Category Archives: 2.1 Curriculum

Reflection on Drama TDT

I found this video explaining a Drama lesson very helpful. It gave me a real insight into how to structure a drama lesson and made me feel more confident in planning a lesson based around drama. It starts off explaining that you should have a “Drama Contract” with the pupils as it helps with behaviour management. This helps to keep the children on task and provides a stimulus of reflection for the teacher. If the lesson gets out of control or something goes wrong the teacher can look back at what went wrong and what part of the “Drama Contract” the pupils did not stick to, equally so if something goes right.

In the video it then explains the importance of a warm-up in drama and how beneficial it is. The leaders of the lesson explain that it helps to ready the mind and the body for the activities that are planned for the lesson. Later in the video the participants in the class start to make like between drama and other subjects such as literacy. This really helped to open my eyes to the fact that you don’t just have to have a lesson only based on drama, you can relate other subjects into your drama lesson. An example of this could be if the pupils were learning about World War 2 you could structure drama lesson around this. This could be done by getting the children to act out children getting taken away from their mothers or getting them to act out a scene where everyone has just found out the war is over. By doing this is allows the pupils to understand the emotions and events that occurred throughout the war.

By structuring the lesson in this way it helps to give the teacher a step by step guide as to how the lesson will go. In saying that a practitioner also need to be flexible as the lesson may not always go to plan as there may some pupils leaving class to go on a trip. By having a well-planned lesson it also helps the teacher keep focus which therefore also helps to keep the pupils focus. This is because if the teacher is seen to be focused and on task this sets an appropriate example to the children which in turn keeps them on task.

Dance Workshop

Going into the dance workshop today I was pretty apprehensive into what it was going to entail as I am not the best dancer and have hardly any rhythm! Despite this I had a great time and had a real laugh throughout. It was not only a learning experience but also allowed me to get to know others in my class.

The workshop really gave me an insight into what dance in primary school is like and how it can be adapted to relate to many other subjects within the curriculum. It helped to show me that it doesn’t have to be overly complicated and the teachers don’t have to always do a lot of demonstrating. In fact it is sometimes better to allow the children to come up with their own moves as it allows them to use their imagination. As someone who is not at all into dancing and never has been it was quite worrying for me that I potentially might have to teach children how to dance/routines. However Eilidh reassured me that there is many different and creative ways of teaching it and that it doesn’t always have to be a set routine.

A key message I took from today’s workshop is that dance does not always have to entail a set routine that you have to teach the kids. Dance can be taught in a variety of creative ways and can be linked into many different topics and subjects. I also learnt from Eilidh that dance can be understood by everyone whether you are deaf or speak another language as all you need to do is show someone an action for them to get involved and understand. I will definitely take this into placement as I don’t know what challenges I may face or what different types of children may be in my class. I also learned throughout this workshop to be a bit more relaxed and confident as it doesn’t matter if I look a bit ridiculous as long as I have fun, look confident and make sure the kids have fun and learn something that’s all that’s important.