Drama
This weeks drama input focused on different drama conventions such as freeze frame, thought tunnel, forum theatre, flashback/forward, hot seating and improvisation.
These conventions can fit in anywhere in the expressive art outcomes for CfE:
- I enjoy creating, choosing and accepting roles, using movement, expression and voice.
EXA 1-12a
-
I can create, adapt and sustain different roles, experimenting with movement, expression and voice and using theatre arts technology.
Andrew briefly went through activities we could do for these conventions by looking at the story of ‘The Lonely Dragon’ again. Andrew once again was teacher in role which as Grainger (2003) points out can increase enjoyment as the teacher, ‘genuinely joins the class on their imaginary journey, prompting belief, commitment and involvement’.
Following on from this Andrew decided to once again be teacher in role but introduce us to a new story about Frankie Miller. Andrew played the role of a group leader telling his group (us) that Frankie Miller was coming back to town after ten years and that this was concerning. In our chosen groups we had to state why this was concerning to us and then act out what had happened to Frankie Miller to mean he had to leave town.
” Theatre stretches perspective by giving students opportunities to reflect on behaviors, situations, and personalities in the context of a drama. Drama allows students to demonstrate deep understanding of pieces of literature” (Gidcumb, 2014).
This quote from Gidcumb exemplifies the usefulness of these activities in the development of students not only in drama but cross- curricular. Being able to reflect on behaviours and situations plays largely into their PSE work and is a useful skill for life in and out of school. Also the deep understanding of literature is particularly useful as you can easily do the drama on the book your class are currently reading.
ART
Today we had a guest speaker from South Lanarkshire council Isobel Laird to talk to us about art in the classroom. She went through a book of artwork she had gathered demonstrating work from primary one to primary seven. I enjoyed this as I was able to see various ways to teach art right through the years. Many teachers wish for a little more guidance on teaching art as stated in the Creativity Across Learning document (2013), ‘In all education sectors there is a clear demand for more guidance and practical resources for teachers about what creativity is and how to nurture it.‘ This vault of artwork provided direction for us on how to teach art. Isobel also demonstrated that the majority of this work was not just one lesson but could take anywhere between 6-8 weeks and involve many form of art and design.
For our workshop we were guided through a project that could take a few weeks in school as it involved various forms of art. Each stage was easy to follow and easy to adapt to any level throughout the school. Firstly, we had to do a continuous line drawing of a washing line with a pen on a small piece of paper. A pen is important because when children use a pencil they tend to spend the whole lesson rubbing out and starting again but with a pen they have to use what they did and often are more satisfied- this is known as ‘phycology of the pen’. I believe the only thing the children may struggle with is having to draw continuously without removing pen from paper. Some may find this difficult and become frustrated.
We then filled in this design with water colour paint.
Following from this we had to choose an A4 sheet of paper and using a limited selection of paint create a wall using some pictures for references. The limited colour palette forced us to mix and to be creative and to accept we might not get it perfect.
Following this we covered a large sheet of paper with a wash of colours of our choice.
The final aspect of this was to put our three pieces together by ripping up the wash of colour picture, cutting out our washing line and wall and sticking them on to a new piece of paper to create a picture. I seem to have lost the picture of my final piece so cannot include it. If doing this in school the end result would be that the children would have pictures based around the same content but each picture would be different in its own way. As a lesson over a series of weeks this would also be easy to teach requiring very commonly found resources in schools e.g.. paint and paper.
REFERENCES
Gidcumb, B. (2014) Integrating drama in the elementary classroom: Where do I start? Available at: https://educationcloset.com/2014/08/01/integrating-drama-in-the-elementary-classroom-where-do-i-start/
Grainger, T.(2003) Creative teachers and the language arts: Possibilities and potential. Education 3-13: International Journal of Primary, Elementary and Early Years Education.
