Wk 5: Puppetry

This week looked at puppetry and with a dramatic context to create tension and contrast. One of the activities that were experienced within this drama workshop was the Alien and Human which focuses on hands being the puppet (one student is the alien and the other is the human). This activity can be used with any object found around the classroom and puppetry is a great way to get children involved in feeding their imagination. Young children have always experienced puppetry even without prompting, through many of their toys they play with (Ewing and Simons, 2004, p. 53). Puppetry for students allows them to bring out their creative and imaginative side, which means they can express themselves behind inanimate objects without being criticised or hurt. The implications for puppetry is that students can sometimes take it too personally, that is why structuring and scaffolding any activities you do with students, can lead to a successful lesson/experience learnt.

Puppets made in wk 9 tutorial 8: Barbie and Daenerys Targaryen hanging out.

Reference

Ewing, R., and Simons, J. (2004). Beyond the Script: Take Two. Newtown, NSW: e:lit.

Wk 4: Teacher-in-Role

Within this week’s workshops we looked at they use of ‘Teacher-in-Role’ and how effective it is throughout a drama activity/lesson. Basically the teacher of the classroom takes a role in a drama activity and guides, builds tension, gives more information on the activity, and gets the students excited about it. This position would physically help the teacher to assess where his/her students are within the curriculum and also builds a positive outlook towards the students. This can be called as an invention, where Bloomfield & Childs (2000) states that “Invention in drama is practical – ‘a doing’ experience that only comes alive through the act of performance” (p. 28) .I would implement this into a teaching standpoint by allowing the students to also have a say in what might happen throughout the drama activity, where I will facilitate and guide them through certain situations within the classroom and on the playground as an example to model appropriate behaviour to other teachers and students.

References

Bloomfield, A. & Childs, J. (2000). Teaching Integrated Arts in the Primary School. London: David Fulton Publishers. 

Pic 1 http://thewiredworldofjd.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/img_1842.jpg

Wk 3: Playbuilding

This week we introduced a pretext (part of a story, story they don’t know about) about “Green Children” which builds on to a drama activity. This activity looks into playbuilding and would suit all k-6 stages and would implement it into my own teaching by actually getting the children to draw these questions out from a pretext they have not seen before? For example if a question was asked e.g. where were the Green Children’s parents? Wright (2012) believes “Visual narrative provides us with a means for making sense of the world and of experiences” (p. 18) where children can use their imagination to draw/sketch what the Green Children’s parents might have looked like. This can lead onto a physical activity where children get into groups of four and they act out what might have happened before the Green Children were found near the cave. With their visual image drawn down, they can manipulate it to suit any drama setting. 

Picture drawn in Wk. 3 Drama: Our interpretation of where the Green children ended up.

Reference

Wright, S. (2012). Children, Meaning-Making and the Arts. Frenchs Forest: Pearson Australia.

Wk 2 Drama: Programming Drama

This week we considered literacy within drama and how it impacts highly towards making drama what it is. We looked at the story book ‘Voices in the Park’ by Anthony Browne and how we molded this storybook into a drama activity. This week we concentrated on the use of ‘Conscience Alley’ in classrooms and how it can be manipulated with other storybooks or a scene that children may have experienced before e.g. ‘going to the park with a friend when you’re not meant to leave the house today’. As mentioned by Gibson and Ewing (2011) “Students are thus provided with opportunities to rehearse consequences of decisions, consider characters’ reasoning, and think about potential resolutions” (p. 56). I believe Conscience Alley in a drama setting would be useful for students who have not had many opportunities with dealing with decision making. This activity can help them to experience every aspect of decision making and will facilitate them in the later future.

This video is a creative mix of 'Voices in the Park' by Anthony Brown and uses singing and images in the picture book to tell the story of how Smudge and Charles became friends in the park through different seasons of the year.

References

Gibson, R. & Ewing, R. (2011). Transforming the Curriculum through the Arts. Claremont Street, South Yarra: Palgrave Macmillan.

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jl3_L_daF8A

Wk 1: What Good are the Arts?

Throughout this lecture we concentrated on the question ‘What Good are the Arts?’ I believe the arts can show your own individuality though expressions of the 5 strands of the Arts which are Music, Dance, Drama, Visual and Media Arts. Through professional experience, I discovered that when children do an Art form e.g. painting, they can only express themselves to whatever extent they have within the classroom, for example, a teacher saying you can only paint the picture in front of you the exact colour it should be in real life e.g. a koala being grey. Children are therefore limited to feel the colours that they enjoy painting with. As said by Anne Bloomfield (2000) “Children are recognised as creative artists in their own right... ” (p. 2) to which I believe they should be able to express their feelings through any type of art form and not be given extreme guidelines as to what they have to do to conform within society such as school.

3 of the 5 Art strands experienced in this semesters Creative Arts. Visual Arts, Drama and Media Arts.

References

Bloomfield, A. & Childs, J. (2000). Teaching Integrated Arts in the Primary School. London: David Fulton Publishers.

Pic 1 http://fc10.deviantart.com/fs27/f/2008/138/8/4/Peradventure_by_Adrift_Dreams.jpg

Pic 2

http://mvprogress.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/drama1.jpg

Pic 3

http://paulb94.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/wordle-media-arts-paul-copy2.jpg