Writing a Pirate Story through Dance and Oral Story-telling

A dance and literacy project with Year 2 and 4 Written and delivered by Philippa Beagley, Dance Consultant, Southwark Education Arts Team

Practicing the sea dance warm-up in twos, to encourage communication, movement memory and leadership

Introductory dance activity to explore ways of travelling and then creating freeze frames in groups of a specified number

Vicious pirates planning to overthrow the ship

Pulling up the sails, in groups of three

Practicing sword fighting – one of 3 images combined to make a short sequence

Practicing sword fighting

Staring out to sea through telescopes

Pirates sneaking around the ship

The crew scrubbing the decks

The pirates sneaked around the ship searching for the treasure map.

The crew were happily practising their sword fighting.

Turning and circling while moving around the pirate ship

Dance was followed by shared writing. Each session concentrated on writing one paragraph.

Mixed ability groups ensured that all children had a chance to make a contribution, whether writing or not.

The use of picture prompts and the fact that spelling was not an issue, encouraged even reluctant writers to write.

The opportunity to sprawl on the floor and move about was especially encouraging for the boys.

All the children enjoyed writing using large pens and paper, with the opportunity to discuss ideas before writing.

Children were encouraged to talk and exchange ideas before writing.

Writing could take any format during this session. It was used as a prompt for performance and writing in books

later.