Second Session

Today was my second session teaching in the school in Weymouth and since the weather was appalling, we had lots of different activities to keep the children occupied.

Before the session started I spent my prep time sorting out and separating the strips of paper the children had painted with fluorescent yellow paint to be concertina'd - as many of them were stuck together or to the newspaper they had been left on.

At the start of the session I introduced the children to their capes for the first time, and told them a bit about sea slugs - mainly about the similarities between the sea slugs and slugs that they find in their gardens. This was met with very positive results.

I had the idea that rather then letting the children loose with spots and glue on there capes we should get them to draw out a design first on a piece of paper, using photographs for inspiration of real sea slugs. This worked out quite well and got them to try their hand at designing a part of their costumes and to really look at the sea slugs.

While they did this, with their teachers handing out pink and yellow highlighters for the kids to colour their designs in with, I supervised the 7 in the giant slug in popping their balloons and releasing their papier mache skull caps, marking them, trimming them and beginning to paint them. They finished this activity just before lunch and had just enough time to tidy up before the lunch break started so that worked out well.

For the children who finished their designs very quickly, we handed out the yellow strips for the children to concertina.While some were very quick to blitz through this activity, others were still finishing their designs and colouring them in.

Over the lunch break myself and the teacher discussed the best way to set out the afternoon activites, and we thought it best to have the 7 doing the giant slug design where to put the spots with 4 designing one side, and the other 3 designing the other side.

During their quiet reading, between the lunch break and afternoon session, I separated out the spots and myself and the TA who was with us in the afternoon laid out the Giant Slug on the long fable in the forum.

The afternoon session was split into 3 sections. 

1. The teacher I am working with primarilly supervised the bulk of the class in setting out the capes in pairs for those that had finished their designs and sticking them on with the fabric glue I had bought.
2. The TA we had with us supervised the 7 in the giant slug seeing the slug for the first time and their designing.
3. Myself taking small groups of 3 to 5 to demonstrate the cable ties.

I found out at the end of the session that the giant slug children had decided they each wanted to do a design for half the slug rather then 3 designing one side and 4 designing the other. The teacher has asked me to select the 2 designs for them to use, annonymously, so that they know it was fair.

This worked out well except some of the children tend to get very excited and rush through the activities but they are working really hard their is always next session to sort out any tasks that have perhaps not been quite finished propperly.

In evaluation, I am glad that I made sure the majority of the putting together of the costumes could be done by the children themselves. It is unfortunate that they can't handle the sharper scissors to cut out their spots themselves and that - because of the schools health and safety regulations - they couldn't take part in any of the dying, but I have tried to make sure that everything else is all things that they are able to do themselves so that they can genuinely say they made their costumes.