INSPIRATION AFRICA!
Project 7
INTRODUCTORY SESSIONS
Year 2 at Raglan Primary School
The Introduction day began with Olusola in the hall. The team and children from Year 2 at Raglan Primary School introduced themselves with the name game and then played another name game where they also told the class something that they particularly liked.
My name is .... and I like ....
Sola then got the class to repeat this adding physical movements to "warm up the body and digest breakfast" - shaking arms and legs and rubbing cheeks.
This was followed by an introduction to Inspiration Africa! from Tony. The children were asked for a definition of 'inspiration', this was then discussed and simplified.
Next Shiela, from the Horniman Education Department, unpacked African objects from crates and passed them round the class. Some of the children tried on the costumes and masks while some shook and rattled instruments. Later on in the day they would return to these objects to make some observational drawings.
Sola then split the class in two and ended the session with a call and response traditional African Fulani song. The Fulani song is about children coming back into the village after being in the forest and learning lessons of life from childhood to adulthood.
Using clapping rhythms and simple dance steps, the class was divided into two groups with each group singing the song and performing two different sets of movements. Two children dressed up to represent the children returning from the forest.
After break the children met up in the ICT suite where they had an introduction to the internet and were taken through the project web site. They began by viewing previous schools work and pupils read poems out to the class that children in other schools had written.
They then moved on to view their own key object - the Bwa plank masks and were asked what they thought of it.
"It looks like a snake", said one girl. "Someone doing a handstand", "a dinosaur's foot", "a face with a clock nose". They then finished by filling in the form linked to their project page and submitting their thoughts on what they had seen on the site.
Charlotte from Raglan sent the following comment from the Inspiration Africa website:
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I liked the deck chairs and Umbrellas
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Matthew from Raglan sent the following comment from the Inspiration Africa website:
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I liked looking at the plank mask
Its my birthday I'm 7
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Fergus from Raglan sent the following comment from the Inspiration Africa website:
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I liked the African Stools and masks
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Anna from Raglan sent the following comment from the Inspiration Africa website:
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I liked looking at the mask best of
all because it was so tall. I also
liked the deckchairs and the umbrellas
because they were so colourful and
there were words on them.
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Mason from Raglan sent the following comment from the Inspiration Africa website:
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I liked reading about other schools projects.
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Isobel from Raglan sent the following comment from the Inspiration Africa website:
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all the pretty patterns and pottery
and poems.
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After lunch the class were introduced to their key word - UNITY. Sola and Tony read out dictionary definitions and the children brainstormed the word and its meanings to find: togetherness, linking and friendship amongst others.
The children then gathered around Tony to be shown the screen printing equipment - the screen, the squeegee and inks.
Tony demonstrated how it was used by printing two simple oval shapes that overlapped as a unity symbol.
The pupils then discussed what their symbols might be with Sola and Tony eg. sea life symbols might be dolphins or starfish and human symbols might be linked hands, olympic rings, mother and daughter, etc.
Each child then created their own unity symbol and took it in turn to print it onto a class 'unity' banner.
When they had finished they returned to their seats to draw some of the objects from the handling collection that they had seen in the morning before posing in front of their UNITY banner at the end of the introduction day.
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