Using the elements of movement to assess students

Before learning more about drama strategies, I had a conception of drama as being a difficult subject to assess students on. One of the main reasons for this is because creativity is difficult to evaluate, as the nature of being creative means thinking and acting outside of the box.

I have been fortunate to receive some tools for assessing drama education. One of them is using the Elements of Choral Work chart to evaluate how students are incorporating these into their dramatic interpretations. The Elements of Choral Work are as follows:

Duration	Slow	Medium	Fast
Pitch	High	Neutral	Low
Dynamics (volume)	Loud	Medium	Soft
Timbre	Male		Female
Ensemble	Ensemble	Pairs/small groups	Individuals

Teachers may choose to use an Embodied Scale drama strategy as a pre-assessment. They would ask the students to line up from most comfortable, to least comfortable, or most knowledgeable to least knowledgeable in relation to the topic addressed in class. 

Then a teacher could introduce the lesson, and encourage students to use whichever elements they see best fit. The effectiveness of the chosen elements, and the amount of various elements used by students could give the teacher a good overall impression about how comfortable/knowledgeable the students are about the different The Elements of Choral Work, as well as about the task in general. 

Drama + ESL + Puppets = Fun Lesson Idea

I believe that the best way to encourage students to become invested in education is to get to know them, build a relationship, and incorporate their interests into lesson planning.  

As a student who's English is a second language, I know first hand the importance of drama in language acquisition. It is not only a great way to be purposefully silly and build a relationship with students, but also a powerful learning tool. Being able to use one's body to communicate by transcending language barriers was one extremely helpful way that I was able to learn a lot of English...very fast!

This resource provides a lesson plan idea for teachers to use puppets with ESL learners. The resource outlines a powerful point, in that "[...] young children [...] rarely experience performance anxiety and any embarrassment they do have is greatly reduced by the fact that they view the puppet as a being half way between the teacher and themselves." Gibberish sentences is a supportive game to this puppet idea that could also support language acquisition for ESL students.  

Relating this idea back to Dwyer's Learning Theory, encouraging students to do or experience something is exponentially increasing the likelihood that they will remember it. This lesson plan is ideal because it ties together all of these ends and can be used to make learning a lot of fun.

Drama and Character Education

As a student, drama was never my favourite subject. In fact, the word 'drama' still creates a pretty powerful physical response for me. Sweaty palms, butterflies are some of the things that I experience when I am put on the spot and asked to act 'dramatically'.

However, as an educator, I believe it is crucial to reflect on our practice and consider how we can alter our outlook to benefit our students.

Here is some of my reflection:

-I am starting to value infusing drama because I see how it can help students step certain characteristics that they see for themselves.  For instance, I consider myself outgoing when surround by people with whom I feel comfortable. In drama class, I have found myself being increasingly comfortable with new people in small group settings.
-The seamless way of incorporating drama in across various curriculum strands is a great way for encouraging students to incorporate drama, without placing so much emphasis on being dramatic. For a student like myself, this would reduce a lot of anxiety around drama.

This reflection has made me think more about how I want to incorporate drama into my future classroom, and how to ensure that all of my students feel safe within my planning.

The following are two questions that I have been considering:
How does drama help develop students' character?
How can teachers use drama as a key pedagogy?

Drama allows students to explore multiple perspectives and situations. We experimented with this using the children's story book called "Giraffes Can't Dance".

We had used the drama strategy of voice over narration combined with movement to address interpersonal skills and encouraging students to take another perspective, and step into character's shoes. In order to make a distinction between the student who is playing the character, and the character themselves we used face masks. What a wonderful way of suing props to help students take on a different role, as well as for the audience to see a clear distinction between the student, and the dramatic role playing.

This strategy has huge potential for teaching students character development!

Learning about how we learn...

People learn in different ways. This is something most of us discover in school, particularly when confronted with a group assignment where coming to a consensus about a particular approach/presentation proves to be more difficult than anticipated. However, for most of us, learning about how we learn best takes a little while to discover...That has been the case for me at least.. 

Gardner's Multiple Intelligence Theory helps break down the different learning styles into categories dominated by a single general ability. 

The eight different intelligence's outlined by Gardner are:

• musical–rhythmic
• visual–spatial
• verbal–linguistic
• logical–mathematical
• bodily–kinesthetic
• interpersonal
• intrapersonal
• naturalistic

It is crucial for educators to discuss the various learning styles with students, and to guide students to determine which learning style the best fit into, to support student learning. 

Discussing with students that different people learn in different ways allows them to see differences among themselves and their classmates, and how when these differences come together, it can make a final product that much richer. Graybill discusses a wonderful learning activity perfect for students to learn about, and appreciate the different learning styles. 

Drama strategies and student collaboration.

A couple of drama education strategies that I have recently learned are rhythmic reading, alter ego and tableaux.
Rhythmic reading is a strategy in which music/rhythm is added to a read-aloud piece. I had learned this using boomwhackers.

The following video illustrates how rhythmic reading can be brought into the classroom to aid students in attention as well as reading fluency.

I see tremendous benefits in using this strategy with older students. Younger students may get bogged down and distracted by the music, particularly if they are building up their working memory and are concentrating on phonology.

Alter ego/voices in the head is a dramatic strategy whereby students act out both the voices in the head of a character. What an awesome chance to explore perspective taking!!

Tableaux is one of the most versatile drama strategies that I have experienced! The planning, role taking and freeze framing of an important point in a drama sequence allows students to collaborate and illustrate a specific act that they believe is important. What I like most about this strategy is that it allows students to select a scene that they believe is important to freeze and focus on, and allows all member to have a part that they can plan and collaborate in deciding on. This way, students who are shy are not put on the spot, and have an idea of what to anticipate come time to share their tableaux with peers.

Here are some examples of tableaux from our teacher education Arts class:

 

When combined, the possibilities of these strategies are endless!

Role playing lesson:

Role playing lesson:

One of the best way for students to learn is for them to do. Hands on experimentation in which students are actively taking part in learning and experiencing things has been proven to result in 80% of remembering, according to Dwyer's learning theory.

Teaching tolerance provides a very useful lesson plan for teaching gender expression and addressing bullying for K-grade 2. One wonderful aspect of this lesson plan is that it allows for modifications and differentiation. One way of differentiating this lesson for students who are hard of hearing would be to record each presentation and display it on an overhead projector or a smart board, students who are gifted could take the core learning activity from this lesson and apply it to a play, or create their own and students who have physical disabilities could do voice over narrations, or employ elements of Choral work to showcase the essential questions of this lesson.

Welcome, welcome!!!

Hello, and welcome to my Multi-modal Resource Portfolio! 

My name is Ana Vintan, and I am currently completing my teaching degree at Brock University. I am passionate about innovating teaching practices and developing students' 21 century skills. The purpose of this journal is to create a creative and practical resource that can be used within educational drama settings for myself as well as fellow educators in the primary and junior division. 
Happy reading!

While I do not have a vast background in drama, I see tremendous value in drama education! I believe it allows all students to build confidence, develop character education by being able to take on the feelings/thoughts/emotions of other and interpreting experiences in a dramatic context. I also believe drama offers students the opportunity to interact with peers and build social connections in a way that is very different from the traditional academic context.
My journey as I learn about drama strategies will be reflected within this online portal, which I will use to document my learning process. Descriptions of theories and research, sample lesson plans as well as some of my professional reflections will be discussed within this blog. I hope that reading this blog will inspire the infusion of a variety of drama education strategies that can be adapted and incorporated into any classroom.