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Teaching Longsword
Went into Pamphill school to teach the first of a series of longsword sessions to a class of year 4 children.
Very glad I took my friend Paul with me. He's a retired teacher and taught his children longsword dancing for many years.
Watching him work with the kids is a real revelation as to what training and experience can do.
He controlled over 30 children without once raising his voice and had them doing exactly what he wanted without noise or fuss. Simple things, like making it a game to move as quietly as possible when forming their groups, or telling them to sit on the floor cross-legged with their swords across their laps making sure their swords didn't touch the floor and make a noise.
He spent the first ten minutes just getting them to listen to the music, clap along, count to eight with the music and just developing their sense of rhythm and the patterns of 8 and 16 that the dance requires.
Lots of positive feedback to all the children.
By the end of the lesson, every group had managed the first two figures of the dance and several of the children spontaneously came up afterwards and said 'thank you'.
We're all looking forward to next week.
Very glad I took my friend Paul with me. He's a retired teacher and taught his children longsword dancing for many years.
Watching him work with the kids is a real revelation as to what training and experience can do.
He controlled over 30 children without once raising his voice and had them doing exactly what he wanted without noise or fuss. Simple things, like making it a game to move as quietly as possible when forming their groups, or telling them to sit on the floor cross-legged with their swords across their laps making sure their swords didn't touch the floor and make a noise.
He spent the first ten minutes just getting them to listen to the music, clap along, count to eight with the music and just developing their sense of rhythm and the patterns of 8 and 16 that the dance requires.
Lots of positive feedback to all the children.
By the end of the lesson, every group had managed the first two figures of the dance and several of the children spontaneously came up afterwards and said 'thank you'.
We're all looking forward to next week.