Introduction to Ensemble
Extension
* Stop/Go 10 Mins
Aims: : Listening to instructions, focusing, working as an ensemble, spatial awareness.
- Ask students to walk around the room, filling the space.
- Explain you will call out instructions and they must do what you say. Go = they walk and Stop = they freeze.
- Practice for a minute and then introduce a further two rules. Jump = they jump and Clap = they clap
- Again, practice for a minute with all four instructions so far.
- Now, add the last two instructions. Turn = they spin around and Leap = they take a large leap forward.
- Practice with all six instructions.
Scale Up: Once the group are confident you can start to swap the instructions around in the pairs you introduced them. Change one pair at a time starting with “stop” and “go”.
Go = will mean they stop and Stop = will mean they go.
Continue with the other four instructions which still mean the same. You can then swap the next two:
Jump = they clap and Clap = they jump.
Again, continue so stop, go, jump and clap are subverted, but turn and leap are the same. Finally, you can swap the last two so all words have different meanings.
Turn = they leap and Leap = they turn
* Roots 15 Mins
Aims: : Supporting each other through ensemble work, focusing, recovering from mistakes, staying present and alert.
- Stand in a circle. Ask everyone to put their hand in the air.
- Explain you will pass the ball to each other until everyone has had a turn.
- Emphasise they must remember who passed them the ball and who they passed the ball to.
- When the ball is thrown to you then you put your arm down.
- You can only throw to someone who has their hand up.
- Keep going until the last person receives it, at which point they will pass it back to the teacher.
We will call this SEQUENCE 1. Repeat SEQUENCE 1 a few times until everyone is confident with the order.
For example:
Teacher passes to Adam.
Adam passes to Mohammad.
Mohammad passes to Josie.
Josie passes to Rex.
Rex passes to Amina.
Amina passes to Kaajel.
Kaajel passes to Sarah.
Sarah passes to Paolo.
Paolo passes back to Teacher.
Now, explain you will create a different sequence – SEQUENCE 2.
- Repeat the process of putting your hand up.
- This time, you will say the name of someone.
- Tell them to choose different people from SEQUENCE 1.
- When you hear your name you put your hand down.
- Repeat until everyone has had their name called.
- The last person will say the teacher’s name.
For example:
“Josie”
“Adam”
“Kaajel’
“Amina”
“Paolo”
“Mohammad”
“Rex”
“Sarah”
“Teacher”
Practice SEQUENCE 2 a few times until they are confident.
- Now recap SEQUENCE 1
- Explain you’re going to try and put both sequences together.
- Start with SEQUENCE 1 and, after the ball has been passed a few times, you can introduce SEQUENCE 2.
- They must always stay present and be ready to “receive” the ball or their name.
- Once your group get good at this, you can even add in further sequences. These could be passing a clap, passing a click, passing a smaller/different coloured ball or walking to each other.
Troubleshooting:
Inevitably, they will make mistakes.
Encourage them to slow it down. This exercise is about how they recover and support each other through this. Encourage them to start from the beginning of that sequence again to reintroduce whatever “action” went missing. See if there is a pattern as to when it goes missing – it could be one of the students sends it to the incorrect person each time. If they struggle, then stop and practice that sequence by itself.
If you think your group will struggle, or if you have a lot of students, you could even write down the patterns on paper to refer back to.
Don’t introduce new sequences until they are comfortable with the previous ones.
* Call Out 10 Mins
Aims: : Listening to instructions, focusing, working as an ensemble, spatial awareness.
- Ask the group to move around the room.
- Introduce the instructions of stop and go. Stop = they freeze, Go = they continue walking
- Explain that you will shout out numbers and each number represents an instruction you’d like them to do.
- Introduce the numbers slowly. When they are comfortable, you can introduce another number.
- When you call out “One,” they will all group together in the centre of the room.
- When you say “Two,” they must spread out.
- When you say “Three,” they must reach their arms up towards the sky.
- When you say “Four,” they must stretch their arms out in front of them
- You can elicit other ideas from the group for further numbers.
- Put on some music and experiment.
Guide:
Go = Continue walking
Stop = Freeze
1 = Group together in the centre of the room.
2 = Spread out.
3 = Reach arms up towards the sky.
4 = Stretch their arms out towards the front.