Drama Week 1

Drama Week 1

Today was the first day of class in our Drama and Dance program. To be quite honest, I do not have much experience with drama or dance, and even less with teaching these subjects in class. However, growing up I loved participating in drama, and found the exercises fun and a refreshing break in the monotonous day of lessons. I believe that the Arts are a very important part of the Ontario Curriculum. I think that subjects such as Art, Drama, and Dance help to foster creativity in students and help to encourage different ways of thinking and learning in an academic setting.


This is an excerpt taken from the Ontario Arts Curriculum:

Participation in the arts and learning about the arts can also broaden students’ horizons in various ways. Through study of the arts, students learn about some of the diverse artistic practices, both traditional and contemporary, of a variety of cultures. They learn that they are part of a living and changing culture. They also learn to appreciate the similarities and differences among the various forms of artistic expression of people around the world. The arts offer students unique opportunities to engage in imaginative and innovative thought and action and to develop the ability to communicate and represent their thoughts, feelings, and ideas in numerous ways.

The Ontario Curriculum, The Arts, Grades 1 – 8, 2009, p. 3

The Creative Process

Carrying on with the topic of the Ontario Arts Curriculum, today we covered the creative process. This is the second time I have gotten a chance to study the creative process as we also covered it in Music last year. This is the cyclical process that should be followed when creating or engaging with new material, starting with Challenging and Inspiring, finishing at Reflecting and Evaluating, with opportunities for reflection and feedback from peers and teachers throughout.

One of the activities from today which I really enjoyed and think that would work really well in the class was 'Hot Seating'. As a class we read Jeffrey and the Sloth. Hot Seating is an activity where the teacher chooses a student to be in the hot seat. For this activity they were to act in role as Jeffrey. The class came up with questions to ask Jeffrey about his feelings and emotions/attitudes in regards to what was happening in the story. 

Josh sitting in the HOTSEAT

I think that this a fun activity that can be used to incorporate some Language Arts Curriculum into the Drama Classroom. This is an activity that can be done as a whole class activity, or have small groups, each with a student in the Hot Seat. I think that this is a fun and engaging activity that students would love to participate in that actively extends their understanding of the text to the world around them. I think that this exercise would work best with a grade 5-8 class, as it requires you to really put yourself in the 'shoes' of the selected character and to empathize with them.

This cross-curricular activity hits expectations from two subjects for Grade 6: Language Arts and Drama.

Reading 1.6: extend understanding of text /ideas by connecting, comparing and contrasting the ideas in them to their own knowledge, experience, and insights, to familiar texts and to the world around them. 

Drama:

B1.3 plan and shape the direction of the drama or role play by introducing new perspectives and ideas, both in and out of role.

Dwyer's Learners Theory

The theory that we focused on today was Dwyer's Learners Theory, which states that students only remember 20% of what they hear, 30% of what they see, 50% of what they write/doodle, 70% of what they discuss, 80% of what they do/experience and 90% of what they teach to others. The relevance for this theory is that when you have students physically take part in a lesson, or have them teach something to another student, they will retain the most amount of information. This relates to drama as you have the students physically taking part in their learning, leading to better information retention, and thus more enduring understanding.

This week we focused on the exceptionality of students with Visual Impairment or Binocular Difficulties. Some common symptoms of this are when students have blurred vision or trouble seeing. These difficulties may manifest themselves in student behaviour such as slow/difficulty/aversion to reading or covering one eye to focus while reading. Some ways that you can modify for students with these exceptionalities are using larger font for handouts, checking in with students regarding stress levels, ensuring students have their glasses, and providing students with ample and clear verbal instruction. In terms of modifying Hot Seating specifically for students with visual impairment, you can put more focus on auditory queues rather than visual cues or you can provide the student with an audio book or a large print version of the story.