Crew

Schools have closed, the year is done and summer is upon us along with swine flu! But we are still busy working here at CREW, we have a few weeks to go before we can sit on the beach and sip that champagne!

At the moment we are all working very hard on our NEW shows for September 2009. We are very excited about Tudors, a show for Year 3, led by the Eric the executioner. At the moment we are all helping Eric with all the work that needs to be done. We are sourcing props and costume and finalising the script.

Another show we are currently working on is a Black History game show, this workshop will cover black history in England and across the world. We will be ready to pilot the show in September and will definitely have it available for Black History Month in October. We are also expanding our show Express Yourself so that there will be versions for reception, Key Stages 1 and 2. We are also creating more with our popular puppet Cornelius Crew, Cornelius was piloted at West Acton Primary school and has proved to be really popular and a great workshop which provides a foundation in numeracy for reception and Year 1. Which is why Cornelius is now branching out into Literacy and he is going to the seaside too!

So it’s busy, busy in the office. Along with all the new shows and our wonderful puppet we are also working with MENCAP again, this year saw us working with their travel trainers and conexions. We created two shows for MENCAP and they have proved to be rewarding and an incredible learning curve. We are taking some more travel trainers through the CREW training programme.We are also gearing up to go back up to the Forest and are currently preparing training programmes and team building days for the Forest Holiday staff.

That all said there is a project we are currently working on that is incredibly exciting and extremly important. We at CREW have had many discussions and debates regarding the situation surrounding knife crime. We are all saddened and frustrated by the fact that violence and knives have entered schools and disrupting the youth in this country. So CREW have decided to try and help! We believe many carry knivs in this country for protection as they have never been taught how to protect themselves without a weapon! We have currently teamed up with a self defence expert and are working on a programme which will cover self-defence and confidence building, drama based workshops which will also provide a platform for these children to speak out!! WATCH THIS SPACE!

The CREW Training team were asked by the Science Museum (sciencemuseum .org.uk) to help their outreach team, fine-tune their presentation skills, for their exciting new electricity game show. CREW brought on board experience from our ‘Bright Sparks’ Electricity workshop for KS1 And KS2, and combined this with our presentation skills training. This was, together with the knowledge and resources of the Science Museum team; to help target their ‘Danger High Voltage’ show, to specifically engage a KS3 audience. The challenge was for the two teams to create a show that was exciting enough to appeal to the passions of the teenage audience, without compromising the educational validity of the experience. The ‘DHV’ show is an exciting, educational, game show, that introduces/ reinforces the KS3 electricity curriculum to (approx) 200 children per show. Throughout the project it became clear that the age and size of the KS3 audiences demanded a level of presentation that artfully combined exciting interaction techniques with defined control skills. I am very pleased to say that the teams worked extremely hard to ensure that this show has become a great example of KS3 interactive science. A big thank you to the SM team: Nathaniel, Damien, Danny, Tracey, Deanne, Jane, and Jammie, not forgetting, Shana and Richard (the happy couple).

Adam Senior, MD

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A big, thank you to Briony Creasey of ECAS (Ealing Curriculum Advisory Service); for organising, ‘The Ealing Enquiry’ project, throughout March. Due to Briony’s coordination and recommendation through ECAS, we were able to offer Ealing schools ½ price (and in some cases) free science workshops. The team presented our ‘Clued-up or Clueless’ science murder mystery workshops to, approx 2000, KS2 primary school children throughout the borough. These crime busting, finger printing, bloodstained workshops acted as the catalyst to a 2 week science project, supported by our teacher’s packs, that offered the upper KS2 children the chance to get some real ‘hands on’ science investigation experience. With all the games and challenges designed to promote the ‘applied’ use of ‘transition’ level science investigation skills, this project really ‘cracked the case’!
Adam Senior, M.D.

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Spring term saw the development of our ‘Suitcase Stories’ for Foundation Years children. I was particularly grateful for the inspirations I received from Kate Livingstone (Foundation Stage Coordinator at West Acton Primary) in order to develop ‘Cornelius goes to Market’. Cornelius and I are really looking forward to using story, song, music and rhyme to make numeracy accessible for Nursery and Reception children. The team have been looking for a long time, for some way to bring CREW resources to the younger years, in a format that can engage, whilst not over exciting or overwhelming them and I think we have finally cracked it! Literacy next, can’t wait!

Bala McAlinn, Schools Manager

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The CREW training team were really pleased to get lost in the woods this spring! Forest Holidays (www.forestholidays.co.uk) have decided to, not only offer a great ‘outdoors’ experience in the luxury if very ‘modern’ cabins (I got to sleep in a tree house that Snow White would have been proud of) but they have determined to make their team of ‘Rangers’ accessible, exciting, informative and, most important, fun! We worked very closely with a dedicated team of ‘rangers’, managers and site assistants to explore the benefits of an interactive interpretation of their resource, ‘the forest’. We are really pleased to be able to say the team ‘lapped up’ our training and have started applying it across a range of their activities, from the ‘Ranger Walks’, to Self Sufficiency Survival Courses, from the toddler activities to team meetings.

We will be back to work with Forest holidays in the Autumn, which is very exciting…..tree house here I come!

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Site Assistant Rachael discovers true freedom!

Ranger Natalie and Site Manager Stuart explaining the joy of the Forest!

Site Manager Stuart hears it all from site assistant Rachael.

The 'Gang' at Forest Holidays doing the CREW thing

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A Special Offer too good to miss!

As your school may have used Crew on a number of occasions, we would like to offer you the opportunity to receive free workshops! If you are new to CREW this might be a good way of trying us out.

Recently a few schools that are within a group, hub or cluster have been creating themed weeks within their Borough e.g. Science Week, Healthy Eating Week or History week, and booked us to perform the shows. This has allowed us to offer half price 60 children sessions to the group, hub or cluster schools and free workshops to the school who have organised the event. This is perfect for Black History month!

To receive your free workshops, all we require you to do is arrange at least a weeks worth of workshops amongst your group, hub or cluster of schools. Alternatively, if you can provide us with a list of schools who would be interested in taking part in a week of workshops within your borough and the workshops they would like to see, we would be more than happy to coordinate booking in dates and times for individual schools.

We will travel to each of the schools to run the workshop, so you don’t need to organise the schools to come to you. Your school will then receive a free day of workshops of your choice and the other schools will receive 50% off their workshops for groups of 60 children. You can choose whichever workshops you would like to create your ideal education experience.

Yet again last year CREW were invited back to Syria to work on the Massar Syrian Children’s project; and were very pleased to be able to witness the milestone of 100,000 children being inspired by the ‘Green Team’. We are very proud to have been the guiding force behind the evolution of this empowered team of young Syrians who are now using their ‘new found’ performance and presentation skills to deliver inspirational informal learning to the children of Syria. The ‘Green Team’ are evolving fast, with some of their members, ready and willing to take on mature roles at the very centre of the project administration; having ‘cut their teeth’ whilst performing all across this fast growing, friendly, modernizing, and hopeful country.

Adam Senior Director

Click here to see what a Syrian trainee says about the CREW communications and confidence course- see how CREW can benefit YOU!

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In 2008 CREW launched our exciting two-part workshop, Express Yourself, the project was commissioned by Tower Hamlets and aimed at the Bangladeshi community. The project went very well and the feedback was extraordinary so we are now offering it as a transition project for KS2 (information is within our CREW leaflet). Express Yourself has already been used successfully in schools in Waltham Forest and Ealing.

Express Yourself helps children learn about communication and self-expression in an environment of collaboration. During the first workshop the children are lead through challenges and games which end with the teacher being given a resource pack, which includes follow up work and parent puzzlers for children to take home. CREW then return for workshop two, after one week, which cements all the work done in workshop one and in the classroom. Express Yourself prepares children for communicating ‘in the big bad world’. They laugh, listen and learn about emotions, speaking, listening, being polite and expressing how they feel!

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CREW have teamed up with Ealing MENCAP and developed the presentation skills in their travel training team. Combining the MENCAP expertise to develop three workshops designed to help children with learning difficulties navigate the pitfalls of independent travel. ‘You’ focuses on building children’s confidence, to travel on their own; ‘ME’ is about communication asking for directions or help, finally the last workshop ‘FREE’, takes all the confidence, and communication concepts and puts them together with role-plays in our big red bus!
2009 will see one CREW presenter and one MENCAP Travel Trainer taking ‘You, Me and Free’ to special needs schools across London.
‘You, Me and Free’ is a rewarding and positive project as it allows these young, and sometimes forgotten members of our society to be an integral part of their community. We have been highly rewarded by the enthusiasm with which the children took to the challenges.

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