Drama

Continuing our focus on different drama conventions, we listened to a story called “The Tunnel” by Anthony Brown. This story enabled us to learn new drama conventions;

• Voice in the head.
• Role on the wall.
• Vox Pop.
• Mime.
• Thought Tracking.

Drama can act as an escape from reality, for most children this is an exciting concept. My favourite convention is ‘Voice in the head’ because it allows a character to step out from the story and tell their point of view. As future teachers it is vital that we help children understand that everyone sees the world differently and that we are all from various backgrounds and cultures. Personally I feel drama would be great for teaching tough topics, such as; bullying, war and citizenship.

Dance

Continuing to use the moves we worked on in the last seminar we created a short sequence with the theme of Halloween. To start with we were given a print out of a ‘mummy’ and we were to use our imagination to create our own move that symbolised the picture. After creating our move the whole class came together with the move they had created using their print outs. All the moves were put together to create a short dance sequence. It is important that we allow children to freely express themselves and use their own creativity. We should help children to understand that their creativity is valued.

Cross-curricular

Both these seminars made me realise that drama and dance can be incorporated throughout the curriculum. That we should encourage children to freely express their thoughts and feelings. Children can sometimes struggle to understand others peoples points of view however by using dance and drama it can make it easier for children to ‘step into someone elses shoes’. We can use dance and drama to enhance literature. Children can create moves from a picture in a book and express a characters feelings through drama.