Early in the morning on Thursday we made our way back out to Rathkeevin, thinking about what it was like when we had to get up for school that early. As usual Astrid was waiting for us in the car-park, armed with her box of pencils, rubbers, scissors and all sorts of paper. Since we were a bit early we got to wait in the teachers’ lounge (imagine that!) while Principal Padraig talked to the class about the day ahead.
Everyone was excited to see us when we finally did stop by the classroom, eager to get their latest characters off their sheets of paper and marching about. Not everyone had got a chance to show off their characters yet, so Aoife and I went around the classroom to gather up everyone’s favourite characters so we could stick them up on the blackboard with blue-tack so everyone could have a look.
The kids explain their art.
We got all of the students to come to the front of the class and take turns telling us a little bit about their characters.
Caoimin was one of the first to tell us about his character ‘Kevin Tuff’, a pretty cool guy with an umbrella hat, sunglasses and best of all…a hover-board! Caoimin explained that though his name might be ‘Tuff’, but Kevin is still afraid of some things, like dogs and cats and especially having people step on him. It might seem a bit silly, until you realize how small Kevin is compared to us!
Imagine being his size, you’d probably be scared of the same things. Astrid said Kevin was very smart to have invented a hover-board so he can fly up high where people won’t accidentally step on him.
Kevin tuff takes a break on a bookshelf and shows off his super cool hoverboard.
There were giggles in the crowd of kids about some of the funnier characters on the board, but everyone was very interested in each other’s characters. One thing was for sure though – each character had a unique personality.
So that they would have the best chance of surviving whatever they got themselves into, all the kids cut out the characters they had drawn during their last class and stuck them to thick card paper and cut them out again.
Who says you can’t have fun while you work?
Now all we needed was to split the class into groups and get them to see what a whole bunch of characters might get up to together in the classroom.
This part took a while to organize, because we had to make sure the stories we came up with were short enough so we could tell them in a few photographs. Since everyone had a bunch of characters, we had each group pick two or three of their favourites that would go out on adventures together. There was no fighting about this part at all – everyone would have their say in coming up with parts of the story.
Experimenting with characters.
The kids went running about the classroom in their groups and trying out lots of things with their characters – ‘Superspider’ went diving in a specially designed plastic helmet, climbed on top of the world and even did some lab-work with a giant microscope. A few of the others had more run-ins with Arthur Bones (the otherwise friendly classroom skeleton). One character, Miss Nice even had to get an operation to stick her leg back on. She recovered just fine though and even got a brand new crutch for her troubles. Mrs Sherlock Holmes also got locked up in Blue Basket Jail in all this commotion, but it seems nobody knew quite why. A mystery to be solved for sure.
Super Spider the Super-Diver.
Spidey usually lives inside a sewage treatment plant but also quite enjoys hanging off shelves. Maybe he’s trying to get to that tin of Roses?
Arthur Bones strikes again! I doubt he started this though, he’s usually such an agreeable guy.
After this busy brainstorming session all the groups went back to their tables and Astrid explained the next step. Each group would work together to make a ‘storyboard’, something like a little comic strip like you might see in the Sunday papers or the Beano. Using only five or six pictures each group would have to draw out the story we would photograph in our next class.
Astrid, Aoife and I went around all the tables and helped each group pick their main storyboard artist. We made sure each group understood that these stories had to be pretty simple. I drew out six boxes on their pieces of paper and told them to fill them with the big events of their story, working their way from the beginning to the end – from box 1 to box 6.
Me (the shaggier headed one) showing Caoimhin a trick for the story-boards.
Thanks to the storyboards we also found out that Mrs Sherlock Holmes was thrown in jail because she was hot on the trail of an evil character who had kidnapped Miss Nice (the poor girl was still on crutches!). Seems there’s some crooked dealings going on in Classroom City!
Is there any justice? Mrs Sherlock Holmes in Blue Basket Jail!
At the end of the class every group was on the way to finishing at least one storyboard. Our next time with Rahtkeevin would sadly be our last class with this great bunch, but we would also get to set up a professional little photo studio and bring these storyboards to life so we can share them with the world, and of course, you, our dear readers.
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