Berkeley Academy / Primary School - Summer Camp 2013

Berkeley
Primary
School
Summer School
2013 Review
Berkeley Primary School Summer School Project
“Razzmatazz and All that Jazz” began its journey from
a discussion with Executive Headteacher, Kevin Prunty
in May 2013. His vision was to provide an exciting and
engaging summer programme to help children with the
transition from one learning year to the next.
There has been much discussion nationally about lost learning
time during the summer holidays and how summer school
programmes can help stimulate
learning through “other”
activities outside of the
traditional classroom
context. With this in
mind, I was set the challenge to
create an original programme
to capture the imagination
of pupils in years 4 and
5 and to help them
avoid potential
lost learning
time through
the summer
break.
“Doing
a dance routine,
making your own
choreography, learning
to chest pop, krump,
and the “Thriller Zombie”
dance was really fun”.

A key focus of the Summer
School, jointly funded by
Berkeley Primary School and
Cranford Community College,
was literacy and numeracy.
Mr Prunty saw this as a great
opportunity to continue developing
these fundamental skills but through
a non-traditional format.
Working collaboratively
with some amazing arts
practitioners from the world
of dance, theatre, music,
visual arts and education, we
devised a multi-arts programme
to run for 4 weeks from the start of the
summer holidays through to the middle
of August. Working as 4 groups, fire,
air, earth and water, each group spent one
week learning arts specific skills in each
arts specialism, whilst improving literacy
and numeracy. Every Friday, all the
groups came together and performed/
shared through a workshop forum,
what they had learnt. Each new week,
the children took their prior learning
and applied these new skills into the
next arts specialism.
“It was a great
experience creating a
drama script, practising for
our performance and acting on
the stage. We have learnt to face
the audience when speaking, focus
when acting; you need expression
when acting”.
“It was very useful learning to
count and keep in time. I’ve
learnt how a drum kit works
and how electric guitars
work”.
By the end of the first week, there was
a wealth of original material produced
by the children which we could use to
create a final performance piece. By
the end of the third week we had so
much amazing work from the children
it was difficult to decide what to
leave out and what should be drawn
together into a complete storyline for
a performance to parents and Berkeley
staff on the final Friday.

The learning process was a
real journey of discovery, not
just for the children but for the
staff as well. The storyline was
organic, making the learning even
more exciting. By the end of week
one, the children had begun to drive
a storyline with an Island theme as the
main hook for all the creative work
which followed stimulating
song writing, storytelling,
dance routines, props and
scenery for the characters
to tell their story. From this
hook came more adventurous
journeys involving ship wrecks,
an aeroplane crash, fire and water
tribes, islands made of sweets
and food. There is a Baboon in
the moon, who steals
the stars until
the warring tribes
learn to live in
harmony and a
wishing tree
that can grant
one wish to a
deserving person.
The story had a
moral, a purpose and
a message.
“I
really liked
learning to make new
decorations and adding
different materials for
design. I enjoyed a lot
Mixing colours, designing
and making something
realistic”.
At the start of week 4 they worked in their final
arts specialism and then we gave the children a
choice as to which arts specialism they wished
to work in to create the performance. It didn’t
take them long to have the plot sorted and for the
final few days the whole group came together
to form a Summer School Theatre Company.
The performance was amazing. You could feel
the excitement and pride from the children and
the arts practitioners performing together this
original piece of musical theatre written, devised
and performed by them; the culmination of four
weeks work. You could feel this sense of pride
from the staff and parents who attended the
performance, amazed by the quality and talent
before them.

There is no doubt this
summer school project
achieved what it set out to
achieve and more. It not only
helped to improve literacy and
numeracy but it developed the
children’s social and life skills
too; self-confidence, creativity,
imagination, self-discipline,
spatial awareness, team
work, communication
and so much more. They
learnt, the history and
facts of famous artists and
performers, technical theatre
terms, dance and music genres,
how to make dance videos, (every
group made one), cultural influences
in the arts and the language of the
arts and they got to learn all this
from arts experts very talented in
their chosen field.
Watching the children grow in confidence,
individually and collectively was inspiring.
The whole experience seemed to transform
them. Many parents commented on the
change they had seen in their child
during the process and hoped the
same opportunity would be
available for their younger
children in the future.
I am looking forward to
Summer School 2014.
Jessica Joyce
(Summer School Organiser)
“It
helped
build my
imagination,
because you learn
while having fun”.
“Summer School is the best,
it was a fun place to learn. It’s
a great opportunity for other
kids out there”.