Lesson video

Hello, I'm Molly, your drama teacher for today.

Welcome to the unit of living history through drama, unit four.

We're going to be doing lesson two today, which is on Mary Seacole.

Lots of things have happened before we were born that are very important.

Some people write things in books, some people create poetry, some people make songs and some people act them out like we're going to do in our sessions.

So today we are going to be meeting someone very, very special.

Are you ready? Let's go then.

In today's session, let's make sure that there is lots of space, so you need to make sure that you can spread your arms out really wide, make sure that you're not going to bump your head on anything and making sure that there is nothing on the floor that you might stand on.

So first of all, we are going to do a warm up to really get ourselves ready for today's session.

Then we are going to meet a lady called Mary Seacole.

We're going to learn a little bit about her, who she was and why she is an important person in our history.

Then we're going have a little look at emotions and how emotions, we can show emotions in our faces and how we show emotions in our bodies and we'll be doing an exercise with that later on.

And lastly, the last part of the session, which is think it out.

This part of the session is where we just see what we can remember from today's session.

Here are our star words for today.

Our first word is improvise.

When you use your imagination to make something up on the spot, like when you make up a story or make up a new game.

This is how we remember it.

Making something up on the spot.

So we're drawing the I or the I.

Making something up on the spot.

Our next star word of the day is acting.

When you pretend to be something or someone else.

And our last star word of today is emotions.

These are things that we feel inside our bodies.

They are our feelings.

Before we start, please make sure that you have a nice clear space for your drama lesson for today.

Please pause the video now if you need to clear your space.

Now let's warm up.

For our warmup today, we are going to look at emotions.

Emotion is something that we feel inside our bodies.

So if someone tells us that we're getting ice cream, we might feel excited.

Or if you've accidentally broken your favourite toy, you might be very upset.

So firstly, let's try making some faces today.

Are you ready? So when the bubble appears on your screen, I would like us both to make the face, okay? How do we think our faces might change when that bubble appears? So one of them might be happy.

So show me your face, what it would like if you were happy.

Brilliant, okay.

So here are the bubbles.

Happy.

Show me your face.

Brilliant.

Sad.

How might your face change if you were sad? Brilliant.

Angry, how might your face change when you're angry? When you feel angry.

Very good, some very scary faces there.

What about if we are excited? Excellent.

What if we are scared? Scared, we're feeling scared.

And our last bubble.

We're feeling shocked.

Shocked.

Well done, there were some really good faces and emotions there.

Now, I'm going to say a sentence and I would like you to react by pulling a face.

So you might make that face.

So if I said we are going on holiday.

You would show me an excited face or a shocked face.

So let's start.

How do you think you would feel if you saw a ghost? And how do we use our face to show that? Can you show me the face that you would make if you saw a ghost? That's right, you would definitely pull a scared face.

Okay, how would you feel if somebody was calling you names? How would you feel if someone was calling you names? And how do you use your face to show that? Let's try it together.

That's right.

We would be sad.

And how would you feel if you got home and your parents told you that you were going holiday? How would you use your face to show that? Excited, exactly.

Great work.

I'm really impressed with how you can use your faces to show different emotions.

You're going to need that for later on.

Now, we are going to meet a lady called Mary Seacole.

Shall we go and meet her? Here is a photograph taken of Mary Seacole.

This is from the website the Mary Seacole Trust.

Hello, I'm Mary Seacole.

Pleased to meet you.

I was born more than 200 years ago in Jamaica.

My father was white and my mother was black.

My mother was like a doctor and a nurse all rolled into one, a doctress.

And when I was a child, she taught me all of her skills.

In 1854 when the war broke out in Crimea, I knew at once I was meant to go there.

I read all about Florence Nightingale who was looking for nurses to help her with the soldiers.

I wanted to go and help.

So I was going to travel from Jamaica to London.

When I arrived in England, I went straight to the War Department in London.

I had an interview to join Florence Nightingale in Crimea.

But they looked at me and shook their heads.

I asked them why they didn't want me to join their team of nurses.

Was it because I wasn't good enough? Was it because I didn't know enough about nursing? No, it was because of the colour of my skin.

I was determined at that point that just because someone didn't like the colour of my skin that they shouldn't stop me doing what I do best.

Helping people.

So I bought a ticket to get a boat to Crimea.

If they wouldn't let me join Florence Nightingale's hospital, then I would build my own.

When I got to Crimea, it was very smelly and sometimes very frightening.

Some of my friends in London gave me some money so I was able to open the hospital I mentioned.

The British Hotel.

I would care for the soldiers.

Some were wounded, some were ill.

Most of them were hungry and all very, very frightened and far from home.

A year after I arrived in Crimea, a war started very nearby, so I needed to get a lot of things ready, like bandages, hot water, and lots and lots of soup.

I made some lovely vegetable soup.

Will you help me make some soup for the soldiers? We will need some carrots peeled, we'll need some potatoes chopped and some onions sliced.

So can you help me get it ready? Let's peel the carrots.

We've got to be careful though.

One carrot.

Done.

Let's chop the potatoes.

Small pieces, please.

About the size of a one penny.

Chop, chop, chop.

Turn it around.

Chop, chop, chop.

Perfect.

Let's put the potato to the side.

Now we're going to slice some onions.

Oh no, onions do make me cry when I chop them.

Will they make you cry as well? Slice, slice, slice.

Slice, slice.

I'm going to put that onion to the side.

Now you're going to have to repeat that 'cause we've got a lot of soup to make.

Please pause the video whilst you make your soup.

Thank you for helping me.

I gave the soldiers the warm soup and they really enjoyed it.

Some of them hadn't eaten for days.

They were very hungry.

I cleaned their wounds and I wrapped them up in clean bandages.

I did similar things that Florence Nightingale did as I'd read all the same books as her.

I would treat all of the soldiers.

Even the soldiers we were fighting against.

British soldiers and Russian soldiers were all humans in my eyes and deserved to be treated the same.

I wish people had thought that about me when I wanted to join the nurses in England but they saw the colour of my skin as too different to theirs and didn't give me a job.

One day during the war, I had to go very close to where the war was happening to help the soldiers 'cause they couldn't travel to the hospital.

This was very scary and very frightening indeed but I was brave.

People started to know who I was.

People had heard about Mary Seacole, the lady with the hospital who was going to do everything she could to help everybody.

And this made me feel very, very happy.

Suddenly, the war was over and all the soldiers went home, leaving the British Hotel empty.

So I left and I came back to London.

When I came back, I didn't have any money as I'd spent it all building the hospital.

I was very poor and nobody would help me.

I had hoped that because I'd saved thousands of British and Russian soldiers that someone would help me when I came back to London.

But that didn't happen.

Until one day, somebody turned up at my door.

It was somebody who writes things in the newspaper.

He came and was shocked to see how I was being treated because he'd seen how hard I was working in Crimea and how I looked after the soldiers.

He wrote letters to his friends and they raised money to help me.

So much money.

And they organised a huge party to celebrate my work.

I was worried that nobody would turn up because nobody knew all the brave things I had done when I was in Crimea.

But they did.

80,000 of them.

Then they gave me a letter, which had a message from her Royal Highness Queen Victoria congratulating me for my bravery and for building the British Hotel in Crimea.

I was so shocked and excited.

I looked up and everybody was clapping.

Standing on their feet, 80,000 people all celebrating the work I had done.

I think we know quite a lot about Mary Seacole now.

But what do you think are the three main things that we should remember about Mary Seacole? I'll give you some help.

Number one, Mary Seacole was born in Jamaica.

Number two, Mary wasn't wanted at the War Hospital.

And number three, Mary built the British Hotel.

That is the hospital that helped all the soldiers in the Crimean War.

Now, I would like you to find a space in your room and imagine that you are Mary Seacole.

You are very good at your job.

You've tried so hard to help people but when you ask to join the War Hospital in London, they say they don't need you because of the colour of your skin.

How do you think Mary Seacole would feel being told that? Have a think now about the emotion and I would like you to act it out with your faces and your bodies.

What does the emotion do to your body and your face? Does it make you want to make your body really big and jump around or does it make you quite small? Pause the video so that you can have a go.

Next, I would like us to think about when Mary Seacole built the British Hotel.

A hospital that was closer to the battlefield than Florence Nightingale's where all the soldiers could be looked after, get better and finally leave to go home.

If you knew that you had built a place where people could get better and give them a better life, how do you think you would feel? Please show me with you face and your body how you think this might make you feel.

Please pause the video so that you can have a go.

Remember when we talked about Mary Seacole not having any money when she back to England because she'd spent it all building the British Hotel, that must have made her very sad and worried.

Then one day Mary saw that someone had written something very nice about her in the paper, about how everybody should remember how fabulous Mary Seacole was at helping the injured soldiers in the war and how she spent all of her own money helping people.

Then she receives an invitation in the post to go to a huge party to celebrate all of her hard work from the queen.

How do you think you would use your face and your body if somebody told you that you were invited to see the queen? Pause the video so that you can have a go.

Really well done.

You've used your bodies and your faces and your emotions to do some wonderful improvising today.

I've got a question for you as our think it out part of today's session.

How do we show emotions in drama? Option one, with our faces.

Option two, with our bodies.

Or option three, with our faces and our bodies.

What do you think the answer to this one might be? That's correct.

We show emotions in drama with our faces and our bodies.

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