Drama: Readers’ theatre

Readers’ theatre is a way of working collaboratively in order to interpret a story and present that interpretation to an audience. It includes more than reading, more than talking but brings together multiple modes in the dramatic form of group story telling (Ewing & Simons, 2004, p.83). In Readers’ theatre, with a script developed from a very familiar story students can focus on their voice, limited gestures and audience rather than other characters (Ewing as cited in Gibson& Ewing, 2011).

Today we did Readers theatre with the script of Mark and the wild things. We split our group into teams with 2 people playing Mark, the remaining team playing the rest of the voices in the script. We had to use our voices and body to portray the essence of the characters. Our tutor encouraged us to use our body language as well as voices to engage the audience with the characters we were playing.

 

                                                               

Mark and the Wild Things

 

(The two marks are sitting in the middle , the two people playing Marks’s mother are flanking the Marks’s on both sides, the rest are the wild things.)

Ideas for teaching

Reader’s theatre gives students a chance to read aloud for a purpose. It combines reading practice and performing. By using Readers theatre students can gain confidence in reading as it helps them to practice their reading skills in meaningful context (Ewing & Simons, 2004,p.83). With Readers’ theatre students infuse expression, fluency and comprehension to their reading and this helps them get more involved in the reading process.

References

Ewing. & Simons, J.(2004). Beyond the Script-drama in the class room. PETA:Newtown,Australia.
Gibson, R., & Ewing, R. (2011). Transforming the curriculum through the arts. Palgrave MacMillan: Melbourne

Visual Arts: Working with Clay

 

Noisy fun-Clay creations

 

In the afternoon workshop we explored the medium of clay which was ‘noisy but fun’. I was really stressed today and working with clay allowed me to concentrate on the moment and let go of my worries for a while. It was my first time working with clay and I was surprised at how much strength it took to pound the clay to squeeze out the air bubbles. Then I spread it out with a roller to the height of a finger as per the instructions. After tracing the design (of a heart shaped frame) out on the clay with a sharp tool, I cut out the unwanted parts of clay from the design. I thought of making a lotus flower initially but dropped the idea for fear of lack of time. We had to cover the 4 stages, slab (Pounding clay into a sheet having a height of a finger), incising (cutting out pieces of clay to make (in our case) a frame) , coiling and scoring(attaching a piece of clay to another) in transforming a lump of clay to a work of art. After making it and scratching my initials on to its back I left it on a rack to air dry along with those made by my mates (see above).

Once dry they are fired in kilns and later on painted with bright and colourful acrylic paints appealing to the young children.

In the lecture today Robyn, discussed the various forms for expressing Visual Arts, Drawings(includes collage-called drawing with scissors, painting, sculpture, printing, photography, fibre crafts(sewing, weaving, paper crafts(as paper is considered a fibre),ceramics, digital electronic media. She also discussed the subject matter for visual arts like people, living things, objects, spaces and places and events.

References

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

 

Drama: Sculpting the voices in the park

 

Today in the drama workshop we explored the literary text “The voices in the park” by Anthony Browne.  We explored the voices of the characters Mother, Charles, Smudge and Smudge’s Father and their personalities through the text and the illustrations in the book. Using drama as a learning tool we tried to decode the characters, their personalities and perspectives.

Sculptures of the overbearing mother

Adjectives wall for the character of the mother

Some adjectives used to describe the mother

scary, narrow minded, embarrassing, pompous, cold, posh, stiff, prejudiced, stern, snobby, controlling

Questions that can be explored with students

• What kind of situation could the mother have grown up in to make her so?
• What are the repercussions of the mother's attitude on her son Charles?

 

 

                                           Expressions for the suppressed boy on the wall

Examples of expressions used to describe the boy

As timid as a mouse, a timid lion, as trapped as a lion in the cage, as stunted as a sprouted seedling under a tree, a bird with its wings clipped

Ideas for Teaching

Sculpting- using bodies to create an image. Working on still images can help students to convert their thoughts or ideas or analytical situations into a tangible form that can be open for discussion. It has the added advantage that it can be remade if required (Ewing &Simons, 2004).

The above portrayed activities (sculpting, role on the wall etc.) are excellent ways to explore the characters in a literary text and decode their personalities to gain an insight into the narrative. These activities can be used to explore the concept of social status, relationships, vocabulary, expressive phrases etc. Teachers can utilise the above tools in the development of the characters (by exploring body language, facial expressions, and gestures), their interactions and their relationships in the narrative text writing. Properly utilised, students with this activity can learn to add depth and voice to their characters. Sculpting can be used to mould characters and if a variety of sculptures are included, some students acting as curators from museums can try to select the best sculpted characters- which can lead to further discussion of the desired traits that prompted the choice. It can be a stimulus for writing a persuasive letter to the curators on why they should select a particular statue (qualities).

References

Browne, A. (1999). Voices in the park. Corgi Childrens: London.
Ewing,R. & Simons, J.(2004). Beyond the Script-drama in the class room.PETA:Newtown,Australia.
 

Visual Arts: Analysing children’s drawings

 

Stages in art development

In the Visual Arts lecture today, we discussed the various stages in art development i.e., Manipulation or Scribble stage, Symbolism stage and Realism stage.

1) Manipulation or Scribble stage (usual age 18 months-3 yrs)- starts to make marks. May remain longer  at this stage due to lack of fine motor skills, lack of opportunity or practice)
2) Symbolism (from 3 yrs up to7/8yrs)-tries to draw representation of the world around and of themselves. Eg. Just head of a tadpole before it develops legs, smiling sun, Hansel and Gretel House.
3) Realism (usually starts from 10 yrs)-wants the drawing to look real. Accepts inputs from teacher to develop skills in drawing.

Ideas for engaging students in drawing.

Before getting the students to draw, engage their senses through touch, photographs, direct experiences like drawing animals at the zoo etc.  Students should be asked to draw things they find engaging or are relevant in some way to them (Eg. Buzz light year). Get them to notice details of the objects they are supposed to draw like matching colours.

Wilson’s Graphic principles

Today I was introduced to the Wilson’s Graphic principles with which a drawing can be analysed (Why young children’s drawing look the way they do?). The seven principles we looked into were

1) Simplicity principle-  (draws the easiest way they can)
2) Perpendicular Principle- (shows a birds’ eye view of something, but with interpretation of things that can’t be explained by physics e.g. A tennis court surrounded by trees that seem to be slanting by showing an inclination of 45 degrees from the floor)
3) Territorial Imperative Principle- (each item in the drawing stands on its own and has a specific area)
4) Fill the format principle-(draws extra things to fill in the space in a page, eg adding more fingers in a hand)
5) Conservation and Multiple Application Principle-(Reuse things in a drawing at every opportunity like same type of flowers on both sides of a person)
6) Draw everything principle- (tries to draw both the inside and outside of things like transport.)
7) Plastic principle-(tries to exaggerate important features through colour, size etc. eg. Head lice drawn in big size)

 

 

Principles in action

 

children’s work with the name of the principles

 

References

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

Visual Arts: Montage and Portrait

 

Name Montage

In the Visual Arts workshop today, we had to show our name montage to Robyn.  I got to see some of the work done by the other students and it was interesting to see the personal information revealed through the work. It was like showing a cross section of yourself on a paper. Some of them needed explanations, some of them did not. I thought some of them were exceptionally outstanding. One thing every montage had in common was that each of these works was extremely meaningful to the person who created it.  To produce my montage I had to evaluate myself to find out what mattered to me and what I wanted to reveal and then find a way to convey my ideas.

My name montage

While developing my montage, I found it initially frustrating to come up with ideas and material to portray my ideas. Even though I am in no way satisfied with the end product, I grudgingly admit to enjoying the process. My only complaint is that I would have liked some more peace and lack of pressure while indulging in my artistic self.

S-Star sign-Capricorn/goat/

O- Origin/Background-Aum-India-yoga-wisdom

N- Needs- Nature/Books/Asian food/ movies

A- aversions-hurtful behaviour

T-Temptations (junk food)

A-Things that I admire- art and architecture


Portrait

 

My attempt at portrait drawing

Portrait-Steps

In today’s class I had to draw a portrait of the person sitting opposite to me. Robyn led us through the basic steps in creating a portrait as follows.

1) Draw an oval (egg) that fills most of the paper.
2) Divide the oval in half by drawing a line horizontal (to correctly fix the position of eyes; I didn’t know that eyes were positioned almost in the middle of the face, the other half is taken up by eyelids, eyebrows, forehead and hair) (then quarter the face by drawing a vertical line in the middle of the oval- this is a personal preference).
3) Divide the lower half, further into another half and then once more to fix the length of nose and position of the lips respectively.
4) Divide the first line into five parts to find the position of eyes.
5)  Modify the outline of the face to resemble that of your model for the portrait.

The end result of this session was definitely a human face, but it had little resemblance to my sitting model. Next time I draw a portrait I would definitely like to work from a photo rather than a moving object. The drawing teacher in our school never taught us how to draw a portrait and this was an enlightening experience.

 

Sample self portraits from a Kindergarten class.

The following are some samples of what kindergarten can achieve in terms of drawing self portraits guided through the aforementioned steps (gathered during my professional experience)

 

Ideas for teaching

The name montage/portrait can be used as a fun way to get to know your students as well as a way to engage them in a creative self evaluation process.

Drama: Reading a pretext

Children who take part in drama lessons have been known to show highly developed social skills (Gibson & Ewing, 2011, p.8). Exploratory play in their early lives allows students to improve their self confidence in exploring other art forms (Gibson & Ewing, 2011, p.10).

Pretext

A pretext can be in the form of a written text, oral stories, maps, diagrams, pictures, television news clips, sections from a news paper, pieces of music, three dimensional objects etc and will provide ample opportunity to explore an imaginary world filled with characters, contexts and situations (Ewing &Simons, 2004, p.64).

Today’s drama class started with a warm up activity that makes you leave the logical thoughts behind and free up the imaginative process before starting the reading of pretext. We got to see the concept of improvisation, offer, block and acceptance of gift in practice and explore it in a collaborative setting. We had to team up with another person to enact the concept of ‘offering’ gifts and respond with an ‘acceptance’ of the gift. We explored three ways of doing this using oral English, gibberish and mime. First we had to say to a partner, “Hello! I have a present for you” with accompanying actions and the recipient of the offer went like “Thank you for the .......”, which also was complimented with accompanying actions. We had to fill in the blank space with the name of whatever we thought was being offered and the entire thing had to be done pleasantly. The same action was repeated, second time using gibberish and exaggerated actions and expressions and the third time with mime. I found the mime easier to do than the gibberish (Although a colleague suggested doing the gibberish using one sound- a concept I found really  useful to increase my comfort level with gibberish). Even though our tutor Victoria said that there were no right or wrong answers, during the verbal transactions I was afraid of coming out with something idiotic, which is pretty much what I feel with almost all of my interactions in the drama transactions. But at the same time it is nice doing something way out of my comfort level.

Reading a pretext-  Green children.

 

We had to read a fragment of the pretext 'The Green Children' and answer the following questions (Pretext-ignites imagination-give us possibilities to play with)

What do you know from reading it?
What questions are beginning to form?

In small groups, we had to write a list of questions we would like to ask, that arose from the discussion with a partner

 

A group list of questions

How did you get here? Do you know how to get back? Where have you come from? What colour are the village people? Where does the cave lead to? How do the normal people make a living? Have the village people come into contact with green children before? Do any of the village people live near the mountains?

Mapping of ‘Pearl Bay’

Based on the information gathered (from reading and imagination) we had to design a country town in which the green children were found and we came up with a small fishing town of 800 people called “Pearl Bay” and created the map of the town. By mapping the geographical and economic aspects of the town, the participants gain in depth understanding of the community and its members, building belief and perspective about the setting and characters.

Creating a frozen moment (Still image)

Think of a person from the village; try to think of the way he/she would react to the discovery of green children. We came up with a witch in the cave who was trying to get to the children who had escaped from the cave. They were discovered by a romantic couple on the weekend. Paticipants can be tapped in to reveal their thoughts.  Students can come up with a caption for the news paper,(Eg. “Evil witch ruins the romantic weekend”. It runs on like this…”.Chad and Mary smith were exploring the …..”. Think about the levels, positioning of people in the tableau etc.

Role walks of villagers

Plot the different kind of people that could live in a village (shop keepers, police, teacher, tourists, grave digger, medicine people, postman, gossipers etc.)

Walk around and gossip with the people you meet. While walking around we imagine ourselves to be a member or visitor of the town and rationalise our presence and relationship with the town and its people to build up our characters. During this exercise we had to understand and build up the stories of our characters with various partners by exchanging gossip about the people we had met, their activities and happenings regarding the green children, thus adding on to our knowledge of the dynamics about the occupants of the town. By doing these we are making sure that students are able to picture the village clearly in their mind within the drama event frameset they are given.

Hot seat

Students in the hot seat are invited to answer the questions from the audience (both the audience and the students in the hot seat are answering questions in their respective roles. For eg, one person in the hot seat was a police chief from the village, another was a grave digger named Karl). This exercise builds the authenticity of the roles and stories within the dramatic context (who, when, where, what).By stepping into a role or ideas you can start to see things from another’s perspective which is one of the central aspects of drama( Gibson & Ewing, 2011, p. 52).

Still image

We also had to pose ourselves in relation to the death of the green skinned boy in a manner that revealed our feeling for the event. It was interesting to see that most of the town people who expressed regret or sympathy with the death of the green child were children or people new to the town. The majority of the old occupants of the town mostly rejected the presence of the green children and few were even openly antagonistic. This activity is a great way to get the students to explore their own perceptions and perspectives. It was interesting to see the stories and perspectives revealed by the characters of the town which made you dig deeper into your own perceptions.

Ideas for teaching children

Choose a picture book, provide a gap in the story to play with imagination. Using the activities detailed above students can be guided to explore the setting, characters etc. This can lead to Literacy activities like writing articles, stories etc.

Drama devices-Still images and tapping in- can give opportunities for the children to play around, indulge in curiosity again exploring thought processes, perceptions and perspectives.
Explore relationships (Couple at home, outside)-body language, leadership etc.

References

Ewing, R. & Simons, J.(2004). Beyond the Script-drama in the class room.PETA:Newtown,Australia.
Gibson, R., & Ewing, R. (2011). Transforming the curriculum through the arts. Palgrave MacMillan: Melbourne

 

Visual Arts : Artistic Expressions

My thoughts on Arts ……..(in my first poetic expression ever)
 

 

It abides in the world around,

Where ever beauty and imagination abound.

It is revealed in a palette of colours, shapes and sound,

Through movements, scents and flavours that confound.

It tempts you with the gentle curves of a smile or the sculptural silhouette of the trees

It soothes you with a symphony of rains or a lullaby of tapping seas

It beguile you with the treasures it conceal

And capture your senses with its appeal.

It opens up the windows of our creative minds,

Letting in splendour and joy to our lives,

You get to see the world through someone else’s eyes,

You travel in another’s footsteps for a few miles,

It breezes through the barriers of language and culture

Oh! Yes.. Arts.., the hope of a better future.

 

In the visual arts workshop today, we played a ‘Picture Word’ game in which we were asked to expand the letters of alphabet to describe the desirable attributes of an art teacher that we could think of. Then we had to express these attributes with drawings. Remaining students had to guess the attributes using the clues given in the pictures. For Example, one of the attributes that start with letter ‘G’ was ‘gifted’. To illustrate the idea a picture of a wrapped present and a teddy bear was drawn. So the students guessed ‘Gift’ + ‘Ted’ as ‘gifted’.

 

Drawing of the word ‘Gifted’

Ideas for teaching

·       Get students to write poems or find creative expressions for topics chosen as a way of portraying  

      their thoughts and ideas.

·       Picture word game-This can be taken further to get the students to expand their vocabulary using the alphabets in their own names to describe their personal attributes. Or else we can get the class to expand the alphabets in the name of a particular student and make a poem with the list of attributes developed.

·       Another creative path  through which we explored the name or ideas was to develop a montage using the alphabets

 For Example,

S- Star sign-Capricorn/goat/dragon/need things to make sense, simple explanations
 

O- Origin/Background-Aum-India-yoga-wisdom

N- Natural- interests-reading/architecture/gardens/organic culture/ Organic/Sustainable

 

A-Dislikes/aversions

T-Temptations

A-Things that are admired

Any of these ideas can be adopted and adapted as required to enhance engagement in a classroom.

I was very apprehensive about this workshop because of my lack of familiarity with the creative expression. But to my surprise it was fun and I was engaged throughout the hour. Time flew. But no one wanted the session to end, which is what a teacher hopes for in a teaching session. As argued by Gibson and Ewing (2011,p.4), arts definitely has the potential to spark the creativity  in a learning process and increase our capacity to make meaning in various ways which enables a deeper understanding of the world.

References

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