Drama
Continuing our learning of using drama in the curriculum, the lesson had the same structure as previous weeks of learning new drama conventions. This week we learned how to use flash forward, flashback, slow motion and narration. Narration allows the children to fully understand what is happening in the story, Booth (1985, page 1) suggests “children’s ability to make sense of the messages that flood them is often beyond their ability or willingness to communicate their understanding of those messages”. This can be applied to the convention use of narration as it provides children with the help to easily comprehend the thoughts of the characters and the meaning of the story. Flash back and flash forward provides an insight to different periods of time out with the story’s time period. This can teach children all about how events and people progress to be what they are at present and how those people and events can affect the future. A valuable lesson of showing how actions have consequences is highly useful in a classroom. Finally using slow motion in drama scenes lets the children explore in detail how their character would feel and react to something in the story and how it would be represented at a very slow pace.
We incorporated all of our new learned drama conventions into our own halloween-themed story. Using teacher in role, we all created a story about a haunted house that none of townspeople dared to enter. Each group within the class then made up their version of the story using the drama conventions, to which each performed in front of the class. For example, my group acted out a tale of trick-or-treaters wanting to knock on the door of the haunted house where they came across an evil witch who froze children to stone. After three session of learning about drama, I am confident in saying I have overcome my inhibitions about performing in front of an audience. I think one of the main reasons for this was the entire class grew more comfortable with engaging with the acting and sharing their abilities. Group drama really made a difference when beginning to act scenes in front of others. By my group members putting in their best effort I felt I would be motivated to do the same. I believe this would take place in a primary classroom as well , according to Baldwin (2009) children soon recognise that for a performance to be successful, everybody must make a positive contribution and have full co-operation.
Music
The main focus was learning to use our voices as teachers. Our voices are the primary source of communication to pupils, therefore taking care of your voice is essential. The General Teaching Council for Scotland advised helpful tips for teachers to manage their voice. One of which being ‘avoid shouting’, of course every teacher will have to shout to get their classes attention more often than they would like. However using other methods such as using an intimidating look for attention will put less strain on your voice and allow to get on with the curriculum. It also advises teachers to protect their voice by trying a number of things: warm up your voice before prolonged usage by humming gently or doing some voice exercises, relax shoulders and neck, breath from the diaphragm, drink water regularly.
We used this learning to carry on to our next activity: singing. Now I have always enjoyed singing as a child, mainly in choir and having lessons in high school, however I felt reservations at the thought of singing in front of my peers. We used useful song resources suitable for early level music learners such as Choonbaboon. We took part in a 15 minute teaching video of a song, after a while everyone in the session eased into singing out loud and became more confident. In reflection as a teacher, I see now I can simple videos like this as a main part of my lesson if it carries out the pupil’s learning intention. I intend to find further resources like this to help inform my planning and teaching.
A useful example of a Choonbaboon video lesson – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KzQpQ5HLMI
Finally, we explored using grids within music. One of the most important and challenging part of learning music is knowing how to read a score sheet, therefore simplifying its appearance into a grid will make things much easier for children who are being newly introduced to music. Us, the learners, were encouraged to consider sounds which they would relate to a certain theme and how they would represent those sounds using different instruments, their voices, and electronic sound effects. In our case, we used the topical theme of fireworks for Guy Fawkes night. Therefore our sounds were described as a bang, whizz, hiss, boom, etc. After deciding how many beats were in each box and what instruments were categorised with each sound, our teacher conducted us to play our instruments along the grid.
Then into groups we came up with our own theme and repeated the activity on a smaller scale. I feel this lesson would be very effective for IDL learning as I associated the grid with maths learning. Learners could use their knowledge of grids in another lesson revolving around using co-ordinates.
One of the main points I took from this week was the importance of allowing children to have choice and input in an arts lesson. Both inputs of today’s module showed how the educators altered their lessons (whilst still using their own planning) to fit how we, the learners, changed the direction. I would say that before I thought teachers were in strict control of lessons and pupils did not have a say in what they were learning, but I am starting to realise that children can only express themselves if you allow them to. Craft (2009) highlight that in practice which fosters creativity by contract our focus to ensure that we encourage children’s ideas and possibilities, and these are not suffocated.
References
Booth, D. (1985) Imaginary gardens with real toads. In Reading and Drama in Education. Theory into Practice. [Online] Vol.24(3). Available: Taylor and Francis. [Accessed 31 October 2017]
Baldwin, P. (2009) School Improvement Through Drama: A Creative Whole Class, Whole School Approach. London: Network Continuum Education.
Craft, A (2007) Creativity and possibility in the Early Years [Online] Available: https://www.tactic.org.uk/pdfs/reflection-craft.pdf [Accessed: 31 October 2017]
GTSC. (2017) Voice Management. [Online] Available: http://www.in2teaching.org.uk/hints-and-tips/View/952.aspx [Accessed: 31 October 2017]
