This lesson is the start of your ten-week project. In this lesson, the children will find out what a set designer does, and make their first attempt at quick modelling. They will also find out a little about the Royal Opera House, and about how we tell a story through ballet. You will need to give each of the children a workbook that will become their portfolio, and explain to them that they will document all of their ideas for the project in this book. At some stage during the first few weeks of the project, you will also need to build a model box. We recommend making the 1:50 scale model box out of mount board for the class to share. The template can be found at the bottom of this page.

In this lesson, the children will have a go at quick sketches of designs for their story from last week, and will learn some more modelling techniques for creating a set in their model box.

In this lesson, the children will learn to respond to music as a designer. They will think about how the music makes them feel and how this affects the marks they make with their pencil. You will also teach the story of Swan Lake and discuss the four main characters, and create an abstract visual response to one of them.

In this lesson, the children will learn how to create a storyboard for a ballet or opera as a designer would. This will also help them to remember the story of Swan Lake that they learned last week.

In this lesson, you will think about how the story of Swan Lake can be translated into different settings.

In this lesson the children will be introduced to the design brief: to design and make a model box for one act in Swan Lake. They will also develop their ideas from the last lesson and create a moodboard for their design concept.

In this lesson, your students will learn about how to use scale in their model box, so that when they experiment with making their models, they will be to use appropriate scale for the dancers.

You can use this lesson quite freely for your students to continue to design and make for their model box. They can use all of the techniques so far, and there is one final making exercise that they can do to produce a backcloth for their set.

By the end of this lesson, each of your students will have made their final decisions about their designs and will have produced a plan for making their models next lesson.

In this lesson, the children will use everything that they have learned over the last 9 lessons to make their final model box design. If you are able to extend this lesson to a whole afternoon, or allow for a couple of afternoons to produce the model box, that will be helpful.