sharing them with others in distant lands. When they came home they brought back exciting tales of exotic places and people, passing them on from one generation to another.
Stories come in all shapes and sizes, myths, legends of all kinds, tall tales, fairy tales, fables, trickster stories, hero stories, ghost tales, teaching stories, oral histories and epic adventures. Stories of gods and heroes and tales with morals define our humanity. Stories enrich lives everywhere, and if you would like us to bring some storytelling magic into your school with one of our literacy Play in a Day’s such as Robin Hood, Beowulf or Myths and Legends do get in touch using the quick enquiry form to the right.
Yes its that time of year when the shops are full of Halloween costumes and bonfire toffee so our thoughts turn to Christmas! Here at Act on Info Theatre in Education Company we haven’t quite started to put the tinsel up yet but we are already taking bookings for our Christmas Panto in a Day workshops.  These drama workshops are for a key stage 2 class, who perform the 10-15 minute panto for the rest of the school after spending the day rehearsing with one of our professional actors. Choose from some classic pantos: Aladdin, Cinderella, Snow White, Dick Whittington, or Peter Pan.
To book just fill in the form on the Play in a Day page of the web site or send us a quick enquiry (see right) if you want more info. Then get ready for plenty of magical-thigh slapping-’Oh no you can’t, oh yes you can’ fun!
A school project to promote healthy eating and a balanced diet has struck gold. The school in Perthshire, which has created its own allotment to help pupils understand where food comes from and how it grows, dug up more than it bargained for.  Pupils from Moncreiffe Primary school were digging up their beans, potatoes and onions when they discovered a strange truffle. A local chef confirmed that the find is indeed a truffle – but not one previously found in Scotland. The white truffle is yet to be fully identified but if it is edible it could be worth hundreds of pounds per kilo. So not only do the pupils get to learn valuable lessons about food they may have found a money spinner for the school at the same time.
It just goes to show where inspired projects may lead your class. We can’t promise to find you any buried treasure, but here at Act on Info Theatre in Education Company we can help make class projects fun with our Play in a Day Drama Workshops. Right I’m off to dig up the Act on Info gardens to see if we have anything valuable buried away!
 Myrtis Here at Act On Info Towers we have been updating our Ancient Greek Play in a Day and were fascinated to see with the news that using facial reconstruction Greek scientists and archaeologists have given an ancient Greek skeleton a face.
The skeleton, found in a mass grave in 1995 has been brought back to life using facial reconstruction and is that of an 11-year-old Athenian girl who died of typhoid fever in 430 BC during a plague. Scientists have named her Myrtis.
It is also interested to note that the scientists used a 3-D technological program called the “Manchester method” – from the University of Manchester – (Well done Manchester!) often used on Egyptian mummies, for the reconstruction process. Myrtis is now on show at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens at an exhibition called “Face to Face with the Past” and scientists have said they will also attempt the same reconstruction on another man and woman; we can’t wait to see the result.
Myrtis really is bringing the ancient Greek past to life, but if you can’t see yourself getting permission to take your class over to Athens to see her, why not let us come into your school and let your class bring it to life themselves by performing in our Ancient Greek Play in a Day, or get the whole school involved in a Play Day.
The RHS have found that gardening is a useful activity to help the development of our youngsters. Apparently children who are given access to gardening learn vital skills.  They become more patient and learn to deal with different outcomes helping to develop their problem solving abilities. They also have less fear of insects and get a chance to get their hands dirty. All this sounds great to Act on Info. If we had a garden we could hold gardening workshops, although I think we’d need some training ourselves for that one. However, we do have a Play in a Day all about The Environment and one about The Rainforest. So if you want to add some drama to the children’s practical skills then why not book a workshop for your school.
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Friday, May 18, 10:43 am
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