Drama Week 3

This week we started the class off with some opening warm-up activities that I thought were fun. I actually have done one of the activities with my last placement class and they really enjoyed it. The one that I did in my last placement was the Embodied Scale, where students have to arrange themselves in order of their birthday month without speaking. In my placement, we then made it more difficult by having them stand in order of their actual birthdate (day and month). The students really enjoyed the fact that they had to try and communicate with each other without actually speaking. This is an activity that I will use again in the classroom as the students have fun with it. We also took part in an activity called Atom, in which we walked along floor tiles, in a straight line, until Melissa called out a number. Whatever number she called, is the amount of people you had to find to form a group. This is a great activity for group formation, and a strategy I may use outside of just the drama/dance classroom.

The group this week did some great activities that were focused on incorporating science into drama class. The group did a number of great activities focused around the rock cycle and specifically igneous rock. They used multiple different strategies such as tableaux, flashback and voice-over narration.

The theory that we focused on today in class was Dewey's Progressive Education Theory that states that children learn best by physically 'doing', or learning empirically. He was a proponent of pragmatism, which asserts that reality must be experienced, hands on.

Here are some important aspects of Dewey's theory:

(a)  Students thrive in an environment where they are allowed to experience and interact with the curriculum. Essentially, human beings learn through a 'hands on' approach.

(b) Students should not only take part in their own learning, but conduct their own paths for acquiring and applying knowledge. 

(c) Curriculum should be interdisciplinary, connecting many subjects.

(d) Education and learning are social and interactive processes and schools are responsible for promoting the social reform needed in society.

(e) Teachers and students should learn together and the role of the teacher is that of a facilitator rather than an instructor. 

(f) Education experiences should emphasize problem solving, critical thinking, and the need to learn by doing.

The drama element that we focused on today melded well with the groups presentation, as we focused on the different elements of tableaux. I think tableaux is a great technique to use as it is very inclusive and can be modified very easily for students with exceptionalities. For instance, for a student with mobility issues, they do not have to move at all, for students in wheelchairs, they can represent the different levels etc. Students who have trouble or do not like speaking in front of the class do not have to speak. Also, with tableaux you can have other students help students with exceptionalities to get into the right position and to maintain position. 

Here are the elements of Tableaux that we focused on today:

Feature	Descriptors
Character	Who? / What?	When? / Where?	Why? / How?
Levels	High	Medium	Low
Expression	Open	Neutral	Closed
Gesture	Relaxed	Neutral	Tense
Space	Expanded	Neutral	Confined