The visit

I think our visit to Sunny Hill primary school went quite as planned. The students attention span was good and we stuck to our time schedule and even finished a bit before planned. In terms of our drama peformance , I think it went well for the following reasons:

Positive factors of performance:

• Everyones costume changes were on time.
• Noone forgot their lines.
• Everyone remembered their queue.
• We all recited our lines clearly and loudly.

The story books were a success because the children seemed intrigued when we were reading them. The children in mine and Ellies group even all wanted took it in turns to read a page each and some asked if they could keep them.

The characters Bee and Joe were good because they related well with the children, in a sense of being the same age and being in similar situations that the children might face when walking home. Also because they were made very believable by Akilesh and Ellie and was enforced by having the books and posters with the in it.

I think my personal performance went well but the end game could have been improved. I think this because although we gained alot of feedback, their was alot of pauses between the questions asked because we hadnt established what way we were going to present it. Although there were positives also such as:

• The children found the game fun.
• It showed how much knowledge they had learnt on Stranger Danger.
• It allowed them to ask questions they may of had.
• Although there were pauses good questions were asked by everyone.

Media

In media, we created a time schedule with a number of tasks to be completed on the day.
Roles of the day consisted of:

Fatmata and Jordan:
Their role was to say the introduction of what our purpose of being here was and what our topic Stranger Danger was about.

Ibu:
Ibu was the narrator of the play and was the person who interacted with the audience throughout by asking their opinion/thoughts of a situation in the play.

We all split into groups to also read the books about the adventures of Bee and Joe.

My role was to end the session with a game along with Faduma. The purpose of the game was to find out what they had learnt about stranger danger from watching our play. It was played by putting you hands either your heads or knees to answer a question. We all thought this was well suited to our target audience it was interactive and a creative way to get feedback on what they learnt on our subject.

Drama

In our preparations in Drama we all contributed differently. Fatmata and I critiqued the others performance whilst we werent acting, to help improve our act. Lola and Ellie took more of a directing role of assuring everyone was focused etc. We collaboritavely came up with concepts for us to include within our play also. Once we had established that we rehearsed with people watching, so they could give us feedback. Some general aspects we had to consider when performing were:

For example:
Remember to speak loud enough
Face the audiene
Remember lines and if someone dosent just continue
Use big actions and gestures
Make sure message is clear to those who are watching

Media

In media we were all set tasks to help contribute to our perfomance. My job was to create a poster along with Ibu, advertising Stranger Danger. Other jobs consisted of creating different story booklets to read to the children. We used the characters Bee and Joe from our drama performance, to continue our theme and allow the children to become more familiar with the characters and the journeys they go on. For eg: Bee and Joe go to the park, Bee and Joe go to the theme park and Bee and Joe go swimming.

Here is an example our finished poster:

Preparations (media)

In order to devise a play for the students at Sunny Hill. We had to research our target audience. We developed a questionnaire and survey to achieve this. We made differnent versions for the teachers and children. Our aim for the childrens questionnaire was to find out what their interests, hobbies and worries were. This therefore allowed us to find a suitable topic to educate them on. Our aim for the teachers questions was to find out what the childrens attention spans were and what thier worries and concerns were.

Human Rights Screening

On 30th April 2010 we visted the ritzy cinema, where they were screening a human rights documentry. The film consisted of 10 films advocating for human rights in a different way. Some of the issues covered were discrimination and child labour. One of the films was titled Liela, it was an animation fortelling story a family living in poverty.

The man who bought her promised to care and look after her, but instead he turned her into a donkey and used her to do all his hard work. One day the girl who was turned into a donkey write something in the sand, the local villagers saw this and were amazed. Then a wise old lady came and saw that the donkey was infact a girl. She then turned her back into a girl and she was reunited back with her family. And the man was then chased out of the village.The issue that was displayed in this short film was child labour.

I think the message conveyed was how children in poor countries are bought and forced to work like mules.I feel that is was effective to display the child as a donkey because it showed how they are treated wrongly and are exploited of their human rights.

Art (smoking poster)

For an art assignment we had to design a poster advocating for people to stop smoking. Here is my poster:

Art (smoking)

In art we also discussed the effects of smoking and watched some trailers that displayed the effects of doing so.

Trailer 1:
The first trailer we saw was set in the future showing a man smoking. It displayed how his physical features had changed due to his excessive smoking, For example:smaller ears, extra eyelids, suffocating lungs etc. I think this was effective because it shows you visually what can eventually be a smokers future.

Other aspects are:
The music set the atmosphere as gloomy.
The fact that he is alone also highlights how you are pushing everyone away from you.

Link:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ds460ROBHnA

Trailer 2:
This shows the same man smoking, but with a baby. This conveys how he is not only harming hiself but the baby aswell. It shows how he is now determining the childs future by smoking and putting it at risk of lung cancer and heart disease. I think this effective because it shows how when you smoke around others, you are poisoning them aswell.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GS2Dq2zHC9w&NR=1

Art

In art we focused on a very current campaign called Change 4 Life. Firstly we discussed what concerns health experts have about the impact of advertising on childrens diet. Me and my partner Ibu thought that Obesity and medical conditions such as diabetes were some just to name a few. We then researched what messages were being portrayed through the change 4 life adverts. We used a table to write down how it appeals to the audience and what actions should be taken.

I also learnt thethe A.I.D.A formula (awareness, interest, desire, action).We then researched a variety of subliminal(hidden message) and overt campaigns(obvious message) and applied the formula to establish what made them effective.

Drama

In Drama we have been learning about theatre in education. We were able to watch a production on sexual bullying called Sweet Love. Whilst watching this I was able to see how you need to appeal to your target audience by considering:

• Characters
• Form of language
• Scenario
• Length of play

Media

In our media lesson we have started a new topic on campaigns. We will be creating a website which informs people of whats going on in the media scene. Each of our websites will include the following headlines:

Film/Theatre
Music
Roles/Jobs within Media etc
Latest News
Places to visit/events

The sofware we are using to produce our websites is called iweb. We have had a lesson on how to use it and will hopefully be easy to use. Before learning about the program we were taught what makes a good or a bad website. Firstly we were shown the 5 most visited websites of the year which included such as google. Then we were shown the 5 worst. By seeing this I learnt what factors should be considered when creating a good website:
Have a clear target audience
Clear Format
Only use images you have the copyright to
Use redable fonts
Use suitable images and text for your topic
Have useful and informative

My website is called Whats the 411? I named it this because it basically asks what's going on? and my website tells all about the media scene. My logo is a mouth, I chose this because news is spread by word and communicating to others.