What Did I Miss?

Kyla is throwing a party on her street. Not just any party. It’s a graduation ceremony. It’ll be mad to see the kids from her old class again after so long. Summer 2020 was literally endless.

Now that they’re all in first year, Kyla wants to get the old gang back together. She’s made caps, she has gowns, and she’s even prepared a speech. But there’s one visitor she’s not expecting…

As Kyla attempts to mark an important milestone in her young life, can she and her mother learn to understand each other and bridge the divide left by lockdown?

Informed by collaborative work with The Ark Children’s Council and featuring choreography by the multi-award winning Junk Ensemble, What Did I Miss? is a story of both childhood and parenthood, about growing up, no matter what age you are.

What Did I Miss? was streamed lived from The Ark to homes and schools for free from 11-13 June 2021 as part of Brightening Air | Coiscéim Coiligh, a nationwide, ten day season of arts experiences brought to you by the Arts Council.

Watching and reflecting on this theatre performance with your class will explore many of the key strands of the Drama and English curricula including: Drama to explore feelings, knowledge and ideas, leading to understanding; examining the relationship between story, theme and life experience; receptiveness to language; emotional and imaginative development through language. The specific theme of this show also links strongly with SPHE curriculum strands including: Myself and Others; Relating to Others; Myself and the Wider World.

Our classroom activity pack contains a number of activities which you can use to explore these curricular links with your class...

To deepen 5th and 6th class students engagement with What Did I Miss? in the classroom, we have made a free complementary activity pack to further explore the themes and experience of watching the show with your class. Pupils will have the opportunity to react and respond creatively to What Did I Miss? through a series of activities. Many of these are cross-curricular, containing elements of the Drama, English, Visual Arts and Social, Personal and Health Education (SPHE) curricula.

You can also make use of many of the activities in this pack without watching the show as the activity packs are designed for use after watching the trailer and reading the blurb of the show.

Download our What Did I Miss? Classroom Activity Pack in English or Irish Now

While the play What Did I Miss? is presented in English, we have also provided our classroom resources as Gaeilge which link to themes and ideas from the show in order to support teachers wishing to deliver classroom based drama and history-based activities through the Irish language.

Activity 1 - Graduation Caps (Visual Art)
Activity 2 - Write a Graduation Speech (English, SPHE)
Activity 3 - Mindful Moments (SPHE)
Activity 4 - Tableaus (Drama)
Activity 5 - Hot Seat (Drama)

Activities 1 and 2 are perfect either before or after watching the show, while Activities 3-5 are best done with your class after they have seen the show and are familiar with the story and characters.