Drama
This week was another themed input, and we used Halloween as inspiration. We were reenacting scenes from a scary story about a house where bad things kept happening. We used some of the conventions previously covered as well as new conventions. The new conventions discussed were: flashback, flashfoward, narration, slow motion and forum theatre. This was the first week that I had no nerves and felt confident about performing in front of the class. I feel that this was reflected in the performance as I was louder and more eager to volunteer to perform.
The skills developed throughout this input are as follows:
- Confidence
- Performing
- Listening
Next steps from this input are to practise acting at home to build confidence and ability. We also have a micro-teaching activity to prepare for next week.
Music
Taking care of your voice is very important, and this week we learned some techniques that we can use to prevent damaging our voices, not just when singing but when speaking to a class. We looked at warm-up videos on a resource called ChoonBaboon, the resource also has a number of singing lessons that you can use. The warm up videos are useful to use with children but also for the teacher to use so that their voice is warmed up before talking loudly at the class. The lessons come with the full song as a lesson, the song with and without backing vocals and lyric sheets. There is one called ‘The Unsinkable Ship’ which is about the Titanic. While out on placement I used the song in the class, but the children were not very interested. I think this was because it was near the end of the day, they had just done the daily mile and I suspect they were all quite tired.
The skills developed throughout this input are as follows:
- Listening
- Performing
- Warming up
Next steps from this input would be to get to know the warm up videos so I can use them continually, I should also research the affects that not warming up can have on your voice and ways to prevent damage.
The Link
The link of this weeks inputs is the importance of voice projection. In drama we discussed the impact of loud and quiet volumes when talking, using the differences for added affect. In music we discussed the importance of taking care of your voice so that when you are talking loudly you are less at risk of causing damage.
Teaching Drama
By giving a theme to your drama inputs it gives you endless possibilities of activities to do. For the theme of Halloween, there are a number of activities you could do.
- Creating the story of a house where an ‘incident’ happened. For this the children could come up with ideas of what the incident was and how it happened and what they would have done if they were in the vicinity when the incident occurred.
- In groups, the children choose a Halloween story (The nightmare before Christmas, Hocus Pocus) and reenact a scene from it using different conventions. They could also adapt the scene to how they would have reacted.
The only real barrier to teaching drama would be the individuals imagination, both the teacher and the children. Time and space may affect it as well, but usually at Holiday times (Halloween, Easter, Christmas) classes do a focus on the theme so that wouldn’t really be a problem.
Teaching Music
Teaching children to take care of their voice is important but can also be quire boring for children, especially if the only warm up techniques the teacher knows is going up and down in scales. ChoonBaboon is a great resource that has fun warm up videos that would interest the children while getting the job of warming them up done.
Barriers to teaching children music would be access to the resources of fun and interesting warm up videos. Some of ChoonBaboon’s resources can be found on YouTube, but to get full access you need to pay the subscription (roughly £25 I think).
Issues
Educators who have no interest in integrating the expressive arts into their daily teachings are a hindrance to teaching the arts. They are putting there own personal preferences about the needs of the children. “Every child and young person in Scotland is entitled to experience a broad general education” (Scottish Government, 2004, p.3). This means that all subjects have to be covered and that includes the expressive arts. The arts allow for all different types of developments and to deny children of that experience would not be good.
References
Scottish Government. (2004) Curriculum for Excellence: Experiences and Outcomes. [Online] Available: https://www.education.gov.scot/Documents/all-experiences-and-outcomes.pdf [Accessed: 15 December 2017].
