Week 1 - Drama

It was great to be getting stuck into drama early on in the semester. I have been interested in exploring drama ever since first semester where we looked at the technique of ‘conscience alley’ being used in English as a tool for further exploring character in text. One thing that really resonated with me in the lecture was just how great an opportunity drama provides in teaching kids how to look at things from alternative perspectives. I am starting to realise that teaching is so much more than just communicating academic content to our students. Of paramount importance is the elaboration of our student’s morals and character and I think that drama will offer a very rich vehicle for children to analyse situations from different points of views. If we can get our students to empathise with the situation of characters by ‘walking in their shoes’ through the use of process drama, then we will be going a long way towards moulding socially aware and thoughtful young people.

In the lecture we looked at a piece of text called ‘The Green Children’ and were asked to formulate questions to bring to the drama workshop. Some of the questions I came up with were:

‘Why are the children green?’
‘What do they eat?’
‘Why do they have to fit in with the majority?’
‘What was the green boy pining for?’

As a result of these questions, we were asked to further challenge the perspectives and assumptions we had formed as a result of the text. For example, were the ‘green children’ actually children? Could they have been small adults or maybe even aliens instead? I am starting to appreciate the opportunity that drama provides for exploring a multitude of different roles and perspectives. As I am learning, drama is always about assuming a role.

We proceeded to engage in a number of drama activities revolving around the text, such as still image/freeze frame of the moment of discovery of the green children, creating an aerial map of the town the green children were discovered in and tapping in which requires each student to assume a freeze frame of a character in the scenario and when they are tapped in they have to come to life and improvise some dialogue.

I had a great time in drama and am starting to see how drama can be a brilliant tool that we can incorporate into other KLAs especially english.

Week 1 - Visual Arts

Week one of creative arts and i have to admit i have really been looking forward to starting this unit. Some of my fondest and most vivid memories of primary school all revolve around art. I was lucky enough to have a primary school teacher who focused heavily on art and what i loved about the subject in primary school was that it never felt laborious. I always saw it as something that was a lot of fun compared to other subjects like maths. On reflection, i think part of the attraction was that there was never a precise answer with art. There was never a right or wrong. However you decided to express yourself was ok. I feel like that realisation fostered a feeling of safety and i can imagine that art can be utilised to encourage those students who may be less confident in other KLAs.

We started our art lecture with Robyn asking the question what is art?

That is a tricky question to give a clear answer to. Art encompasses such a broad spectrum of human expression that giving a specific definition can prove to be a difficult task. We were asked to partner up with the person sitting next to us and come up with a creative way of expressing our answer. Me and my partner (Ross) decided that we could write a poem, and more specifically a Haiku.
This is what we came up with:

To express ones self
By any means possible
Is the heart of art

Ross was kind enough to head to the front of the lecture hall and read it out to everyone and was met with a warm round of applause. There were some other great examples including a very clever mimed drama piece exploring the development of art through history.

The biggest revelation i had in today's lecture came towards the end of the lecture when Robyn was talking about an illustration from the book 'The Little Prince'. In the book the child draws a picture of a boa constrictor digesting an elephant but the image isn't apparent to the teacher, so the child has to draw what is going on inside the boa constrictor's stomach. The child is dismayed that she had to explain her drawing to her teacher. It suddenly hit me that as a child it must be tiring to always have to give explanations of their art to adults. I hope that when i become a teacher i give my students the space to use their imagination and not be quizzed on it when they do. I will endeavour to appreciate their art and accept it at face value and not expect them to conform to a more adult understanding of art.

In the art workshop we participated in a great game that I will look to employ in the future. We were split into teams and given a piece of paper with a letter of the alphabet in the corner. We had to draw a picture or a couple of pictures that when combined described a characteristic of a good art teacher. We then had to guess as many characteristics of a good art teacher as possible. I had to draw a characteristic starting with the letter B. I decided I would combine the letter ‘B’ with a picture of an old man with wrinkles to define the characteristic ‘Bold’. I really thought that this was a great game as it got us thinking about characteristics that make a good art teacher and also encouraged team co-operation and participation.