The Council of Bevelle meets for the first time.

What Actually Happened...

"Councillors of Bevelle,

I thank you deeply for the honour you have bestowed upon me. Even though I am very old, the kindness, and respect you have given to me by the world still surprises me. For those who do not know my face, you certainly know my name. I am An Séanfhear Niderb, otherwise known as Niderb the Ancient. Although you cannot tell by my looks, I was born long before any of the nations you are here to represent were even heard of. I cannot think of a better way to put my age, experience and love of all peoples of Bevelle to good use.

We all know full well that Bevelle is a world full of wonder, magic, and excitement; however, Bevelle is not without its troubles. Those troubles are what brought this Council together.I have been made aware that some Councillors did not have the chance to read my letter before they arrived here. These letters explained my position here. The leaders of the great nations of Siena and Tropical Land asked me to be the impartial advisor, facilitator and chairperson.

I hope that Bevelle will profit from these meetings, and deeply wish that all persons here will conduct themselves in a manner that would make themselves and their nations proud.

Now let us begin!"

The drama lesson this week has me even more excited then previous lessons. (Which, I didn't think was possible!) This week I finally got the action going and held the very first "Council of Bevelle". I asked the children to sit in a circle, and told them that this was going to be the first of many meetings of the "Council of Bevelle". Here we discussed what a council is, what the purpose of a council is, and what kind of people are on a council. In opening the official council meeting, I addressed the children as adults and more importantly, with humility. I needed them to feel and believe that they were mature, elected officials that held power and more importantly responsibility.

The power of the imagination really can be impressive, as I learned at the meeting. I asked the children to introduce themselves (in character) and talk about themselves. Each and every child impressed me with their introduction. Some wowed me by putting on generic "foreign" accents, speech impediments (vampires spoke with a lisp because of their teeth) and one girl even refused to speak. This girl just looked at me with a confused facial expression and shook her head every time I asked her a question. At first I thought maybe this girl had decided she was too old for this large scale game of make-believe. Other children were laughing at (what I thought was) my perceived loss of control and I have to say I felt a bit nervous. Could it be that the children didn't connect to the map of Bevelle as much as I had hoped?

But then, one child then asked the group "Does anyone know if they speak English in Terragaia?"(The country the girl's character was from.)Straight away, the children came back into character, asking each other if anyone could speak in this girls language. I was blown away. I think that the children had spent so much time developing the physical layout of Bevelle that it was simple to just become the characters. As if this wasn't enough, the same child that asked the first question just shouted over the noise "Hang on! I have an idea!" and turned to me. This girl had such belief in her character, her world and the characters of her peers she had drawn us all in. The entire class fell silent. (Much more quickly then if it had been ME silencing them I might add!) She turned to me and simply said "I'm sure Seanfhéar Niderb can speak her language, seeing as he's so old and has been everywhere!" I scooped up my jaw off the floor and turned to the Terragaian that caused this little kerfuffle. I just spouted some nonsense words and told the rest of the class that I was going to ask her if she understood English. This ingenious girl flashed me a smile and responded in similar nonsense to what I had said. I turned to the group and announced that she didn't speak English, but that I would work on a potion to help her learn English really quickly.

What really impressed me was how quickly and convincingly the kiddles developed the culture of Bevelle. Children just randomly said "Oh yeah and I'm cousin/brother/sister/friend to..." without any hesitation. Vampires in Bevelle are all brothers and sisters it transpired, and werewolves are very mysterious and rare. There is only one Alchemist on the planet, and she won't teach anyone how to perform alchemy. The country of Tropical Land is ruled by a monarchy, and the country of De'th is ruled by one dictator. Everyone in Candy Lab has lava for blood, which is useful considering it is covered in snow all year round. My character, Niderb (My surname backwards...) was refereced to much more than I intended. Whether I wanted to or not, I am now part of Bevelle and its history and culture.

We finished the first meeting with everyone standing up and shaking hands with one another (Although the werewolf and vampires avoided each other!) and as themselves the children played a small drama game.

So Where Do We Go From Here?

I need no further proof that the children believe that the world of Bevelle exists for them and has its own traits. The world that they have created has sucked all of us in and they are really starting to take control of the world. I think I can say that the creation step is officially finished!

Tune in next week to see what plans I am concocting over the Easter Break! I hope to create a dossier for every country, in a true "UN" style. Every country will get profiles on the other countries, a list of resources they have, and suggested prices they can sell them for. More importantly the children will also have to source which resources they need, and what countries have these things.

Most Importantly...

I now know that I can trust the children with this world we have created together. They will throw me at times, but the level of belief is so strong it seems that they will always help out.They will make the decisions, and keep each other in check while... hang on...oh god it's a teachers worst nightmare...

THE KIDS ARE IN CHARGE!!!

Around the World in 80 da- er.. 60 minutes.

What Actually Happened:

Last week, my aim was to solidify the fictional lens that we started the previous week. I planned on starting to create the safe environment that the children need to feel safe to express themselves.

During the week, I put children into pairs (with one child on her own, through her own request). These pairs are going to be the government of their countries. Over the last few days I've asked the children to design the shape of their countries, flags, languages, currencies etc. all of which the children must have ready for Thursday.

Reviewing the lesson from the previous week, the first part the children wanted to discuss was the name of their world. I was secretly delighted that they wanted to change the name of the world. I didn't draw attention to the fact that "Funnest" isn't a word, as my lesson was not an English lesson in the slightest. Drama is a safe haven for these children, and all children really; I wasn't going to taint it with a grammar correction.

Seeing as the very successful classroom management system (ClassRealm) is based on games, and the drama world is based on ClassRealm, I gave the class a list of names of towns from various Final Fantasy games. Long story short, the children's new world has been named: (Drum roll please!)

Again? Next time I won't ask for any drum roll.

Bevelle!

Yes indeed the kiddles named their new and magical wonderland after the pseudo world capital Bevelle from Final Fantasy X.

Upon further reflection of the last drama lesson, I realised that my lesson was much more a geography based one and not so much a drama lesson. This week, the lesson was as much an art lesson as it was a drama lesson!

The children worked hard on planning and forming their countries. They all tried very hard to ensure geographical accuracy, with every country having a river, mountain ranges, deserts, coastlines etc. I decided to support the children's idea here. I told the children some countries were going to be called "superpowers" and be much larger and richer, some would have to be very cold countries, while at least one would be an archipelago.

It's hard to see, but this country is actually in the shape of a camel.

These boys are in charge of one of the two "superpower nations"

The children worked hard and worked long, and none of them wanted to stop working when I told the children that time was up.

So Where Do We Go From Here?

The children are really starting to get sucked into their world, now known as Bevelle. They all were very critical of their countries, which told me that they really cared about how they looked and the way they were represented. I wanted to cement the fictional lens that I had established in the last lesson, and I know that I achieved this from the children's attitudes, not to mention how they introduced their countries to me.

Tune in next week to find out if I:

• Begin the character development of the children.
• Ask the children to meet the other nations at a UN Summit.

Most Importantly...

Like last week, the children really enjoyed themselves. On top of that, they are really becoming invested in Bevelle, including the typically not-so-enthusiastic-about-school kids! I need to keep in mind that for this project to work, I'll need to keep the children's enthusiasm up all the time, and not just at the new, fresh and exciting phase.

Excuses excuses.

It's been more than a week since my last update, which is slightly unprofessional for a weekly blog. I didn't reveal this earlier but my school is undergoing a WSE (Whole School Evaluation) this week. I have the next post half written so it should be up by Friday, I PROMISE.

Also, my inspection is Thursday morning, so I'd be surprised if I manage to get drama done that day. The kiddies will not be happy, so to compensate we'll do drama for a bit longer on Friday.

What's In A Name...

All images below are their owners property. Any mention of children's names are changed for privacy reasons. 
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So here we go! My first post reporting on an actual lesson! Here we go:

What Actually Happened...

Before I go through yesterday's lesson, I'm first going to go through the Drama curriculum.

For the non Irish readers, the Irish primary curriculum has a grand total of 12 subjects. The three core subjects: English, Irish and Maths, the three SESE (Social, Environmental and Scientific Education) subjects are Geography, History and Science. We have PE, and SPHE (Social, Personal and Health education) and finally another group of 3: the Arts, which consist of Art, Music and Drama. (The 12th subject is determined by the ethos of the particular school, usually it is religious instruction.)

In the Drama Curriculum there are three prerequisites to making a drama lesson successful. These are:

• Content.
• The fictional lens.
• Creating a safe environment. (Children feel comfortable acting in front of others)

Although the curriculum demands that these three are needed for each drama lesson, this weeks lesson will be focused purely on establishing the fictional lens.

Out fictional lens!

So this is the fictional lens. A board. Now it will look better as time goes on I promise. This had a fairly old display from the previous year(s) of the class teacher I'm covering for. I took it down (with permission! Don't worry I'm not one of those subs) This board is going to have the map of our world or realm and therefore shall always be the focus of my future drama lessons.

I began by talking to the children about geography, activating their previous knowledge about geographical features and what our world would "need". Keeping in the theme of games, I showed the kiddles a few world maps from Pokémon, Final Fantasy and other such games. However, being a teacher, I of course HAD to show a few maps from books so I showed a map of Middle Earth from the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit books.

World Map from Final Fantasy VII

We talked about each map in detail, comparing each map to the ones before it (and of course, the real world!) Together the children concluded that our world map needed:

• Mountains
• Oceans
• Rivers and lakes
• Deserts
• Grasslands
• Snow ("Icecaps" I corrected!)
• Bogs (This unusual one might be because we are learning about turf/peat in Geography at the minute!)
• Towns
• Caves
• Castles

After that, I asked the children to form groups and add to this list. This is where things became interesting. Each group (three groups of four and one group of three) attacked this task in totally different ways! One group rushed to the ClassRealm folder, the one that contains all the children's character profiles. They used the information of their characters, pictures and clothes to inspire them to think outside the box. For example: "Sir! Tom's character is a vampire! We need to make sure there's a country where it's always night!"

Chidlers using the ClassRealm profiles as an inspiration.

Two groups ran towards the class library and grabbed two very different atlases, which resulted in two very different suggestions. One Atlas was much more realistic: group gave suggestions such as "We need tundras, and glaciers, and tropical rain forests! While the other atlas was more graphic and produced suggestions more specific such as "Could we put in the Eiffel tower or Big Ben?"

The realistic atlas...

...compared to the more graphic one.

The last group decided to just use their knowledge of the real world and suggested the likes of shopping centres, jet ski's, airplanes and cruise ships.

Finally I typed every groups suggestions and that inspired even more ideas! Dragons, ice-cream mountains and sword shops just had to be included. We settled on a very extensive list, which will be narrowed down and refined every now and then during the next week. 

Next came something that I felt was very important: the Name of this new universe we were creating. I gave the class some examples "Terra, Gaia, Neo-Earth, Haven, Pandora - These are the kind of names that the kind of world we're creating usually have." 

Each child received a sticky note, wrote a potential name on it, and then put it on the flip chart in the room. Some of these suggestions were pretty inventive. Jadertiv (Which uses the first letters of most of the children's names in the class), Tartune, Dubland, and Awesomearth being ones that really made me smile. Naturally there would be a few that also made me smile in another way, (Greenland, Iceland and 4th Class Bad World) but what matters is that each child gets a chance to contribute and every suggestion is valued.

The suggestions ready to be voted for!

Here we came to the part of the lesson that I was slightly anxious about. My class of 15 students usually work well together but there are a few kiddles that could easily throw a tantrum if their name wasn't chosen. So before any voting occured, I simply asked the children "Lads, if your suggestion is chosen, is that a good reason to get upset?" Simply by asking this the kids immediately dismissed the idea of reacting in this way with one child saying "Ah sir we're not in Junior Infants!"

Through a show of hands, the children voted for the names they wanted out of the selection. We just repeated this process until we had three left. Those who were knocked out got the benefit of being told that their names would be used for countries, mountains, moons, landmarks etc.

Our three finalists!

So we finally got down to the name. The final three were Jadertiv, The Funnest World in the World, and Happyland where everyone is happy. I asked the children to come up one by one and point to the name they wanted... and the result? Drum roll please!

...not reaaaaaallllyyy what I meant, but I'll take it.

The Funnest World in the World!

So where do we go from here?

I set out to make sure that the children could create and establish their own "fictional lens" as the curriculum states. Did I do that? I'd safely say so. The children's imaginations went into overdrive and they really feel like they created the world. I caught a few talking about it in the yard and the next morning two different children came in with maps drawn for ideas!


Tune in next week to find out if I:

• Made the world map.
• Named the nations and randomly assigned children nationalities.
• Got the children to meet up in their countries and introduced each other as their characters. 

 Most importantly!

It was all really ridiculously fun. Seriously, there hasn't been a lesson all year that I looked forward to so much!The children and myself were excited, giddy, jumpy, and everyone came up with a list of ideas as long as MY arm (I have quite long arms). 

Long. May. This. Last.

Exploring begins...

 Before any lessons, there must be a plan.

They say there are many different types of intelligence. Nine to be exact. Naturalist, Musical, Logical, Existential, Interpersonal, Kinaesthetic, Linguistic, Intra-personal and Spatial.
I'd like to think I have a totally different one than what's on this list. I'm a "Connector". I can take two different concepts or ideas or people, and find a way for them to work together.

This connection? All me. Before this we rubbed on the paste with fingers. The brush was for army punishments. I swear.

Lets go from the start: you need to know about me. I am Conor Bredin, an American born, Irish reared teacher. This is my second year out of college and in the real world. I adore reading, gaming and all things technological. The Internet is my second home. I browse and I stumble, and there are few things I like to look for more than new teaching ideas. When I was in college I kept saying "Oh I can wait to try this when I have my own class!" But those were always OTHER people's ideas. Finally, I have my own! (I think!)

It all started when I came across a video on TED.com. For those who don't know, TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. The TED organisation is devoted to "Ideas Worth Spreading" and have specialised lectures all over the world by all kinds of people. These lectures (ranging from 5 minutes up to an hour) are filmed and put up on their site for your free viewing. One minute you are watching an American banjo player talking about her experiences in China, and the next you could be watching Jamie Oliver dumping a wheelbarrow of sugar across the stage.
 
The video I discovered was entitled "Teaching with the World Peace Game" and I recommend all teachers to check it out. In this video John Hunter speaks about a realistic fantasy world, where children rule their own countries and must manage, finance and better their country. It's all played through discussion and a large 3D map. It is a fascinating video. As I said earlier, "Oh I can't wait to try that out" was my reaction straight away.

So now I must introduce Kickstarter. Again, another fantastic website. (A great place to find truly unique gifts!) On Kickstarter you can "fund and follow creativity" such as music albums, books, business ideas and products. Here I came across Ben Bertolli, a young teacher like myself. Ben's Kickstarter project was the idea of Class Realm, an online classroom management based on video games. Children create their own characters, or profiles and behaviour/effort in class earns them experience points. Unfortunately Ben's Kickstarter didn't get funded in time, but he has developed a paper version which is on his website. Once again, I said to myself "Wow, I'm so going to do this with my class!


So now, this is where the connections are made. I have a class now for the remainder of the school year. They have really taken to Class Realm, as have I. I have decided to combine John Hunter's World Peace game and Ben Bertolli's ClassRealm to make our own world. Starting tomorrow, a full hour of a drama a week will be spent exploring fantasy worlds from films, books, and games to get an idea of what our whole new world will be!

A whole new world! huh... what do ya mean that's taken?

Gradually the children will design, map and live in their own fantasy realm, where I will throw situations at their characters to survive and endure. This world will be as real as our own, I hope.

Tomorrow morning is the beginning of it all!