Zoe’s Blog of Joy

Planning for our Inventions Lesson

This week followed on from the previous week in terms of planning for our Essex Heights Learning through Drama Inventions lesson. We started off by revisiting our brainstorm. We thought about what roles could be played in the drama, and centred the roles around the “mantle of the expert” idea which would see the children playing the roles of engineers, designers, scientists, government officials, and consumers.

We kept ideas open at the first, allowing everyone to come up with something. I proposed the idea that the students would have to invent something to get themselves out of a situation. But that didn’t go anywhere…we thought that we needed to focus on a particular type of invention. Toys? Robots? Darcy thought of a game she plays with students in which students pretend they are things at a museum, and one person cleans the museum objects and they try to touch her without getting caught. We thought we could apply this to a toy shop. But these ideas very quickly went out the window because they seemed too obvious and generic and wouldn’t be juicy enough. We ended up deciding on having the students invent a new mode of transport. We thought that there could be a Da vinci conference (based on the idea that Leonardo Da Vinci invented things hundreds of years before they were made) with teachers in role as government officials and students “enrolled” as engineers, scientists, designers. We thought they could make up a name for themselves as though they are playing a character. Jess had the idea of having them presenting their inventions at a science fair, an idea she got from a movie. We all decided that as warm up games we could play “machines” and “groups and numbers” (where students must make inventions and machines using movement in groups). So, these ideas pretty much make up our lesson plan, which Jo is going to write up and bring next week so we can look over it before we take the lesson. I am going to be playing the environment minister at the Da Vinci conference. This involves briefing the students on the transport they must invent from the perspective of protecting the environment.