This week we focussed on drama and dance. In arm the remaining groups carried out their micro-teaching lessons. One was based on Little Red Riding Hood, one was based on a scene from Matilda and the other was based around a section from the book ‘Room’ by Emma Donoghue. The Little Red Riding Hood group (group 1) used the following conventions: role on the wall, teacher in role, improvisation and freeze frame. This group did really well, they were a bit unrehearsed but the outcome was good. The second group based their micro-teaching on a scene from Matilda where Miss Trunchbull was trying to find out who had been to her house. The conventions this group used were: role on the wall, teacher in role, improvisation, thought tracking and flash forward. This group did really well and the only criticism was that their teacher in role didn’t stay in character for long enough and that they could be more authoritative when it comes to timing. There were a few instances where the group asked the class if they needed more time and it was given to us, they were told that in a classroom they should maybe stick to the time they said they would give so that the children did’t have an enormous amount of time to prepare and could enhance their improvisation skills. The last group based they micro-teaching around excerpts from the book ‘Room’ by Emma Donoghue which we read in first year. This groups approach was much different to the others as they were aiming at high school and college age students so it was more age relevant to us. They were exploring the issue of abuse and control towards women. The conventions they used included: role on the wall, thought tunnel, and two other conventions I’ve never seen before. They used a technique where we were split into small groups and given the task of creating an outline of the smallest person in the group. We had to tape together lots of pieces of A4 paper and then draw around a member of the group. After this we were to pick a word that best described how we felt about ‘old Nick’, scratch up our role on the wall sheets and throw them at the outline while shouting out the word we had chosen. I’ve never seen either of these techniques used but they were very effective and I will definitely use them in a class in the future. Some feedback of this group is that having complete silence when carrying out individual activities and moving from one activity to the next was very effective. The way in which they explored the adult themes of abuse and control was also very effective and done in a way in which it would be easier for students to understand and relate. Their teacher in role was very good indeed, he stayed in character well and had very effective answers to posed questions. The only criticism i have of their micro-teaching is that we could have done with bigger bits of paper for the outline activity, perhaps A3 or Flipchart would have been better as it would have taken less time to complete.
I would use the techniques and stories in a classroom of my own (minus the excerpts from ‘Room’), especially the techniques used by group 3 as I had never thought about using such techniques. One thing that we need to remember is that we would have to remind the children that the person doing the thought tunnel or teacher in role is in character and that what they said or did is no reflection of their personality. This would hopefully avoid the children taking the drama out to the playground and thinking that what happened in class was real life. Another thing I had never thought of doing is using a short video clip to set the scene for the drama to follow. Group 2 used a one minute long clip from Matilda and that gave us enough stimuli for a 20 minute lesson.
For dance this week we first had a lecture about the importance of creative dance in the curriculum and what benefits it has to children to partake in it. For the workshop we were supposed to be filming our halloween themed dances but it was decided that as halloween was so far past we would start with a new theme. Christmas was chosen as the new theme. In the beginning we were split into four groups as half the class were missing. Each group was given a different aspect to work on; stretches, warm-up games, 10 core skills and visual stimuli. My group was in charge of leading the stretches after the warm-up games. We worked from head to toe so we wouldn’t forget any muscle groups. For the warm-ups we played reindeer tig, christmas themed number game and Santa says. After the war-ups we did stretches and then moved onto the christmas themed core skills. We went over these for a few minutes and moved onto the visual stimulus group. This group had not understood the task and so had no images show us so instead we did it as a class. Each of the four groups was to draw two christmas images and pass their sheet to the group on their left. This group then had to come up with a dance move that represented the pictures they had. These dance moves were shown and taught to the class and a new dance routine was created. We then practised this routine and added in our original halloween dance moves. This final routine will be performed, filmed and analysed next week.
Using themes for dance is a great approach as I feel that it engages the children more, especially those who are not the greatest dancers as they are coming up with moves they can perform and feel confident doing. You can also give the children the opportunity to choose their own music and organise their own costumes if they are to perform their dance for an event.
