Drama - Sarah

by Sarah Tuesday, July 28, 2015 0 comments Week 2 Drama

What strategies would you use in teaching a drama workshop like Fox to primary children?

By not pre-reading the whole book to the class, Kate ensured that they did not have their Making, Presenting and Responding influenced by the final conclusion of the book.  They could use their own imagination throughout the teaching sequence to structure their own final piece.  This would allow the children to use their own creativity (Robinson, 2006) to guide where the learning and teaching.

To be able to ensure that students were not influenced by preconceived ideas about endings, I would use the strategy of introducing a novel or the initial piece to gain their ideas whilst only allowing them the next small step toward the end goal.  This would allow for all abilities to participate whilst allowing all individuals to work to their own zone of proximal development (Hoffnung et al., 2013) both cognitively and emotionally. 

In both Fox and the short video of children from Gordon Junior School, the teacher is relating the topic to their students own experiences.  This enables the students to engage with the lesson more readily as they can understand the characters thoughts and feelings as they relate to themselves.  This is important as it has been proven that children learn more from lessons which they can relate to personally. (Piagano & Gillies, as cited in Ashman, 2015)  Using drama can relate any topic more readily to the children within the class, so this is definitely a strategy I would use in my future teaching.

Reflection so far……

I agree with Rich, that I am beginning to see where drama can be used effectively in the classroom.  It does not have to be a traditional drama lesson in an empty room which is what I experienced in high school.  I had not really thought so much about the way children play and their imaginations letting them go to places they create.  If I can harness that creativity and input some of my own, then ‘the world is my oyster!’

References

Hoffnung, M., Hoffnung, R.J., Seifert, K.L., Burton Smith, R., Hine, A., Ward, L., Pause, C. & Swaby, K.  (2013). Lifespan development: A topical approach. (1^st ed.). Milton, Qld: John Wiley & Sons.

Paglano, P. & Gillies, R.M. Inclusive practices. In Ashman, A. (ed.). (2015). Education for inclusion and diversity. (5th ed.). Melbourne: Pearson, Australia.

Robinson, K. (2006). Do schools kill creativity? TED talk, February 2006. Retrieved from: http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity?language=en