Day 5- All Good Things Must Come to an End

Today was an exciting day at A K Wigg Public School, it was so great to see some of the strategies we learned in class used on real live students. It was so fascinating to see how intrigued and engaged the littles ones were. They were learning about equality but they barely saw it as a lesson they were having so much fun! Getting up and moving around is so beneficial for all children, it breaks up there day and get their blood flowing! It is so awesome to see children participate in the drama strategies. Children are so laid back and young they are not embarrassed or unsure in the same way adults are. It didn't bother them that there were 20 adults in the room they did not know they still got crazy acting like chickens. Children appreciate drama so much and when they are so young they just so excited to be having fun!

It was also a great day to see how far everyone in the class of teacher candidates has come. I got the feeling that most people were nervous or unsure about teaching drama, but now they feel more confident and comfortable. It was wonderful to see all the different strategies people picked to show their journey, I was quite impressed by the creativity some people came up with. I really loved the graffiti/quilt strategy. What a fantastic way to conclude something, it is very neat for everyone to write something they learned or something they took away from the lesson and then put it all together. I think this would be fantastic in a classroom to show the class what they completed and to share with others.

Day 4- Drama Time!

Our last day in the Brock drama classroom, can not believe how fast the time went by. Today I developed an appreciation for the creative process. I feel that often we do not give students or children in general enough time to be creative on their own. We sit them in front of I pads, drill them with math questions and then rush them off to soccer practice. Because we do not give creativity the time we often forget the importance of it. Imagining and generating ideas are things children need to on a daily basis, and i am sad because not all of them do. I also feel that you can apply the creative process cross curricular. Not just in drama or art but in social studies or science. In my first teaching block I had my grade 5 social studies class create an action plan to reduce poverty in Niagara. So many of them struggled to come up with the concepts themselves, some students rushed to finish the assignment where others were actually stressed out because they could not come up with something on their own. This scared me a lot, I thought the students would have been excited to use their imaginations and create something totally new! After a lot of encouragement i could see the light bulbs go on and most of the kids were able to go through the creative process on their own, and they loved it! 

Guided Visualization is a great strategy to use in the classroom. Giving students something to visual gives them structure but allows for creativity too. My associate teacher did this in our grade 5 classroom except in language. We would read a book to the students but give them no idea of what the pictures look like, from there they had to draw a picture of what they saw. It was so fascinating see how unique every student's drawing was. You could use this guided visualization strategy in so many different subject areas and different approaches. Student could act out what they are visualizing ,draw it or come up with a caption for it. This strikes creativity and shows children they are creative and they come up ideas on their own and their unique ideas are okay!

 One last thought about creativity is that i think it goes hand in hand with identity. Critical position explains how so many different things contribute to an individuals identity. Creativity in any way could be considered a flexible trait in an individual. 

Day 3- All the Worlds a Stage

Hard to believe we already half way through our time in drama class! It has been such a positive journey thus far... I have even started to implement some of the strategies we have learned so far in my musical theatre class i teach. Musical Theatre is a mix between acting and dancing... the students do not have to sing, they lip-synch but they still have to be performers on stage, using their bodies and facial expressions to tell a story. My students really enjoyed mirroring, flocking and caption making. They are an energetic bunch but we have so much fun on Saturday afternoons. I am thankful for this class at Brock because i am actually using what i learned with real children already! 

My Intermediate Musical Theatre Group 

I have found my self very surprised so far with the heavy topics we have been using in class. Today's lesson was focused on Martin Luther King and it was fantastic. I have never thought of combining drama and serious topics together, I honestly did not think they would work but i was wrong. You can take topics that you may not always know how to teach pencil paper style and teach them with drama, the students become so much more engaged and connected to what they are learning.

  I discovered today too that drama is a wonderful subject to reach across to all of the multiple intelligences. It is so important for teachers to be aware of the different types of learners there are in their classrooms. Some students excel by listening or reading while others excel by doing or interacting with others. This multiple intelligence theory can be used in the drama classroom to help all students reach their maximum potential. In Drama you include so many different aspects of these intelligences, you can read the same book and use a variety of strategies like dance cards, draw/pass, sound scape and choral reading and appeal to all types of learners but ultimately teaching them from the same main idea.  

 

Day 2-Diving into Drama

It is exciting to be in the second drama class of the year, it is great to be up and moving early in the morning as it really gets your day started. Today my group had the opportunity to present several drama strategies including choral reading, mirrors, tableau and caption making. We chose a classic Robert Munch book (one of my favourite authors) for our mentor text today. One strategy that stuck out for me was mirrors. I found this one very challenging and I am thinking it would be best used in a junior setting rather than a primary setting. I think the concept is easily grasped by students however perfecting it (making the movements look they are legitimately being mirrored) is challenging. There were only a few students in the class today that had the technique really down pat. This exercise was a great way for to use space and movement incorporating the elements of dance. 

Mirroring performed by students in the class 

Another great strategy we used today was the dance cards! What a fantastic idea, as a dance teacher i find it easy to use my body for expression and creativity however i know this is not the case for everyone. Having the cards down on the floor in front of the students allowed for ideas but still left so much room for creativity for students picking how they would display that movement. I also really loved how we put our movements together creating a sequence, this showed students really how a dance or movement sequence is created. I always tell my dance students (when i ask them to create their own dance) that creating a dance is easier than you think you just combine movements together in counts of 8. I do similar exercises in some of my younger dance classes... to really get the kids thinking and creating not just 

dancing.  

  

I also think the creative movement aspect of drama is fantastic for students in need of specific accommodations. Students who cannot use their legs or arms can still discover other parts of their body to incorporate in their movements. I also find dance is a great way to help focus students, if you let students move around and shake it off you can see a refocus in them (especially the young ones). 

Day 1- Let the Drama Begin!

Today was my fist day of drama class, I was so excited. Drama has always been one of my favourite school subjects, taking it in up until grade 12. I have also danced since I was 3 years old so performing and creating has always been a hobby of mine. I now teach dance, mostly ballet, jazz and musical theatre. Because of my experience teaching dance I value art in the classroom tremendously and I hope that one day I will be able to incorporate drama, performance or creativity in my classroom as much as possible.

Me at my first dance recital!

Today we were introduced to many different drama strategies including graffiti, position mapping, tap in and tableau. I had worked with tableau before however the other strategies were brand new to me. The one strategy i thought would be fantastic to use in the classroom at anytime would be position mapping. I missed the very first class so i was a little unsure of what to expect for this class... the position mapping allowed me the opportunity to show this and work up to my own comfort level. This exercise you could use in any school subject with any grade! I think it would be a wonderful ice breaker or a strategy used for the teacher t get to know the students or where the students stand with in relation to their question.  

For our class we were asked to stand in position to the chair to what we felt like towards drama and teaching. I stood a little further away from the chair than most however not totally shy from the chair. I felt this was a great to express feeling with silent body language or pose. This was also a great exercise because it allows for all types of learners to participate. If a student was in a wheel chair they could still choose a position, if a student was shy they could still participate. It is also very interesting observing everyone in the class and how everyone had totally different views, thoughts, feelings and opinions towards drama. This is such a great tool for teachers to gather how their students are feeling with out having to actually ask them and expect a full explanation. 

Overall it was successful first drama class,  I am feeling comfortable and confident in this journey to find out who I am as a drama teacher!