This is an essay from the recent ASB credit 2 – Teaching Materials and Methods examinations. The essay received a pass of distinction in the May 2010 examinations in Wellington.
Question: To present a programme of lessons based on a theme. Showing why it is important to work within a theme when teaching students.
Answer:
When teaching speech and drama to students it is often helpful to base your teaching around a theme to help establish connections between each lesson over a set topic. Holiday programmes are a fun and effective way of introducing children into speech and drama. A recent holiday programme I taught called ‘Once Upon a Fairytale’ was of course themed around fairytales and students were invited to come to class in costumes or with stories of fairytales. In the morning I worked with children aged 5-7 years. We covered topic such as – dance drama, storytelling, puppet-making, improvisation and characterisation. In the afternoon I worked with students aged 8-13 years and covered topics such as storytelling, characterisation, improvisation, debating and impromptu speaking and puppet-making. In this essay I will discuss the junior class and the resources I used.
On Day One the topic was Dance Drama. I find younger students enjoy exploring the meaning of words by using their bodies. They learn more by exploring what words mean and how they can express it with their bodies. I used poems full of creative adjectives from a teachers resource book called ‘Perform me a Poem’ by Frances Reed. Students were asked to listen to each of the words and then move and explore the word with their body. The fairytale theme was used in the application, in the second half of class, when I played the song ‘whose afraid of the big bad wolf’ – (a song about the Three Little Pigs). Students created their own performance by developing a dance version of the story to go along with the song. Children loved dancing and performing to the music and the fairytale theme made it a lot easier because the students already knew the play.
On day two the topic was storytelling, which is a great topic for students under the age of seven because they usually have trouble structuring a simple story. We began with an overview of basic story structure – beginning, middle and end with a climax between the middle and the end. In the application during the second half of the class we reinvented the story of Cinderella. Firsty, we talked through the original story together and then we decided to change the climax to re-invent Cinderella. This was excellent as the students already know the story of Cinderella but got to apply the knowledge they had learnt by changing the climax and the ending.
On the third day we made simple sock puppets of fairytale characters. Each child made a pig and bear sock puppet and I brought along a wolf and goldilocks sock puppet. In the application during the second half of class students worked on their storytelling skills by retelling the story of The Three Little Pigs and Goldilocks and the Three Bears with their sock puppets. This was a great to build the students speaking and presenting skills by retelling a story.
On the fourth day we focused on improvisation, which was an excellent way to explore and extend the students imagination and creativity. We played charades and backwards charades with fairytale characters. We also mined simple fairytales the students all knew. All of the students knew the fairytales so it made easy for the students to work together. For the improvisations I used ideas from Mary Brooks’s resource book ‘The Drama Ideas Bank’ and adapted them for fairytales.
On the final day we covered characterisation. The fairytale theme really came in handy on this day, as all the students knew the fairytale characters. In the lesson, we looked at what we knew about the different characters then I asked students to take on the different fairytale character roles. From here we played Freeze where I asked students to freeze during their actions and questioned what they were thinking and doing. By asking and developing this type of inquiry the students were able to explore the psyche of different characters from the stories they knew. We also played The Hot Seat where characters had to answer questions in character. This invited students to respond about their character while also attempting to remain in character. Most of the ideas I got for this section from Constantin Stanislavski’s system – however this system is too complex for children aged 5-7 years so I had to adapt it for them.
By incorporating the theme ‘Once Upon a Fairytale’ into my teaching of speech and drama it made it simple for the students to adapt to tasks. Students had a clear understanding of each of the fairytales, which made it simple to apply the techniques I was teaching to them – such as storytelling or improvisation. A theme helps students become motivated or excited about tasks and learning. Additionally, it is a fun way to plan lessons. For the older students I would look at fairytales on a more critical level. During holiday programmes you only have a short amount of time with the students that is why it is handy to have a theme/stories the students already know. Then you can spend more time on teaching and less time on reading the play/story.
Examiners Comments:
This was an excellent answer. You showed that you have a lot of experience in working to a theme, and you incorporated a lot of good practical ideas in order to explore the work your students presented. I would imagine they came away very enthused about the time they spent with you. Using the particular theme of fairy tales was a good idea because, as you observed, your students were familiar with them and at ease therefore in extending their responses to them.