What your students will learn:

1) Explore how fire fighting techniques during the time of the fire were inadequate and the methods they used to get the fire under control.

2) Investigate the timeline of the fire, how it began and how it spread through the city of London. Including the aftermath of the fire, and how the city was rebuilt.

3) Investigate key job roles including: Market Traders, Blacksmiths, House Servants, and Bakers, and find out about key figures, including: Samuel Pepys, King Charles II, Sir Thomas Bludworth, and Thomas Farriner.

Performance techniques they’ll be using:

1) Use drama and movement, to travel back in time in ‘time machines’ to the year 1666, where they will meet King Charles II and help him put the fire out. Use props to play a game called ‘chain of buckets’ and experience the mammoth task of tackling the flames with buckets of water!

2) Use mime, music and role play to create group ‘mimelines’ and a ‘mime circle’ of the Great Fire, tracking the fire from start to finish, exploring the catastrophic after effects of the fire, and how people were left homeless, living in tents on the outskirts of London.

3) Use characterisation, voice and improvisation to explore the key job roles and key people in 1666. Become the different people, such as Samuel Pepys and have a go at selling your goods on the noisy and bustling streets of 1666 London!