cross curricular project success
Quarrendon Leas
11 - 14 July 2011
The Academy's Humanities and Performing Arts department recently embarked on a cross curricular project centred around the Quarrendon Leas site - an area of open countryside north of the River Thames on the fringe of Aylesbury.
Quarrendon Leas is adjacent to the Academy's new build site and consists of a medieval settlement, a ruined church and the site of Sir Henry Lee's tudor mansion, water gardens and rabbit warrens, in addition to a whole host of different wildlife.
Approximately 60 students were involved in the project over a 4 day period. The following summary of activities outlines what the students got up to throughout the week.
A final performance and presentation to Year 7 students was held at the end of the four days.
Day One
The students were taught a song from medieval times and the dancers went off and choreographed a medieval dance routine.
Day Two
The students went to the site and were told about the history of the site. They looked at the St Pauls church ruins, the Manor house and the garden. At the site the students spilt into 4 groups, 3 music groups and 1 dance group to discuss what stimulus they were going to take away with them to develop into an original piece of dance. The dance group decided they were going to use the church as their stimulus as it had more opportunity to develop the stimulus. The students then discussed the fact that the church represented life for example christenings, weddings, and funerals. They then developed these ideas into possible motifs to use in performance. This was later rehearsed and put with music created by the music groups.
Day Three
The dance group created a new dance to a song called 'Silver Swan' which is also from that time period we tried to choreograph it to the songs narrative.
Day Four
The students performed to the Year 7's, which included history students presenting the history of the site, dancers and musicians performing each of their rehearsed pieces too.
the quarrendon leas project - A STUDENTS PERSPECTIVE
by Kirsty Batson, Year 7
The dance, music and humanities departments recently have joined to create a project on the Quarrendon Leas archaeological site that is just off where our new school is going to be built. Obviously the music/ dance departments have been doing the music/dance side of it and the humanities are focusing on the history and geographical side of it.
I am part of the music/dance side of it so I can't go into enormous detail about it, but as I am in Mr Thomas's history class, I have a rough idea about what is happening with their side of it: apparently they are doing a presentation on the history and such of Quarrendon Leas and they are also going up town on Wednesday to do some sort of questionnaire, although I do not know what the questionnaire is going to be on.
Anyway, the music department have with them a few members of the Oxford Philimusica (which is a professional orchestra in Oxford for those who don't know). They have shown us some instruments that they use, including the violin, cello, bassoon and clarinet. The cello player –Sam- has been doing some really amusing warm ups with us- one of which was slapping, clapping and clicking to a rhythm and it was extremely hard to pick up, sometimes I got it sometimes I didn't. We also sang a few songs from the Tudor times and at the end of our first day, everyone with an instrument had managed to do some kind of tune melody harmoniously (including me but since I can't play an instrument I had to play the rhythm to the song on a drum which was cool) and the dancers even managed to work out some kind of routine to go with it, it really was fantastic! That song we did was by King Henry VIII, although I can't remember what it was called, I know that it was about how the young king wanted to do what he wanted to do and how he didn't care what his advisors or anyone else thought.
The next day we actually went to visit the Quarrendon Leas site, both the music and history part. The music/ dance people found some inspiration in the different parts of the sight for their songs that were to be self-composed and the history people went off to do some measurements or something like that. The only negative aspect of the trip was the all the walking we had to do! It took us half an hour to get there and back; we also had to trek across two very grassy fields to get to the actual sight. Other than that, I thoroughly enjoyed our day and I am looking forward to this Thursday when we are all going to perform and present what we have done to the rest of the year sevens. So, goodbye for now and I shall hope to inform on other events next year.
