Dance in SchoolsSchoolsJubilee at Harrietsham
Written by Jenny, TRS Teacher
I visited Harrietsham Primary School to deliver a Jubilee themed workshop with their year 6 class. As soon as the class entered I knew we were going to have a fun few hours as they were all enthusiastic, had lots of energy and keen to know what they would be doing.
We started our workshop by looking at the different decades that the Queen has been in reign. The children learnt key, iconic movements from each decade in their warm up and we put it together to create a routine to the song ‘Dancing in the Streets’. Our movements ranged from the Hand Jive from the 50’s to Flossing for the 20’s! They loved learning about the different decades and we added in lots of celebratory movements too. Once they had learnt the routine we added in some patriotic red, white and blue props – scarves and pom poms. The children did a great job adapting the movement to use their props and even created and added on their own movements.
‘”I loved learning the dance moves from each decade of the Queen’s Reign”
After a short break, we then looked at the Queen’s castles, palaces and key elements of the Royals. Each group was given a picture of one of the iconic places where the Queen lives or visits. They then had to create a castle or palace shape recreating the turrets, window shapes and size of the buildings. There were some really creative ideas and each group created such different shapes.
“I really enjoyed making our castle shape and marching like a soldier”
Once they had their shapes, I then gave them the task to create a motif based on the celebrations and rituals of the Queen. We talked about the Changing of the guard, the Queen’s garden parties, Tropping of the colour and the Queen’s meet and greets. Each group created some really good movements all having a different take on the task. They then added in some Union Jack Flags to enhance their movements. We had the flags being used as trumpets, drums, salutes and they looked great with the marching movements!
I was blown away with their enthusiasm, effort and creativity of this wonderful group. I had such a great afternoon.
“Thank you so much for coming to teach us today. I loved using all the props”
