Lesson video

This unit covers topics such as migration, seeking asylum, leaving home and being a refugee.

If these are sensitive topics for you, we recommend checking with an adult before starting this lesson, or completing the lesson with a trusted adult nearby.

Hello and welcome to today's drama lesson with me, Mrs. Mears.

Today, we're looking at the topic of migration, and our title for this lesson is Life at Home.

In this lesson, we will be considering the starting points in a family's journey to a new country.

We will be setting the scene with soundscapes, talking objects and speaking in role.

For this lesson today, you will need plenty of space to work in.

So make sure you've got enough room above your head, to the sides room to move and work in, and that there's nothing on the floor that you could tread on that might hurt you.

You also need something to write with.

So grab yourself something like a pen and paper, clear your space.

So pause the video now to get these things ready, and press play to continue.

Great.

We're going to be looking at four different activities today.

The first activity is exploring home, we're going to do lots of talking objects, thinking about what's going on in our own home, how it relates to us.

We're then going to explore and react to the news using soundscapes.

In this activity, there will be some sounds containing gunshots.

So, if you do have any sensitivity to war or guns, then please make sure that you are prepared for that activity, whether you want to join in or not.

We're also going to be creating our own soundscapes to do with different environments.

We're then going to explore a telephone call between yourself and another friend.

And then we're going to explore home again after some events have passed.

The key words today are; physical theatre.

Now, physical theatre is where you use your body to become objects or scenery.

So when you're becoming something that body physically cannot become.

We're also going to be looking at soundscapes.

Now soundscapes, where we make or use sounds to create an atmosphere or an environment.

We're also going to be looking at mime.

Now mime, is silent acting.

It's when we use movements, gestures, and facial expressions to communicate.

Sometimes that can be reacting to an object, sometimes it might be talking to someone who isn't there or reacting to something that isn't there, it's silent acting, using our movements.

We're also going to be looking at dialogue.

Now, dialogue is when two or more characters are speaking to each other.

When it's just two people we sometimes call that a duologue, if it's one person, that's a monologue.

So we're not looking at monologues, we're looking at duologues or more, and it's dialogue.

Great, for this activity, I need you up on your feet because we're going to physically explore our new home on this fantastic morning.

Okay, now you are up, I want you to imagine that you are lying down in your very comfy, wonderful bed, and you've had a wonderful sleep, and now it's time to wake up.

So stretch your body, really big, really stretch.

It's a wonderful way to wake up, stretching everything.

Get out of bed, open that duvet.

Oh, I think we need some lights in here, let's go over to our curtains.

Go up to your curtains, go to open them and freeze.

Now that you are frozen, almost mid opening your curtains, I would like you to morph into your curtains.

You're going to become curtains with your bodies.

You might do it with a spin, you might do it by melting.

Think about how you want to become the curtains from this position.

And you're going to do it in three seconds with me.

Are you ready? Three, two, one, and become the curtains.

Maybe your curtains were similar to mine, maybe they were slightly different.

Okay, and now you're going to tell me, what the curtains can hear.

So the sentence structure is, I am a type of curtain, so you might say, "I am dark curtains, I am light bright curtains or I am soft, beautiful curtains." And then you're going to tell me what you can hear.

"And I can hear the sound of children playing on the street," or, "I can hear the sound of cars whizzing by on their way to work." So you're going to complete that sentence for me now.

I am and I hear, in three, two, one.

Great, and now I'd like you to morph back into the person opening the curtains in three, two, one, and open those curtains.

Oh, see all that light flooding in.

It's just making you so happy and wonderful.

What a brilliant, brilliant home you live in with your family? Now it's time, you've got to get ready, you've got all sorts of things to do today.

One of the first things you need to do is you need to go and get yourself dressed.

So let's go and start off by looking in the mirror.

Go and find the mirror wherever it is in your room, maybe it's to the side over here, maybe it's up high, so think about where your mirror is, and stand in front of it with a lovely pose, show me just how happy you are.

Great.

And now, what you're going to do, in the same way we did with the curtains, is you are going to morph into your mirror.

And this time you are going to tell me what sort of mirror you are and what you can see reflected back at you.

So think about the sort of description that you would have for your character.

Now bearing in mind, this character is in a great place at the moment in their life.

So maybe you can see someone for the happiness and joy.

Maybe you see a bright person with a fantastic future ahead of them.

So tell me what sort of mirror you are and what you can see.

So first of all, we're in our posts, we're going to morph into our mirror in three, two, one and freeze.

Think about how you became in you mirror, you might have just been a mirror image of yourself, maybe just something like me.

And now you're going to tell me, "I am," what sort of mirror I see, and then what you see reflected back at you, in three, two, one.

Great, and your back into your pose.

Brilliant.

I think now it's time to get ourselves dressed.

So let's go over to our wardrobe, shall we? Wherever it is in the room, it might be somewhere different for you, I got to face forward for the camera.

Find your wardrobe, open it, maybe too hard, maybe it's a sliding wardrobe, choose which type of clothes you want to put on today.

Maybe it's a type of top, maybe it's a blouse, maybe it's a jacket, maybe it's some trousers or jeans.

What is it you're going to take out of your wardrobe? Reach in to take it out and freeze.

I now want you to morph into the type of clothes that you have chosen to become.

So think about how you do it with your body, it might be very different to me.

Okay, and three, morphing, two, one, freeze.

I have a pair of trousers, which is quite weird to become with your body, but you can do it, do your best.

And then I want you to tell me what you are and what you feel.

So maybe you feel the soft and happy, maybe you feel excited to kick start the day off.

Think about what you feel and tell me that now in three, two, one.

Brilliant.

And morph back into getting your clothes out of the closet.

Let's get dressed, shall we? Get everything on, Okay, so dressed.

Ah, amazing! Now, before we do anything else, I think it's time.

We've got up quite early, we've really prepared for the day.

Let's sit down and watch some TV.

Are you ready? Sitting down, get your remote, three, two, one freeze.

And now we are going to, again, morph into another object.

And this object is the television.

So think about what type of television you are and what you wonder about today.

Maybe you wonder what the weather is going to be like, maybe you wonder what exciting things are going to be on the television, maybe you wonder what the journey of today's life will be like.

So think about what you wonder.

And we're going to morph into the television in three, two, one, freeze.

And speak what you are and what you wonder.

Three, two, one Brilliant, and morph back into watching television.

Three, two, one.

Brilliant! We've now explored our home.

We're going to now explore and react to the news.

So we're sitting in front of that television and we're going to react to the news that comes to us.

And we're going to be looking and listening to soundscapes here.

Okay, this activity, you need to react to a soundscape.

Now this soundscape is of war, and I am going to be enrolled as a presenter on television, imagining that this is a news report about the war that's happening.

There will be a soundscape behind me to help build the atmosphere of this.

So I want you to react as if you are in this war situation yourself.

So, stand as still as possible before you begin, and when we start the sounds, that's when I'd like you to react as if you are in this atmosphere.

I didn't expect it to happen so soon, but it sounds like everything has started, the war has indeed started.

My goodness, that's a missile, can you hear it? Duck, everyone, duck! People finding it really hard to find safety.

There are many, many tests around.

You can smell of dust everywhere.

It's making it really hard to breathe.

Please, send help.

Brilliant, well done.

Now come back before the television screen if you morphed away, and we're going to get ready to look at our next soundscape, but this one is slightly different.

You are going to be making this soundscape yourselves.

Okay, so our next disaster that we are going to create the soundscape spot ourselves is going to be of a fire.

So I want you to think about how you can create the soundscape yourself.

What sort of noise does a fire make? Usually a fire, if we think about a little fire, it doesn't make much sound at all, if you're used to having candles.

But once fire gets bigger and bigger, it becomes much more crinkly and rustling.

Something that you can use to really help you, is a screwed up piece of paper.

So if you just listen now, and that sound can really help you.

It's also really great if you have something like a crisp packet crinkle, because that noise of the crinkling can really build and build.

You can also use your voice in a really interesting way.

So think about how you can use your voice, maybe you want to move your hands on the table.

Maybe you want to literally bang on things.

So think about how you want to build this fire.

Now, a fire as a natural disaster is going to be a big fire, so I'm going to show you some pictures now, and I would like you to create the sound that goes alongside what you're watching on television.

Off you go.

Great, well done.

Now I want you to think about how can sound create a picture? When you were listening to the sounds in the first activity, did it create a picture in your mind of things that you could see going on? Maybe when you were putting sounds to your picture, it helped you to imagine more what was going on, further and deeper into that fire that we couldn't see? How did it help you to create a picture? And another question I have for you is, do you prefer to react to sounds like we did in the first activity, or to create your own, like we did in the second activity? Which one did you find more interesting, more exciting as a drama activity? Okay, we're now going to move on to our third activity, which is the telephone call.

This activity involves lots of persuasion.

There are many, many ways that we can think to persuade someone to do something.

So I've listed some ideas for you that you can think about when you come to this next activity, which is our telephone call.

The first thing that we can do, is we can list good points as fact.

So for example, the fact that our house has always been a place of safety.

That could be something that we use as a fact, when we are trying to persuade someone to stay, maybe we can use it as a fact that in previous times people who've stayed have been the ones to lose their life.

So we can use that as facts.

So think about all the different things that we can use to help us create our own facts for our persuasion.

Something else that we can is to use threats and fear.

When we use fear, we can really persuade people to do something.

I'll give you some examples when I do the telephone call for you in a moment.

Something else that you can use is bribery.

This is something that has always been used to persuade people to do something.

So for example, with my very, very young children who are three and five, sometimes when I want to persuade them to do something, I might suggest that if they do something good, they might end up having a treat afterwards and that can really help them and encourage them to do what it is that I want them to do.

Flattery is also something that's really well-known to help persuade someone to do something.

So if I say, "Oh, you're so clever," of course, you're going to want to do what I say is the right thing.

Or I say, "Oh, you're so beautiful, you don't want to ruin your hair by staying in this war," you might want to come with me.

So really persuading someone with flattery.

Another idea is to be really future-focused, to make people think about what might happen in the future, in our reality.

And finally, we've got to use certainty words.

Words like will, must, definite, absolute.

If we use words like might, could, should, that's not definite.

There's room to wiggle out of that.

But if I say something will happen, I'm much more definite and I'm going to persuade someone so much more.

Okay, so now we're coming up to the actual telephone call.

This is what I want you to do with it.

So, you're going to speak to a friend.

So this isn't a family member.

We're going to be looking much more at your family members the next lesson.

Today, I want you to focus on a friend.

I want you to imagine that one of you wants to leave home, and the other person wants to stay where they are.

You both going to have different clashing views.

And in that conflict, that's where this drama will come in your telephone call.

So I want you to imagine that the disaster that's facing you today, is that there is a fire on its way.

So time is closing in, it's short.

The fire's going to be here soon.

So I'm going to demonstrate this for you now.

I am going to be enrolled as someone who wants to leave and I'm also going to be enrolled as their friend who wants to stay.

I'm going to be using the different strategies that I talked about beforehand.

So first of all, I'm going to use a threat, then flattery, then bribery, and then listing good points as fact.

"Hi James, James, look you to listen to me now.

It's really, really important.

You know, this fire is on its way, you've got to get out of here.

I packed my bags already.

There's space for you in the car if you want, you've got to get out here now, or you might die." "Bob, you are overreacting.

You are too clever to be thinking like this.

You know that our house is all fire proof, you know that we are going to be safe.

Don't worry about it, stay safe.

If you want to, if you're worried about being in your own house, come to mind, we're absolutely safe here.

You're really intelligent person, you don't have to run away, you can stay with me.

You're so clever, you don't need to do this.

I tell you what, if you come with me, I will give you my play station for a whole month.

Come on, just, I want you to be safe.

You're my best friend.

So honestly, anything you want, my play station, maybe my TV.

You can have anything you can even have.

Calm down James, because I'm telling you now.

Calm down, I'm telling you now we're safe.

The fire isn't here yet, our house is all fireproof, we've survived worse.

And you're just overreacting, our houses and our villages have kept us safe for so long." "I've got to go now, I'm going to really miss you.

Are you're sure you can't come with me?" "Stay, you don't need to leave." "I can't talk to you now, I'm going to hang up." So hopefully, you could see that from one person to the other, we went through with threats, saying things like you're going to die if you stay, and then flattery, telling someone, they're too clever to think like that.

And then bribery, trying to give things to someone to make them want to come with you, and then just listing the good points as fact.

So that's what I would like you to have a go at now.

So now you need to create your own phone call to a friend, and this friend thinks differently to you, you have opposing views.

So you're going to use persuasive language.

So possibly threats, maybe bribes, maybe flattery, maybe facts and opinions.

Find a good ending.

You can either find a way to hang up on that phone call and disagreement.

Maybe you both agree by the end of that, maybe someone is persuaded, or maybe you both leave the conversation undecided.

So keep it to three main points from each character.

If you want to write down some ideas before you stop forming them, you can do that with your pen and paper.

And that can be a really good idea to help you include threats and bribery and flattery and facts and opinions all in that, in your piece of drama.

So, pause the video now to complete your task and press play to resume once you've finished.

Well done.

How did you feel about that decision that you have to make now? The home that you live in, that you love, that you feel comfortable in, is in danger.

How does that make you feel? Something else to think about is which argument was stronger? The need to stay, or the need to leave home? Why was that the stronger argument? What do you think you would do if you were in that position? Okay, we're going to now explore our home again, but this time our home feels a little bit different, because disaster is on the way.

Okay, so now we're going to explore our home for the second time.

But this time, it is the morning after we've heard all this news and we know now that a fire is on its way.

So let's all get into our bed, and this time, imagine you had a really rough night, okay? So you have not slept well at all, you're going to wake up really tired and anxious and troubled.

So wake up and stretch.

Maybe like even more than usually do, get yourself out of bed.

Okay.

The first thing you need to do is to go over to your curtains, begin to open them and freeze.

This time, you're going to morph into your curtains, and you're going to say, "I know danger is near, because I hear." So, that's all more together, in three, two, one, freeze as your curtains.

And now, "I know dangerous near, because I can hear the sound of people crying.

I can hear silence in the air where people have left.

I can hear the rustling of fire in the distance." Think about what you can hear, and I want you to tell me now in three, two, one.

Brilliant.

And now morph back into opening the curtains, and open them.

Okay, maybe it's not so bright anymore because there's going to be smoke in the air, even if it's from a distance.

We need to now go and look at ourselves in that mirror because we need to build up that courage to leave today.

So find your mirror, and this time I want you to stand in front of it with different feelings today.

Stand in front of your mirror in a frozen image.

And then I want you to morph into your mirror.

Maybe it's the same, maybe it's yourself looking back at yourself, maybe it's a box of a mirror.

So morphing into it in three, two, one, and freeze.

Then now I want you to speak as the mirror.

"I know danger is near because I see." What do you see looking back at yourself? In a three, two, one.

Fantastic, and morph back into yourself.

Okay.

Now you need to go and get dressed.

And this time you're getting dressed for a reason.

This isn't just any old day, you're getting dressed because this is the day that you are going to leave.

So go over to your wardrobe, and open it and freeze.

I now want you to think about what clothes you're going to become today, maybe it's something much more specific for the journey ahead of you.

And now you're going to morph into that particular item of clothing in three, two, one, and freeze.

I now want you to say to me, "I know danger is near because I feel." And this might not be to do with the actual feel and the touch of the clothes, this might be to do with the emotional feelings.

I feel what you feel in three, two, one.

Okay, lovely.

And go back to opening your closet.

Okay, now start to put your clothes on.

And think how you're going to get yourself putting on your clothes.

And let's come sit in front of the TV once more.

And this time I want you to look at the TV and you're not even going to turn it on.

So think about, just how you feel in this moment, in time, in your own home then pair it to just how you felt yesterday.

And relax, okay.

Well done, you have done lots this lesson, we've explored talking objects, we have explored soundscapes, by reacting to soundscapes and creating your own.

You've also done some lovely work with dialogue and persuading someone to think in the same way that you do.

Now, next lesson, we're going to be preparing to start our migration.

So I hope that you can join me next lesson.

So before we go, I've got one final question to you.

And that is, what makes a home, a home.

Maybe it's the people in there, maybe it's the objects and the things that you own, maybe it's the physical location, maybe it's the memories.

What makes your home, a home? Well done, today.

If you would like to share your work with Oak National, please ask your parent or carer to tag @OakNational and #LearnwithOak.

Take care.