Year 5 speak with one voice

Working together is always more powerful than efforts made alone, as Year 5 have discovered this week in their exploration of choral poetry. They have watched performances of a variety of poems, all performed by groups, and appreciated the huge range of effects which were achieved. Our drummers loved the body percussion elements, our singers the way in which different combinations of voices could be used. All of us loved the drama of a strong story conveyed en masse. Year 5 then practised performing the chorus of a poem in different ways. They discovered that this has a big impact on the way in which the message of a poem was perceived.

Most fun was had, though, when we worked together to create the chorus of our own poem. The creative process worked best, we found, when we bounced words, ideas and phrases off each other in pairs and small groups. Everyone contributed to the final stanzas and we loved the collaborative nature of it, celebrating each other’s ideas and points of view. The performance at the end was all the better because of it.