Session Two - Saturday 8th December 2012

Today was a new milestone for ESIP as Year 8 met Year 9 and we had 60 students in school for the first time.

The day started with breakfast club, supported as usual by our excellent team of mentors.

Year 9 headed off to the Drama Studio for ‘Representations of Women’. It’s not often you mix Dr Seuss with William Shakespeare but it worked. 

After the warm up to reconstruct ‘Green Eggs and Ham’ we moved on to King Lear and the relationship between the King and Cordelia and then Taming of the Shrew and some differences in opinion on Kate – was she submissive or did she have a trick or two up her sleeve? The plays gave us the opportunity to practice expression and performance and to make different interpretations of what Shakespeare wrote. We analysed and discussed the language, thinking about how the women in the plays were presented and got creative with the text. It’s not every day you get to edit Shakespeare and put on your own performance.

The Year 9s spent a very thoughtful day of drama, interpretation and poetry and ended up creating a collage based on their inpidual thoughts, feelings and interpretations of how women are represented. We will be showing some of these at the End of Year event.

Meanwhile Year 8 were busy with ‘Argument in Action’. Never let it be said that ESIP fails to equip students with essential skills in life or which making successful arguments is a key one! We likened some of these skills to verbal karate – knowing how to think on the spot and say the right thing.

To warm up we practised a few games including the Balloon Debate. Five pupils volunteered to take on a persona and tried to persuade the others, by means of a two minute speech, why they should not be thrown out of a sinking balloon. The rest of the class then had to vote on who to save! 

In life you learn from others and then from experience so we started watching examples of debating speeches by champion debaters. We introduced the key points of structuring, rebuttal and points of information. We learned about PEEL - Point, Explanation, Example, Link – and then practised it within a debate on whether London should be an Independent State. We then played the Alley Game to practice our rebuttals.

After lunch it was time for the debates proper with our motion This House Believes Euthanasia Should Be Legalised. We heard some excellent points across the four groups and every girl, however shy, spoke up and made their voice heard with convincing arguments. There were some excellent ideas and as last year despite many girls having never debated before the standard was excellent and worthy of a competition standard.

Today was all about expression and interaction. It’s not often every girl in a group this size gets, and takes, the opportunity to be vocal and put their voice forward. The Year 9s in particular were very insightful with excellent evaluations of Shakespeare’s writing and some fantastic performances. Perhaps we will see some Shakespeare at the End of Year event…

It was great to see Year 8 and Year 9 together and we look forward to the next session in January.