Drama

When teaching Drama it is important to incorporate a range of elements, as they are the building blocks of students learning about Drama (Bird, Donelan, Freebody, O'Toole & Sinclair, 2012). As mentioned in the clip on Drama in the Classroom, there are many opportunities in Drama for cross curriculum learning (Teachers Media. n.d) I believe it is important to implement Drama teaching into the classroom to enhance student’s confidence, and also encourage class participation in an environment where they will not be laughed at or criticised (Teachers Media. n.d).

I am not familiar with the book called fox so I have looked at two others which are quiet popular for younger grades and a good tool for teaching Drama lessons. 

1. Where Going on a Bear Hunt (Michael Rosen) 

2. Giraffes Can’t Dance (Giles Andrea).  

Strategies:

·       Commence the lesson with identifying the rules, students need to feel safe, and be respectful. Continuously reinforce the techniques throughout the lesson (Teachers Media. n.d)

·       Show the students the front cover of the book and ask what they think the story might be about:

 

·       Whilst reading the story encourage the students to complete a freeze frame of the feelings the Giraffe shows throughout the story. The freeze frame strategy discussed in the clip will emphasize understanding of the text, and how different facial expressions can portray different feelings (Teachers Media. n.d).

·      Divide the student’s into groups and give them all an animal to act out from the story  (Bird, et al, 2012).

·      Read the story again follow with the strategy of dramatic play, where the students take on the roles of the animals (Bird, et al, 2012).

Leah

Drama as a pedagogy has huge cross curriculum potential. With Even Steven mathematics has to be more fun (Baldwin, 2011) and the Dream Cloth (foedauck, n.d.) could be used for social and personal capabilities (ACARA, 2013), especially resilience. All the activities from this week have highlighted how drama is a natural extension of play for children (Bird, Donelan, Freebody, O’Toole and Sinclair, 2012).

The Green Children (Creative Education, n.d.) demonstrated that students could use drama to interpret texts, explore different points of view and the consequences of those points of views. Students get to explore how different experiences lead to different perspectives which teaches students that there are multiple, valuable perspectives (Innes, Moss and Smigiel, 2001).

Fox by Wild and Brooks (2000) also has the potential to create multiple perspectives. Here are some of the drama strategies I would use.

·   Text predictions- Using text cover make predictions about the text.

·   Warm up- The whole class improvises being a fox, dog and magpie.

·   Improvisation- In pairs act out magpie rejecting dogs help.

·   Freeze frame- In pairs create the strange new creature reflected in the water.

·   Roll on the wall- Draw dog, magpie and fox and write character attributes.

·  Teacher role- Teacher plays fox and walks silently through the group while dog and magpie whisper their thoughts.

·  Improvisation- As pairs improvise fox tempting magpie.

·  Decision alley- Magpie walks down the middle whilst students whisper why she should stay or go.

·  Character letter- Magpie writes a letter of apology to dog (Creative Education, n.d.).

Zoe

  
                  
After re-reading our posts I realised I had not mentioned classroom culture. I remember the teacher from The Green Children (Creative Education, n.d.) saying that you did not need to be great at drama just able to do what you expected the students to do. I assume this is the same for modeling enthusiasm and participation.

Zoe

I agree Zoe, I don't think you need to be a great drama teacher to teach drama successfully as drama can take many forms. Younger children should be encouraged to explore through dramatic play to create a platform for learning drama in the future (ACADRM027; Bird, Donelan, freebody, O'Toole & Sinclair, 2012).

Leah