The Real Hogwarts came to Liskeard School in Cornwall last week when Advanced Skills Teacher John Golding invited me to present aspects of the Magic 4 Learning programme.
Liskeard School’s Activity week featured a range of extracurrcular activites for students and in the early stages of the planning John Golding invited me to offer a Magic School session as part of the programme.
John and I have worked together on a number of innovative educational projects in the past, he trained as an NLP practitioner with me and got the ‘magic bug’ a couple of years ago.
The Magic 4 Learning programme, which developed from David Copperfields Project Magic (with his permission) uses magic to motivate learning, develop personal, social and thinking skills whilst at the same time allowing young people access to tuition in magic tricks.
The aim is not to produce a batch of new magicians, although this is often a by-product of the sessions, but rather to offer a context in which to develop team work, creativity and communication skills. The programme was developed to support and motivate learning and not necessarily teach the next generation of conjurors.
You can find out more about the programme and its planned development at Magic 4 Learning
You can hear a podcast about the Magic School below and in the next day or so I hope to add some photographs from the event.
It was great to see ALL of the pupils so actively engage in the magic show at the end of the weeks sessions. The invited audience were not only entertained but amazed by many of the performances. I mean few, if any, of the pupils involved in the sessions knew any magic before the week started.. The magic kits and Crafy Conjurors book provided gave then a kick start, and of course the coaching and support in learning the trciks helped, but by the third day the young people were developing their own ideas; doing more reading and research and working together towards creating a magical experience for their audience.
It was great to receive Tweets of support from Penn & Teller, The Fool Us Team, Andy Nyman, Richard Wiseman, Piff the Magic Dragon and David Copperfield… it gave the whole magic school a feeling of connection to the world of magic. Using a safe, closed, social media network the students were invited to view and comment of performances from some of the Greats in the world of magic; write reviews of Penn & Tellers Fool Us show and enagage in a discussion about the work they were doing.
It was a GREAT week and the students were FANTASTIC…. one or two may well choose to follow up on the interest created during Magic School and become young magicians….
Alan
