Mia was on work experience with us last week and as per tradition she's written a blog...

This week has been a long but exciting week so I would make yourself a nice brew, or a cold beverage whatever takes your fancy really, before you begin to read my blog about my week on work experience with yew tree!
This week I have been doing work experience and because I want to be an actor when I’m older I thought, what a better place to do work experience than with yew tree. So this week I’ve been going from school to school with Sarah.
We began the week at De Lacey Primary school in Pontefract. We were working with children who found education challenging so they were a little bit more difficult and needed the extra support in classes. In the first two classes, which were years 3 and 4, we were helping the children create physical theatre pieces to the song ‘Human’ by Rag ‘n’ Bone Man. The routines included creating 4 movements about why the children enjoy being human. Some children did about hobbies they did or things about their personality. But it was also important that they recognised the negatives so some children did about things they didn’t like doing as much.
In the first class, which was year 3, one particular boy was struggling to come up with actions so Sarah asked me to work with him. I did this and together we came up with 4 movements he could do in the chorus part of the song. In the second class which was year 4 I helped a girl who was struggling because she was new and had only just joined the class. She managed to pick things up relatively quickly and so I asked a girl near her to help her out if she got stuck and to be her partner for a certain part of the song where the children, in pairs, would mirror what the other person was doing. The children from both classes were not shy with there being a visitor in the class, in fact they were curious and excited that I was there because many of them would ask me to watch their pair work or their 4 movements to see what I thought of them and obviously I was happy to help and give my thoughts which were all positive because their work was outstanding. In the afternoon we faced the more challenging class because they were very chattery and excited from playing at lunch time. In this lesson their teacher had asked Sarah to do some Haiku poems with them. So for this we first asked the children to create some freeze frames of different images. Then we taught them what the rules of a Haiku poem were. So they then created haiku poems in their groups for some of the different images Sarah had asked them to create before.  
In the evening I attended Sapphire Company where I came across some new faces and some friends who still go to Sapphire. I used to go Sapphire Company not so long ago but I recently moved up to Gold. In this Sarah taught them a new game called ‘Flying Sheep’. She’d taught this game to Gold a few weeks ago and it was a joy to play. At first people were confused but people soon picked it up and there were howling wolves and bleating sheep flying everywhere. 
On Tuesday we had a shorter day after a meeting at Park Junior school in Castleford we made our way to St Michael’s Academy in Flanshaw. Here we did classes with year 5 they had created a physical theatre piece about going on a space adventure. We began by warming them up then jumped straight in to rehearsing, the children were going to be performing this to their parents in an assembly. We had a few complications with where we could rehearse because the main hall was being used by the year sixes as they were rehearsing their leavers assembly and leavers play.  But we managed in the smaller hall they had, not ideal, but it was better than nothing.  
On Wednesday we started a bit later. At 1 o’clock I met Sarah at St Micheals CE Academy and we were helping with the final rehearsals for their physical theatre piece that they were going to perform in assembly on Friday. Then we went back to the West Yorkshire theatre Dance centre where I helped Amy out with the acro lessons. Once I’d finished here I went and helped but mainly just watched emerald company as they were just devising for they’re Christmas show.
Thursday was my longest day by far! We spent the day at De Lacy Primary school where we were rehearsing the 2 classes we’d worked with on Monday with their physical theatre piece to human. The boy I’d worked with on Monday was so much more confident today and Sarah told me it was because he’d had that extra help that he was so much more confident today. Both classes did very well. Then in the afternoon we worked with the class who were doing poetry and we taught them how do cinquain poems. The poems Sarah asked them to do were about super hero’s so each group created a poem about hero’s. Later on we had orange company where I had to lead a game. The game I chose was Golden Bridge. The kids had fun playing this. The thing with this game is it doesn't end so I had to tell the children when to stop because they would have probably played it forever! Then we had black company where I helped do a read through of a new play that’s been written by a composer that Sarah worked with for Remember the Oaks. This play was called “Remember where you came from” and it was about the history of mining.
Finally Friday! Today we started later again and we met at St Michael’s at 1 o'clock to see the year 3s perform in assembly. They did really well. Then we had Gold Company in the evening where we were devising some more scenes for the Christmas show. And that’s what I did on my week of work experience with Sarah. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading I know it was quite long but I’ve learnt so much from my week with Sarah.


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