Hook:

With Mrs Dear the class watched the AMAZING Shadow Theatre Company "Attraction" from when they performed on Britain's Got Talent!

We were in awe of their technique and skill, as well as emotionally affected by the story that their dance told. The discussion we had around the performance was rich and meaningful, and the children used fantastic verbal phrases of discussion.

If you want to watch it too, just follow this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvQBUccxBr4

This led us to the idea of creating our own shadow shows. So, Mrs Dear showed us a video of a shadow puppet show. We discussed how this was similar and different to the "Attraction" one.

If you want to watch it too, just follow this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCmFWJjc4RA

We are so excited to be given the chance to create our own shadow shows, but know we have a lot to learn first!

What is Light?

We know we need to create shadows and so to start our project work, we needed to scientifically learn what light actually is.

We carried out some investigations to explore the concept of light. We had to follow instructions on a sheet carefully so we went step-by-step.

We learnt that darkness is an absence of light and that light travels in straight lines. 

Mrs Dear than gave the children some CD discs and a bowl of soapy water to blow bubbles in. We could see rainbows!

This showed us that light rays are different colours of the rainbow.

We then made Whizzer Wheels and tried to spin them really quickly to show why light is white (White Light) - we took them home to practise spinning them fast!

Exploring Reflective Materials

Mrs. Lynch set up a dark space in the classroom. As scientists we investigated different materials to see if they could be seen in the dark, and to learn about reflective materials.

Making Shadows

To start our thinking about how to make shadow puppets, we learnt about how shadows are formed. Mrs. Lynch challenged us to create shadows using our hands!  We had great fun.

Making our Shadow Theatres

With Mrs. Dear we have begun to design and make our theatres to be able to perform our shadow puppet shows in.

We used skills of measuring and halving to design and plan the proscenium arch. We then used craft knives to carefully cut away the void required for the screen. Before we were allowed to use the knives we held a risk assessment discussion, and had to prove we knew how to safely pass them to each other and lock/unlock them (safety first!), as well as the way to have our fingers tucked in to avoid cut off fingers!

Mrs. Dear was very pleased with our team work in this lesson.

We have started to paint the curtains red and, once dry, will add decorative features and paint to make the curtains look textured.

Shadow Dancing

Having been inspired by the video of the Attraction Shadow Theatre Group, we had the opportunity to try our own shadow dancing in P.E. Mrs Dear had bought in a spot light and a white sheet. We discussed the risk assessment when working round a large spot light.

We then used dance techniques to try and show one of the key sections of the Greek Myth, Pandora's Box. 

Through practising and watching other groups work carefully, we realised that we had to get close to the sheet for clear shadows and that our movements had to be large and slower.

Today, we worked on amalgamating our 3 versions of the story we had planned, to create the group story which will be the narrative for our shadow show.

We had to read the different sections of our writing and select the best parts from each other’s writing to create one narrative.  We had to keep re-reading to ensure that our story was cohesive (flowed and made sense) and followed our story map.