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TEACHER RESOURCE PACK
THE POLAR BEARS GO WILD!FOR TEACHERS WORKING WITH PUPILS IN RECEPTION – YEAR 1
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THE POLAR BEARS GO WILD!RUNNING FROM 9 – 25 JAN 2015
If you’re aged 5 or under, then here’s the show for you. Get here on your skis/snowshoes/tractor, or paddle your canoe.
Calling all brave explorers! Join two friendly (and slightly naughty) polar bears on the adventure of a lifetime. Where are they going? What will they get up to next? And have they got enough sandwiches? Because polar bears love sandwiches, everyone knows that!
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CONTENTSCONTEXTINTRODUCTION TO THE PACK 4ABOUT THE SHOW - A SHORT SUMMARY AND INTRODUCTION 5
CLASSROOM ACTIVITIESAN OVERVIEW OF CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES (Fully developed activities will be added in July) 6
THE POLAR BEARS GO WILD!
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INTRODUCTION TO THE PACKThis pack is for teachers bringing pupils to see The Polar Bears Go Wild in January 2015.
The classroom activities (which will be added to the pack by the end of July) have been designed to support and extend your pupils’ visit to the theatre and offer teachers ways to pick up on and explore the themes in the play, before and after a visit. They will use drama, and storytelling, as ways of exploring ideas that are relevant to the play. They will also aim to support the EYFS framework and employ the characteristics for effective learning; playing and exploring, active learning, creating and thinking critically. There will be clear links to the key areas of learning at the Foundation Stage; personal, social and emotional development; communication and language; physical development; expressive arts and design and understanding the world.
While the activities will not take an objective led approach, teachers will be able to establish links to the relevant curriculum objectives for their particular year group and can adapt them for their particular educational setting.
Our teacher resources always put drama at the centre of our activities. Working through drama allows children to explore things that matter to them within a fictional context, draw on their prior knowledge and apply it to new situations, develop language as they give expression to new understandings and develop emotional intelligence and critical thinking as they see things from different perspectives. It will also allow the children to take responsibility, make decisions, solve problems and explore possibilities from within the drama.
There will be a free teacher CPD day for The Polar Bears Go Wild on Mon 1 Dec 10am – 4pm, which is a chance for teachers to find out more about the show and gain practical experience of the classroom activities, before leading them with a class.
To find out more about the CPD or book your place, email [email protected]
CONTEXTTHE POLAR BEARS GO WILD!
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ABOUT THE SHOWThe Polar Bears Go Wild is a show about two polar bear friends – Big Polar Bear and Small Polar Bear – going on an adventure together. During the play, we watch them fold out their big map to navigate (though they don’t always agree on which direction to go), scale a mountain, row across a river, ski down an icy slope and stop for a picnic of sandwiches.
Sometimes the polar bears use small toy versions of themselves to act out their journey – showing us how far they travel and how small they are against the high mountains.
Along the way there are many challenges for the polar bear friends to overcome, such as unfolding and refolding their map, pouring juice and sharing out the sandwiches fairly. The bears have very distinct characters and lots of humour comes from their relationship; we see very clearly the dynamics of friendship and the difficulty of sharing, compromise and decision-making.
The polar bears are gentle, friendly and quite silly. There are no words spoken in the show, but the interactions between the two bears are very physical and the performers use mime and movement to clearly show us what is happening. There’s also plenty of music.
The set initially appears simple – three large triangular shapes – but as the show unfolds, doors, boats, windows, mountains, rivers and picnic baskets appear in inventive and surprising ways. Mountains are made from foil survival blankets that the audience are invited onto stage to play with at the end of the show.
THE POLAR BEARS GO WILD! – CONTEXT
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COMING SOON:Full classroom activities will be added to this pack in July, after we have developed them with teachers and children in our partner school, Eleanor Palmer Primary. The activities will give a range of approaches to help you prepare pupils for seeing The Polar Bears Go Wild and extend the experience after wards. In the meantime, here is an overview of what the activities may include:
• Drama,movementandstorytellingactivitiesthatexploreideasaroundjourneys,travelandenvironments– packing and preparing for a trip in different climates, investigating different ways of travelling, creating simple maps and following them.
• Exploringrealpolarbearsandtheirhabitats.Possibledramaandin-roleworkaroundsettingupapolarbear sanctuary or going on a research trip to the Arctic to watch polar bears.
• Movementanddanceactivitiesthatexploresizeanddirection–contrastsinbig/small,forwards/backwards etc.
• Apost-showactivitythatusesimaginativeplayandstorytellingtoexplorewherethepolarbearswent next on their adventures.
THE POLAR BEARS GO WILD! – CONTEXT
CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES
THE POLAR BEARS GO WILDAMacrobert/FishandGameproductioninassociationwiththeUnicorn
CREATIVE TEAMCreated and performed by Eilidh MacAskill and Fiona Manson
Resource pack written by Ella Macfadyen
