Way, way back many centuries ago, not long after…

Well, 2009 this was, Philip, Marcus and Ben delivered a workshop for Creative Partnerships in a primary school in Bradford. The aim was to improve literacy and higher language skills in primary school pupils, particularly pupils for whom English was perhaps a second language.
The project, which spanned several months, involved getting the pupils to explore new words to help them describe feelings and situations using more complex language with a view to improving imagination and higher order thinking skills. We then explored the new language to retell a popular film through the medium of rap.

The pupils chose Home Alone as the film they wanted to work with. Having watched the film, they then wrote rap lyrics to retell the story, all the while incorporating words they had explored earlier in the program.

The final product was three songs which were put to an edit of the film. The pupils also performed their songs, with the videos running on a screen in the background, at an assembly for their school. This is part 1…