School workshop suggestion

Here you will find a workshop outline designed for use in school ‘bubbles’ as children return to the classroom. This has been created for use alongside selected poems from The Corona Collection – A Conversation.

Workshop outline

Read the poem JUST SUPPOSING…

Have a conversation in your group, in your bubble

Discuss the following, as a group. Take notes.

1. What? What have you been missing most during the lockdown?

• Who? Which group/gathering have you most wished you could be part of? (sitting around with friends, visiting a relative, playing team sport, being on the playground with others, going to the shops, the cinema, the swimming pool, going to a football match…)

• Where? If restrictions on travel were lifted and you could go anywhere, be anyplace right now – anywhere in Enfield, in London, in the UK, in the world, in the universe…where would it be?

• Rules. There have been lots of new rules imposed during the lockdown. Discuss the different rules there have been and decide amongst yourselves one rule you think is an important rule, a good rule that perhaps we should keep in place even after lockdown is over.

• The future. You have all had a lot of time on your own, away from school, away from your teachers, from parts of your family. You will have had time to think, observe the world in different ways, maybe some of you have been watching the news, looking outside at nature, having thoughts and conversations with people in your household or conversations inside your own head. 

Imagine that together in your bubble, you are going to form the new government in the post-Corona world. Decide on some new rules you intend to introduce as a result of your own learning and experiences during this time.

Rules to ensure a happier, safer world.  

Finally, read the poem COCOON – discuss the idea of metaphor.

Ask the group to come up with their own metaphor for what this whole period has felt like.