Week 12 Drama 2

Drama 2: Play-building

In this workshop, we focused on scaffolding and sequencing learning experiences in drama. We began the workshop with the pretext Green Children. We did a serial of activities to comprehend the pretext including still image, group mapping, role-walking, hot-seating and ritual enactment. There was a strong continuity rbetween the role-walk activity and hot seating activity and they were the parts I felt most engaging.

As students created a map of an imaginary town where people brought the two green children to, students used their prior knowledge of community, science and economics aspects. Then in role walking, students explored deeper about their roles in particular situations as well as the connection between their roles and the green children. While communicating with other people about their roles, students could collect information from other roles to comprehend the story and their relationship with others. This links into the KLA requirement that students learning to make drama need to “take on and sustains roles in a variety of drama forms to express meaning in a wide range of imagined situations” (Board of Studies, 2006, p. 26). To further expand students understanding of a particular situation, three students were picked to sit on the hot seat in the front of the class and the rest of us questioned their characters in role. These sequenced activities encouraged students’ imagination of different situations, critical thinking and oral skills. A student-centred activity like hot-seating “changes the dynamic in the classroom because the teacher is not providing an evaluating feedback loop” (Ewing & Gibson, R., p. 56). Activities like role-walk and hot-seating are very helpful to build students’ creativity and literacy comprehension during playing and making drama.

References:

Gibson, R. & Ewing, R. (2011). Transforming the curriculum through the Arts. Palgrave Macmillan: Melbourne.

NSW Board of Studies. (2006). Creative Arts K-6 Syllabus. Sydney: BOS.