In today’s lecture, we discussed the importance of drama in schools. A key point in the lecture was that drama helps to build the confidence of the teacher and the learners. As I have previously mentioned, this is one of the four capacities of the curriculum and so it is vital that children do become confident individuals (Scottish Executive, 2004). We also discussed that drama allows escapism, pupils can escape problems they may be having and step into someone else’s shoes, imagining what they may be feeling. In addition to this, pupils could channel their emotions and thoughts through the role they are playing in a drama, this is an important aspect of the expressive arts benchmarks as the Experiences and Outcomes state: “Inspired by a range of stimuli, I can express and communicate my ideas, thoughts and feelings through drama” (2017). A further main idea from the lecture was that drama as well as the other performing arts promote and measure emotional growth, where the curriculum does not. It was discussed that the curriculum often places focus on growth in the likes of literacy and numeracy rather than emotional growth. However, performing arts allow emotional development. Cybele Raver (2003) emphasises that emotional development matters just as much as academic preparedness as emotionally well-adjusted children have a better chance of success in the early years of school.
In our drama input we had our microteaching task. As I mentioned in last week’s blog I was incredibly nervous for this task however it went much better than I thought it would. We used the story “3 little pigs” as it was a story we knew most people would be familiar with. We began with summarising the story before going on to our first convention, teacher in role. I lead this convention and was surprised by my own confidence when doing so despite my inhibitions. We then used a further three conventions: flashback, hot seat and thought tunnel. The participation from the class was greater than we had expected and so this helped settle our nerves. Overall, this task went very well and we received positive feedback from the class. This task has helped me reflect on how I might teach drama in the future and having had some experience in teaching drama I am now looking forward to teaching the subject, something I never thought I would say a matter of weeks ago!
After lunch, in our music input, we had a very unique learning experience. The Pupils of the Greenmill Primary School String Orchestra were teaching us how to play their instruments. In pairs, we sat with one pupils who taught us how to play their instrument, I was learning cello. Firstly, we were shown how to hold the instrument before learning the correct way to hold the bow. To help us do so we played a variety of games such as heads, shoulders, knees and toes as well as balancing a hula hoop crisp on top of the bow whilst maintaining the correct bow hold – I found this rather difficult. We then moved on to learning some notes. We began with the notes D and A playing tunes with these notes before learning the ‘Cheeky Monkey’ song using the notes D, F, F# and G. This was difficult as it involved placing our fingers in the correct position as well as the bow.
Overall, this was an incredibly interactive day. Both classes helped me to improve my confidence when performing the arts as it was made clear that teachers have the ability to teach the arts if they take advantage of the resources available to them. This resultantly has changed my view on teaching the arts in the future as I also realised through the workshops that the arts can change pupils lives for the better.
Reference List
Cybele Raver, C (2003) Young Children’s Emotional Development and School Readiness [Online] Available: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/C_Raver/publication/242095521_Young_Children’s_Emotional_Development_and_School_Readiness/links/54183f160cf203f155ada1d5/Young-Childrens-Emotional-Development-and-School-Readiness.pdf [Accessed 7 November 2017].
Scottish Executive (2004) A Curriculum for Excellence: The Curriculum Review Group. [Online] Available: http://www.gov.scot/Resource/Doc/26800/0023690.pdf [Accessed 7 November 2017].
Scottish Government (2017). Curriculum for Excellence: Expressive Arts. [Online]. Accessible: https://www.education.gov.scot/Documents/expressive-arts-eo. [Accessed: 7 November 2017].
