Lesson video

Hello and welcome to drama.

This is exploring narrative poetry through drama.

And the lesson title is the Pied Piper of Hamelin, Part 1.

My name's Mr. Wood, and I'm going to be your teacher for this topic.

If you're ready, let's get started.

For this lesson, you're going to need plenty of space.

You also need to make sure that this lesson is taking place inside.

That your shoes and socks are off, that the floor is not slippery, and you're wearing comfy clothes ready to move about.

If you need to pause the video, you can do that now to make those things happen.

We're going to start today's lesson with a warm up.

We'll then move on to the story of the Pied Piper and we'll understand what that's all about.

Before we move on to a little bit of role play, and then we will finish the lesson with understanding people's choices in the Pied Piper.

So your keywords for today's lesson are: Choice.

And that is an act of choosing between two or more possibilities.

Consequence is a result or effect of a decision and that's generally unpleasant.

And morals, they are standards of behaviour, good and bad.

Now let's begin the warm up.

So this warm up we're going to start with a little bit of jogging on the spot.

So if you've cleared the space and you're ready to move, let's get it going.

Just from side to side.

You can bring your hands up to the side, like that.

If you're in a wheelchair, you can modify this by simply bringing your arms up and you can add a slight bounce in your shoulders as well.

Okay? Let's see if we can change this up with our hands now.

Your hands are going to come up to the side, as we're still jogging.

And let's see if we can bring them up, down.

Up, down.

Up, down.

Up, down.

This time we're going to make muscle gestures.

And we're going to go up, down.

Up, down.

Up, down.

Up, down.

Lovely, okay.

Okay what we're going to do now is our hands are going to come up to our sides like this, and we're going to twist our torso, to face the opposite side.

We'll do four on on each side are you ready? One, two.

Three, four.

Five, six.

Seven, and eight.

Okay, hands by your side.

We're going to roll our shoulders.

So we're going to take them back in small circles like that.

Okay, are we ready? One, two.

Three, four.

Five, six.

Seven, eight.

Now we're going to go and reverse going forward.

And one, two.

Three, four.

Five, six.

Seven, eight.

Okay, I'd like you to take your knee and bring it up if you can.

Watch your balance.

The whole point of this is to get our hips moving as well.

There we go.

So once you've swapped it to the other side, then your feet can go down.

Okay, let's put our hands out to the side.

What I would like you to do, is just very simply bob your arms up and down.

It's not going all the way up like a star jump.

It's just going a little bit, and it's bouncing.

Okay.

Now what I'd like you to do is make that a little bit wider.

Starting to look like a baby bird trying to fly.

And now a bit wider again.

Teenage bird ready to fly.

And now, can you guess we're going to be like an eagle, top to bottom, top to bottom, top to bottom, top to bottom.

Okay, shake your hands out.

And repeat after me.

Ss, ss, ss, ss.

Your turn.

Ss, ss, ss, ss.

Sh, sh, sh, sh.

Sh, sh, sh, sh.

Hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm.

Vv, vv, vv, vv.

Vv, vv, vv, vv.

K, k, k, k.

K, k, k, k.

Oo, oo, oo, oo.

Ah, ah, ah, ah.

Ee.

And altogether, oo, ah, ee.

Oo, ah, e.

Really stretch your face.

Your turn.

We'll go again, oh, ah, ee.

Oh, ah, ee.

Okay, now this is a fun tongue twister.

Are you ready? Red Lorry, yellow Lorry.

Say that for me.

Red Lorry, yellow Lorry.

Now I'd like you to repeat that, alongside me at the same time, and we're going to try and get quicker as we get on.

Okay so three, two, one.

Red lorry, yellow lorry.

Red lorry, yellow lorry.

Red lorry, yellow lorry.

Red lorry, yellow lorry.

Red lorry, yellow lorry.

Red yellow.

Ah, I'm out of it there.

Hopefully you can get even quicker than I count there.

If you feel like your body is warm enough to move, if you feel like your voice is safe and ready to speak, then we can continue with the lesson.

But if you feel like it needs a little bit more, you can pause the video and rewind to do any of those activities again.

We're now going to move on with the story of the Pied Piper.

There was once a town called Hamelin.

It was filled with rats.

And these rats were huge.

They were fighting with dogs and with cats, and people couldn't do anything about them.

The mayor decided it would be a great idea to offer a reward to anyone who could remove the rats.

And he didn't care how they removed them, he just wanted them gone.

Now the Pied Piper comes along, and he's dressed differently to everybody else in the town.

And he decides he will accept the challenge for the right reward.

So he plays his flute and all of the rats follow him down, through the town.

And they drown in the water, which is quite sad.

But that's the story.

The town celebrates, and everyone seems quite happy that now they are free of their rat problem.

When the Pied Piper asks for his money, the mayor says, no.

The mayor refuses to pay him.

So the Pied Piper goes away.

And this time he plays his flute again.

Unfortunately on this occasion, all of the town's children start following him just like the rats did.

Now we know what happened to the rats.

Luckily the same thing didn't happen to the children.

He simply trapped them in a cave.

And there was one boy who couldn't walk as fast as the other children.

He was disabled, he couldn't move and dance to the same speed of the other children.

So in theory, he got left behind.

Now this was positive for him, because it meant that he wasn't trapped in the cave.

So the child goes back to the town to tell everyone what's happened.

The mayor finds the Pied Piper and confronts him about why he's taken their children.

And the Pied Piper turns around and says, "I am teaching you a lesson about being greedy.

You can't deny me my money or offer me half when we agreed on a price." So the mayor decides, yes.

I've seen the error of my ways, I will give you the money.

There you go, here's your payment that you asked for.

The children were then released, and they all lived happily ever after minus a few rats.

The Pied Piper is the main character.

Do you think that's true or do you think that's false? Three seconds have a guess.

Of course the answer is true.

He is the person we follow throughout the story.

Let's see what Robert Browning was talking about, when he mentions these rats.

Because otherwise, there's no need to get rid of them if they weren't causing a nuisance "Rats.

They fought the dogs and killed the cats, and bit the babies in their cradles, and ate the cheeses out of the vats.

And licked the soup from the cooks' own ladles.

Split open the kegs of salted sprats, made nests inside men's Sunday hats.

And even spoiled the women's chats by drowning their speaking with shrieking and squeaking in 50 different sharps and flats." Now if that doesn't sound like a problem, I don't know what is.

The words that he uses a very interesting, and they bring forward a lot of images in my head.

I can see these rats fighting with dogs, and killing the cats.

I can see them biting babies, eating the cheese.

That would be the one that gets me the most.

Licking soup from ladles.

Splitting open kegs.

Nesting inside hats, spoiling people's chats.

I think there's a special noise in my head that's quite a horrible shriek.

Drowning the speaking, it's shrieking and squeaking.

Very interesting.

Now is time to have a little go at role play given what we know so far.

The mayor.

He made a choice not to pay the Pied Piper.

This is called an immoral choice.

We talked about morals earlier in our key words.

Why do you think he did this? I'm going to read you the passage of what he said.

"But as for the guilders, what we spoke.

Of them as you very well know, was in joke.

Beside our losses have made us thrifty.

A thousand guilders.

Come, take 50." What do you think he will look like? In your own eyes when you visualise this man what does he look like? He's a similar character to that of Scrooge.

Quite miserly, quite mean.

And what parts of the story make you think this? Do we think there are other parts of the story that build up his character? Now that you've got a bit of an idea in your head, we're going to have a go at creating the mayor.

We're going to consider just three things for the character of the mayor.

The first one is stunts.

So we need to consider how we are standing.

I think this man has a lot of weight both wealth, and intellect.

So I think that's going to weigh him down.

So consider your knees being softened, okay.

So we've got stunts.

We then have posture.

I think this man doesn't just have all the weight of knowledge and of money and wealth, but also the idea that that wealth might make him slightly more decrepit, it might make him arch over.

So we've got the soften knees to support his weight, and the rolled forward posture.

Okay, now we've got to consider the facial expressions.

So I think this man has quite a sour face.

I think he's quite vinegary.

I think he is quite bitter.

So I think he's squinched his mouth like this.

I think he's got a nose like he smelled something bad.

Yeah.

And I think his eyes kind of scan the room.

In my opinion, this is just one way of walking as the mayor.

But I also think you could interpret him in your own way as well.

From what we've read and from what we've taken on board, in terms of knowledge.

I think you can make your own judgments as to how you think the stunts, the posture, and the facial expressions could be used.

Oh those rats again.

Look at them.

Look at that one.

He's wrestling a cat.

I want them dead.

I want that free last rat dead.

Dead! How am I going to kill them all? Well, I'm not going to be the one to do it I'll tell you that.

I know, I've got it yes.

Yes, that'll do.

I am coming to get every one of you dirty little vamins killed.

I'm going to get someone to do it.

I'm going to pay them.

Yeah that's right.

I'm going to pay them.

Oh I'm I? How do you think the mayor should react to the rats? I would like you to imagine you are the mayor.

You are in your bedroom, looking out of the window at the rats.

You decide enough is enough.

So you have to make a plan to pay someone to deal with them.

How you do that is up to you.

But make sure that you show your character through your body.

Pause the video now to complete this task, and then click resume when you're ready to move on.

Okay how did you get on? Was it funny? Was it sad? Was it serious? Or was it evil? Mine definitely had some evil tones to it towards the end.

I wonder what yours look like.

Now the Pied Piper, offered a service to the town.

He was being paid for it, so there was a bit of an understanding.

There was an agreement there.

It wasn't written, it was verbal but it was an agreement all the same.

And that's the same as any different job in the world.

If you imagine you are a chef, and you have cooked a beautiful meal for someone.

They eat it, they say it was really nice.

And then they don't pay you.

How would you feel about that? Would you be okay? Would you just let them leave? Or would you try and tell them why you deserve to be paid for your time, your effort, your skill, and at least the money for the ingredients.

Do you think he was right to feel betrayed? Maybe? I think so.

What emotions other than betrayal, do you think you would feel if you were the Pied Piper? Because you've just been told you helped and you're not going to get paid.

Well, you're not going to have that money.

Not that we agreed anyway.

Would you feel sadness? Sad that you've been coerced? Would you feel confused? Thinking that you could trust the mayor.

After all he is in charge of the town.

Would you feel anger? And what do we think this looks like in the body? Do we think we can show these emotions in the body? Let's have a look.

We're going to explore the emotions now.

So sadness, confusion, and anger.

Let's explore how sadness looks.

Okay we generally drop our shoulders forward slightly.

And then we tend to drop our head as well.

But if we bow our head in total, if it goes all the way down we can't see all the lovely facial expressions.

So we're going to drop our shoulders, we're going to drop our head slightly so the chin will come down, and then our eyes will go the rest of the distance.

So the chin goes down, and then eyes go further.

Okay, so they go all the way down.

Our facial expressions they're quite important.

Then you also want to follow the line, of direction of our shoulders as well.

So the shoulders have come down, the chin has gone down.

The eyes go the rest of the way, and our cheeks, you can emphasise the sad face.

Okay, so that's neutral.

Shoulders forwards, chin down, eyes the rest of the way and mouth.

Next we're going to look at confusion.

I wonder how confusion might look.

Ah, there we go.

So we need to think about what we're thinking.

Which is an interesting concept.

I'm thinking about thinking, but I'm not sure what the answer is.

There's an itch somewhere around.

It's either on the chin or maybe on the back of the head.

If it's on the back of the head, and shoulders might be up a little bit more like.

I'm sure there was something I had to do.

Well, wait.

Wait a minute.

Something's not right.

There might be a strain in the face.

We might think, wait what? Lastly, anger.

Now anger is very powerful.

It comes from within.

So we need to consider, the anger kind of bubbling.

It's bubbling up and out.

And it brings the shoulders up.

Whereas in sadness that went down, in anger they go up.

It's tense it's almost closing the gap of your neck.

Okay, so the hands might clench into fist.

You might then make every other limb rigid.

Okay, we might look around not even be a squint and one eye as we're trying to think, what am I going to do with all this anger? The face has naturally screwed itself up in the jaw, imagine you're biting on something.

You're trying to bite into a lolly or you're trying to show a rock and you just can't do it.

Really angry.

Okay and it's bringing yourself in.

It's almost tying a knot if your body was a piece of rope it's tying a knot with that and it's pulling it tighter.

Okay and it's creating tension.

So how does the Pied Piper react to the mayor? I'd like you to imagine that you are the Pied Piper.

The mayor has said you aren't going to receive the payment you expected.

I would like you to speak directly to your audience about how this makes you feel.

Make sure you show your character through your emotions.

So that's what I did.

Going forwards you now need to develop that, and share with your audience what you are going to do to.

To complete this task you need to pause the video, and click resume when you're ready to move on.

Oh, how did you get on? Was it different from mine? I hope so.

Was it funny? Did you make it funny? Was it sad? Serious? Was it evil? Now we move on to understanding people's choices.

So the mayor.

He chose to get rid of the rat.

He chose to let the Pied Piper do this.

He chose to agree to pay him.

He chose not to pay him, after he did the work.

He chose to pay him when he realises, he's in the wrong.

Whereas the Pied Piper, chose to help the town.

He chose to steal the children.

He chose to accept the money and let the children go.

Why do you think the mayor refused to pay the Pied Piper? Is it because he's evil? Is it because he's greedy and he wanted the money for himself? Is it because he thought the job was too easy for so much money? Is it because he was joking all along? Is it because he didn't like the Pied Piper? I would like you to imagine that the mayor is pure evil.

And you are going to be the mayor.

Role play the scene you had, looking out of your bedroom down at the rats.

I would like you to hatch your plan, to get rid of them.

Add in a line about how you will trick someone into getting rid of them for you.

Now you may not realise it's going to be the Pied Piper at this point, but it does need to be clear of your intentions.

Pause the video to complete this task.

You may need to try this a couple of times, and then click resume once you feel like you've done it and you're ready to move on.

How did you get on? Was he purely evil? Was he completely sinister? I hope so.

Now, if you were the mayor at this time what would you do? Would it be option one? You'd pay the Pied Piper upfront before he completed the work.

Would it be option two? Pay the Pied Piper.

That's a bit of a tongue twister now.

Half before and half after he completes the work.

Or would it be option three? Pay the Pied Piper all after the job was completed.

Now these are your three options.

And this is if you were the mayor, if you could change the story.

Pick option one, two, or three.

So regardless of which option you chose, your decision is moral.

Because it means you would have still paid for the honest service.

This is good.

It means you're all lovely people.

The mayor never paid the Pied Piper.

Is that true? Or is it false? Of course the answer's false.

He did give the money before the end of the story.

Now if you were the Pied Piper at the moment when he's denied the money, what would you do? Option one, explain you work very hard for the money and it was a service that he agreed to pay for.

Would it be option two? You'd have stormed off and never stepped foot in Hamelin again? Or would it be option three? Tell the people of the town, how you have not been paid for helping them have better lives.

Pick an option now.

Now you've chosen.

I'd like you to justify your money.

Imagine you are the Pied Piper, and the mayor has just said you won't be getting paid.

Role play the moment where you react.

Use your chosen options to help you structure the scene, and make sure you look at your audience when you are talking.

Don't forget about the skills we've already looked at so far.

They can go in as well.

You need to pause the video to complete this task, and then click resume when you're ready to move on.

So how did you get on? Did you enjoy it? That's the main thing.

Did you look at your audience? Well done if you did.

Today you've worked really hard getting to grips with the story of the Pied Piper.

We've looked at the characters as well and you've started to understand some of their choices.

And lastly, we had a go at role playing both the mayor and the Pied Piper.

So well done.

I hope you've enjoyed this lesson.

I really have enjoyed teaching it.

So thank you, it's been a pleasure.

If you'd like to share your incredible work with us, please ask your parents or carer first.

They can tag us on Twitter with @OakNational and #LearnwithOak.

I look forward to our next lesson on the Pied Piper part two.

Until then, take care and goodbye.