Par­ent home: Lat­est news

We are so proud and excited to announce that, as of 8th May, we are now offi­cially at the start­ing point of our excit­ing three year jour­ney with our part­ner schools to rev­o­lu­tionise the teach­ing of Shake­speare in Thanet and beyond by “doing it on our feet, see­ing it live and start­ing it early” — the three essen­tial prin­ci­ples of active learn­ing approaches in the RSC “Stand Up For Shake­speare” manifesto.

On Fri­day, 8th May, King Ethel­bert School hosted its first major train­ing event to launch our new Royal Shake­speare Com­pany Learn­ing Per­for­mance Net­work, in part­ner­ship with The Royal Shake­speare Com­pany, The Mar­lowe The­atre and eight selected school across Kent. The event was lead by Rachel Gart­side, one of our fan­tas­tic RSC part­ner prac­ti­tion­ers. We all thor­oughly enjoyed our­selves explor­ing active approaches to teach­ing the Henry plays, some of Shakespeare’s most vibrant his­tory plays. The day included charg­ing into “the breach” (my favourite bit!) plug­ging the hole in the Hon­fleur cas­tle wall with “our Eng­lish dead” (!) and scream­ing “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more!” the ral­ly­ing cry of Prince Hal.

Our part­ner schools are Cliftonville Pri­mary School, Dame Janet Pri­mary School, St. Sav­iours Pri­mary School, St Mary’s Catholic Pri­mary School, The Ash­ford School, Kings Rochester School, Elling­ton and Here­son School and High­worth Gram­mar School. We are delighted to have recruited such a won­der­ful mix and bal­ance of schools across Kent who are all so com­mit­ted to and excited by the part­ner­ship and the oppor­tu­ni­ties and pos­si­bil­i­ties it will offer our stu­dents and our communities.

As an out­come of the train­ing day, our­selves and our part­ners are now tak­ing our learn­ing back to our schools, shar­ing it with other teach­ers in our depart­ments and using the day to build inter­est­ing and lively work with our pupils, which we will share, and cel­e­brate with each other.

You can watch the film of the day made by Joshua Jones, our fea­tured, tal­ented Year 13 film maker, which accom­pa­nies this arti­cle. Asso­ci­ated links (and more of Joshua’s won­der­ful films!) can be found in our Read­ing Week pages and our RSC pages. Enjoy!