Year 7 Play: The Sword in the Stone

This year’s Year 7 were a delight to teach. They always approached lessons with enthusiasm, positivity and a love of learning.  At the end of the year, the Year 7s are usually given smaller parts in the school play, which would be a collaborative affair involving all three year groups. Traditionally, the Year 8s would be given the main roles, after having completed their FCE exams, and the Year 9s would fill in other minor roles and battle scenes in such a way that would allow them to focus on their end-of-cycle exams.

This year, however, due to covid restrictions, each class performed their own play to avoid close social contact across year groups. The school play is a valuable social and learning experience, as well as a fun way to end the term. It allows children to showcase a dramatic side that might not otherwise have been seen, encourages others to come out of their shells,  and requires them to work together, depend on each other, and support each other. It can also reveal much about their attitudes and character that their teachers and peers might not have known about.

Year 7 showed themselves to be collaborative, creative, patient and good-humoured – characteristics they have actually demonstrated all year. They wrote their own script, which is inspired by the Arthurian legends they had studied earlier in the year.

They are a delightful class, and from September they will be excellent role models to next year’s new Year 7s.

We hope you enjoy their foray into the world of screenwriting and performing. Special thanks to the parents for supporting their children in perfecting their costumes, but extra special thanks the children themselves for their enthusiasm, and their kindness to each other.

Some of the Year 7 girls can also be seen in the Y8 play, performing as socially distanced fairies in A Midsummer Night’s Dream – a part that the boys were overlooked for, in a case of shocking gender discrimination.