Having taken part in my first drama workshop earlier this week and having watched the recommended video from Nikki, I have been carefully considering the importance of structure in a drama lesson.
Reflecting upon the video, the lesson saw a very distinct structure. It started by setting expectations of the children throughout the lesson to ensure full participation, concentration and effort. I believe this to be beneficial as from the get-go, children know what is expected of them and what needs to be done to get the most out of the lesson. The lesson then goes on to follow a very rigid structure which includes a warm up, sound scape, body scape, performance and evaluation.
One particular section of the lesson, I particularly found interesting was giving children a still image and asking them to think about what was going on, how it made them feel etc in order to develop their analysing skills. This relates to the outcome discussing children being able express their views and ideas openly on certain areas for discussion. I then thought it would be a good idea to link these images (or stimuli) to other aspects of the curriculum being taught to help widen a child’s understanding of a topic. This idea was later discussed in the video clip. The performance element of the lesson was one in which I found to be extremely beneficial as it allows the children to learn audience skills, evaluate their learning and hear other peoples views on what they have been working on whilst giving them the chance to enhance key skills such as confidence and communication. This relates to the outcome of drama referring to a child being able to stand up in front of an audience whilst performing either a scripted or improvised piece.
Finally, the lesson featured, ended with an evaluation. This is important in order to allow children to critically analyse their own work, what they have taken part in and what they enjoyed. This allows children to develop their interpersonal skills and improve in certain areas of their drama work in the future.
Following a structure like the one displayed in the video and explored in our drama workshop, in my opinion is very pertinent in allowing the children to get the most out of their drama experience. It is a well thought out structure that I would love to use and adapt in order to deliver drama effectively to my future classes.
