(This blog post will combine week 6 and 7)
I would say that in my past experiences, as a child, I definitely loved having the opportunity to take part in drama and dance. I would find myself using and watching these art forms as a way of indulging in escapism, a very common process that young children do to find a relief from their realities. However, as I matured I strayed from my interest in dance and drama, thus spurring feelings of uneasiness prior to these sessions.
Drama
In our drama session we explored new conventions that could be used within a lesson, namely: vox pocs, role on the wall, thought-tracking, voice-in-head and mime. We integrated our learning Anthony Browne’s ‘The Tunnel’ , a story of the relationship between a brother and sister. After familiarising ourselves with the plot of the story, i.e. the brother and sister do not get on and the brother seems to bully his sister, we were asked to create a role on the wall for the two characters. Drawing an outline of each person, we wrote words on the outside to describe what the character appears to be and on the inside what the characters feels about themselves.
Using this convention within a drama lesson I feel would be useful because it allows the children to learn the valuable lesson of seeing other people’s points of view and that a person may not be what they appear to be. I understand now that the main intention of drama lessons in early education are allow children the opportunity to pretend and to have the freedom to to express themselves, however moral lesson about stereotypes can always be useful when teaching children. We later moved on and finished reading the story to be able to apply the other conventions in our lesson. As groups, we acted out segments of the story and used voice-in-head, which requires a character to step forward out of the scene and the actor explains the thoughts and feelings of the character which the audience may not have picked up on. This gives children an opportunity to relate to the character using aesthetics to help recognise how feelings can make people commit certain, potentially hurtful, actions. Grainger (2003) suggests drama is essentially associated with creating and solving problems, therefore children can create their critical thinking skills through their role in the drama experience and use ways of thinking they may not used before. In respect to teaching, I feel after seeing all of my fellow peers take part and have a role in the activity, that group drama is the best way to ease children into performing and to involve everyone in the lesson. Ways this could be adapted is maybe less confident children could have non-speaking roles, however everyone getting up in front of an audience will start to build on their confidence. Andrew pointed out that a common worry of teachers, when asking pupils their thoughts and answers, is silence from the class. This results in the teacher ending the silence quickly with telling the class the answer he/she were looking for. In reflection I see now that patience, especially in drama lessons, is key when allowing the children to think for themselves and that being scared of ‘the silence’ is something to overlook. Additionally, flexibility is a skill that goes a long way in teaching drama lessons, if the lesson veers away from the path you had initially planned it to take – just go with it. The use of drama in curriculum is for the child to express themselves without limitation.
‘I have the freedom to choose and explore how I can use my voice, movement and expression in role play and drama.’ EXA 0-12a.
Dance
As much I considered all aspects of the arts to be important in primary teaching, I did not realise the extent of how much dance is incorporated in the CfE curriculum. I was surprised to learn that there are many dance-related experiences and outcomes, including
‘I enjoy creating short dance sequences, using travel, turn, jump, gesture, pause and fall, within safe practice.’ EXA 1-08a.
Over the course of two inputs, these outcomes were displayed in our dance activities. In groups we had to move round different stations of movement, namely: reach, twist, balance, turn, kick, jump, hop, gesture, slide, and roll. At each station we had to come up with a movement of this description. At the end we combined all of the movements to create a dance which we performed to the rest of the class. As a teacher, I see how giving the children this freedom has its benefits for their creativity to develop in different ways. However I always see how having certain guidelines and a structure to their dance moves, i.e. their movement had to within a certain category, makes things easier for those who may struggle in this area.
Later, everyone in the session stood in a circle, using the theme of Halloween, to create a dance move for every number from 0-9. We then got back into our groups and answers a list on mathematical calculations, the answers determined a sequence of the dance moves we had created. This showed how dance can be incorporated in any other curricular subject, such as maths, and how using memorable actions can help young learners understand the concept of every number having meaning/value. The main thing I took from this particular teaching was how little teacher input there was. Using this type of method in my planning and teaching for dance lessons is essential because as Cone (2009, page 81) states, “offering children the opportunity to discover how they can be creators of their own ideas is the one of the most powerful lessons we can teach”.
References
Grainger, T. (2003) Creative teachers and the language arts: Possibilities and potential. Education 3-13: International Journal of Primary, Elementary and Early Years Education. Vol.31(1). pp. 43-47.
Purcell Cone, T. (2009) Following Their Lead: Supporting Children’s Ideas for Creating Dances. In Journal of Dance Education. Vol. 9(3), pp. 81-89.
Scottish Government (2004) Curriculum for Excellence: Expressive Arts Experiences and Outcomes. [Online] Available: https://www.education.gov.scot/Documents/expressive-arts-eo.pdf [Accessed 24 October 2017]
