Peter Pan!

Now that I have been in drama for a couple of weeks now, I am beginning to feel more comfortable in the class. I still find that it is hard to get up and get moving and to find the motivation to participate. I really do love to observe more than I love to participate. This week was a particularly fun week, though! Class fell on Halloween and when I walked into the room to see many of my classmates dressed up in costume, I knew that today was going to be a fun day! Especially when I saw Peter Pan, Tinkerbell, Captain Hook and Tick-Tock - the crocodile from the movie. At that moment, I knew today was going to be great... And I wasn't wrong! Take a look below to see some of the wonderful strategies that this group presented today - I think the entire presentation was done SO wonderfully, it was magical!

STRATEGIES

                                                                                   Corridor of Voices

Line up and a character walks down the corridor while people say the inner voice. This was an amazingly well done strategy! This group had all of the students in the class create a corridor - we stood in two rows to make a hallway. Captain Hook and Peter Pan each took turns to walk down this corridor of voices, while the students all had to say something that this character may be thinking or feeling. For Captain hook, many said things like "I shouldn't have let Peter Pan get away!" or "I need to get better at this!" while, when Peter Pan walked through the corridor, students said things like "Haha! That Hook - he'll never get me!" or something like "Wow, that was a close one! I really need to be more careful".
This tool would be extremely effective during a language lesson when students are learning about Point of View, or when trying to have students empathize and learn to put themselves in another persons shoes, to know what they are feeling. I would LOVE to use this in my classroom. It could even be used during the instruction of life skills - maybe a workshop on bullying. I think that this would be done with a junior grade as the primary students may not understand how to empathize as well. I also think that it is important to ensure that this is not a PERSONAL thing, and that the students don't walk away feeling poorly about themselves. This would be a great novel study for something like The Outsiders which really focuses on teaching students about hierarchy and social construction of roles.

Draw & Pass

Helps students produce a collaborative product thus emphasizing teamwork skills. It also allows for creative individual processes to come together. For this activity, the group had us fold a paper into three sections. The task was to draw a pirate as a collaborative group, without discussing or showing the other members what exactly we were drawing. Someone would start by drawing the head, then you fold back the paper and the next person drew the torso, then you would fold the paper again and the last member would draw the legs of the pirate. It was a fun and neat way to see what we could come up with! 
This could definitely be used as an art related activity. I think that this could also be used for any age level! I think it would be difficult to do in a math lesson or a science lesson - unless you did a diagram of a human body or some sort of cell or organ (if you could find a great way to divide the sheet - however I think it would serve best as an art lesson or a language lesson - trying to draw a character from the book maybe based upon a description of the character. This is also a great task for teamwork and seeing how combining different perspectives and opinions may turn out in the end!


So many of today's strategies were really, really well laid out. I think that I would use each and every one of them in a lesson. The corridor of voices and the draw and pass strategy were both really interactive strategies that involved all classmates. It did not single anyone out, which is something I would be worried about doing in a class (especially because this is something I fear so much!) but it allows everyone to get involved in a safe place. Another extremely effective strategy, was the Guided Visualization. Which had the students close their eyes and imagine the story as the teacher read it. During this, the group played music to really get you to feel and to experience the story as if you were in it. This was incredible. I felt like I was a character in the story of Peter Pan! Being an adult and feeling so impacted by this strategy, I can only imagine how much my primary class (or junior class) would just LOVE this exercise! Especially in kindergarten at the age of make believe - these students would just love this. I cannot wait to be able to try this out in my class... Thank you to this group for their wonderful presentation today! It was truly fantastic and strengthened my enjoyment for drama even more!