Feel The Rhythm Evaluation

There were two workshops, a week apart.  Each lasted two hours during the morning.  The same group of 10 pupils participated in both workshops, alongside storytellers Dez and Ali Quarréll, percussionist Rick Wilson and class teacher.  The workshops took place in a section of a resources room at the school.

During the intervening week the group
•         researched rainforests, in books and on the internet,
•         talked about the stories and
•         made their own versions of the percussion instruments they had enjoyed using.

The Following aspects were monitored

Knowledge & Understanding
•         The children learnt about rainforests, before the workshop they had no knowledge at all of them.
•         They learned how to research finding pictures in books and on the internet.
•         They learnt that things that didn’t look like instruments could be used to make different noises – they especially liked the wind
           tubes.
•         They heard three new stories, and could recall them as a group.
•         They don’t understand that this is part of a project.

Skills
•         They concentrated to discern differences between each sound.
•         They had to use their imaginations and think what each sound could be.
•         They had to really listen and respond at the right time.
•         Some of the instruments were very fiddly, they took a lot of physical manipulation.
•         The workshops improved their confidence, every child stood up and did something.

Attitudes & Values
•         It was good to see them applauding and encouraging each other.
•         They don’t often listen to recordings of themselves and it was interesting to see how much they enjoyed this.
•         It really improved their confidence in themselves.

Enjoyment, Inspiration & Creativity
•         They had their own ideas - the sounds they made for crying and buzzing weren’t the noises we (the adults) were expecting.
•         The music element was good, the rhythm was way more complicated than we usually work with for this age group.
•         The main thing was creating ‘pictures’ and using a descriptive vocabulary.
•         They all went home and talked to their mums about it – the other children wanted to know when it was their turn.
•         All of the children chose to follow-up the session with a painting and/or making an instrument.

Action, Behaviour, Progression
•         They remembered the different types of instruments and used this information to make their own.  At first they put everything
           they could inside their shakers, but discovered that this did not always make the sound better.

General

The size of group (10, then 12) was ideal.  It would have been too intimidating for them with fewer children.  If the group had been bigger some children could have chosen to be lost on the periphery.  But you (the artists) engaged with all the children and they were able to get a group dynamic.

The session was long (2 hours, inc. 15 minute break).  I was surprised they sat for so long and concentrated.  It would not have worked with this age group as an afternoon workshop, the morning was a good time.

The pace and follow-on was good and built up skills.  However there could have been more physical activity included.

It was lovely to have all that time to get the story setting.  It was really beneficial and helped me get a long story out of them.

I would have liked to have had a prepared setting (for the first workshop) rather than just the corner of a room.  I did it for the second one (the corner was decorated with photographs of the first session, pictures found by the children, percussion instruments and instruments they had made).