Well have been defiantly away for awhile but I have a renewed vision to report on some of the the stuff I will be undertaking this year.

I guess I probably should have started this post with the fact that I have now completed my under graduate degree and am now undertaking an honors year in drama. So the plan is to I guess write about the things that happening in the project and hopefully hear some feedback from any readers out there.

Some background to the project probably necessary. At the moment its not incredibly structured or even I don’t have that exact grasp on exactly what I will be researching and collecting data on specifically. At the moment I want to look at the basically cyber bullyin, cyber stalking, cyber harrashment or anything cyber related and was intending on writing a theatre in education piece about these issues. The government is pumping large amount of money into the perceived problems they see in relation to the online world while more and more people are hooking up over the net, people can make their avatar who they really want to be. None of this really answers the question about what the draw to it is nor why tech natives seem to fit so much more easily into it than non-natives? Anyway this is not really give a clear or even semi-transparent view of what I’m trying to do but the idea’s will come after the research begins which should shape the project.

So I have been looking around for some websites and all that bingo bango because we need to find some for the assignment which will be handed in. So I have been looking and not came up with too much. The other day I was thinking about the lesson plan assignment and was looking through the library and found and older edition of MASK which is a publication put out by Drama Victoria which had a drama lesson about De Bono’s thinking hats.

So this is an old draft that I haven’t touched in weeks but been searching on the internet looking at creative drama, drama for learning across the curriculum and drama in education and been finding enough stuff just shifting though it is the main dilemma. Not finding much through those searches but relatively basic lesson plans and material I have typed in process drama lesson plan and come up with a few sites that seem promising.

This site has heaps of different stuff on a whole range of topics. I think it would be useful on its own using there ideas to teach what it is they are talking about but also adapting their ideas and stealing there exercises and putting them in a different context. There’s the same scenario we did in class about changing states of matter, an exercise about the discovery of fire, an Oregon trail propaganda piece (this could be adapted to an Australian situation very easily) and so much more. Some of the exercises are very limited and probably designed just to slot into lessons/units about that topic, where as I would probably pinch the inspiration and adapt the ideas to better suit a whole lesson or unit on that topic using drama. Of course I could quite easily just use it as they have intended. Here the page it’s called Creative Drama Lesson Plans http://www.childdrama.com/lessons.html

I have found an even better site then the previous which contains a whole range of lesson plans that cover an extensive range of topics and subjects. They range from year 7 to 12 and scanning through and opening some of them up there is great material which could be used itself or adapted to better suite a different frame work. I had a look at a lesson designed around violence which uses tableau images and discussion to deal with this issue, a lesson on a poem called hostage which uses tableau images, movement and both to explore the theme of being a hostage, the list goes on with smoking, drugs and different literature. I think this is a very valuable website to draw ideas from and use directly. Some of the lessons are sort and i think they would have to be extended or changed to accommodate myself but overall its got a lot of really good stuff in there. For my own teaching I would probably look there to see if that is what I was focusing on and draw ideas from that or just adapt the ideas to suite what I’m teaching. The page is called Drama in Education, heres the site http://www.kentaylor.co.uk/die/materials/lesson.html

I was searching around and stumbled on a unit of work published by the Queensland Government about using process drama to look at the issues young people face in today’s society in which they explore issues of representation and identity. It uses drama to place students in a community where they must deal with issues from all angles parents, community member, young people etc in which they reflect and document how young people are perceived with the community. It could be used specifically to tackle an issue in ones own community. The Queensland curriculum structure is a bit hard to get my head around at first but it could easily be adapted to VELS considering the hard work is pretty much done for it. It’s designed for non-drama teachers to use and from what i can tell as an English perspective looking at issues in communities and how young people are perceived. It uses a whole range of dramatic activities and has teaching points beside them. I defiantly would like to print this off and see what I can do with it, I think it would be great to use in a unit on youth, perceptions of youth or even a study of issues (if just slightly adapted). It’s called Race around the Block it can either be found by punching that into Google or here is the URL www.qsa.qld.edu.au/yrs1to10/kla/arts/docs/modules/dr_5_ratb.pdf -  

I found this list of picture story books that are suggested to be used with process drama, it has a list of the themes of the books so it would be handy if looking at something have a look for a book and sue that as a start for the process drama.

Book Title Author Approx. Themes

Age Level

1. The Pigeon finds a hot dog Mo Williams K-2 Sharing, Social situations, anger, response to situations

2. The Goodbye Joanne Ryder K-2 Saying a goodbye (closure) to things you love

3. Toestomper and the caterpillars Sharlene Collicott K-4 Bullying (all grades)

4. Don’t Laugh at me Steve Seskin All grades Respect, diversity, friendship

Allen Shamblin

5. A Fine Fine School Sharon Creetch Love of school

6. The Stranger Christian Allsburg K-4 Seasons, inference clues

7. Water Dance Thomas Locker Water

8. Dear Wally Rudd Libba Moore Gray K-2 Closure

9. The Goodbye Walk Joanne Ryder K-2 Closure

10.Rosa N. Giovanni 3^rd gd. Civil Rights – this version needs a lot of background knowledge

11. All the Places to Love Patricia MacLachlan 3-6 Places to belong, nature, simple things, beauty

12. Alexander and the Terrible, Judith Viorst 2-3 Feelings – having a bad day

Horrible, No Good Very Bad Day

Book Title Author Approx. Themes

Age Level

13. The Patchwork Path Bettye Stroud 2-3 Underground Railroad

14. Stellaluna Janell Cannon 2-3 Acceptance/friendship

15. The Story of Ruby Bridges Robert Coles 2-6 Civil Rights, integration

16. The Whales’ Song Dyan Sheldon 2-6 Different opinions about endangered whales

17. Fly Away Home Eve Banting K-6 Homelessness

18. Perfect Pigs: An Introduction to Marc Brown K-6 Courtesy, Respect, Manners Manners Stephen Krensky

19. Mr. Peabody’s Apples Madonna K-adult Rumors, gossip, responsibility

20. Finklehopper Frog Irene Livingstone 2^nd gd. Celebrating individuality

21. The Quiltmaker’s Gift Jeff Brombeau All Service/greed

22. Wind Flyers Angela Johnson All Strength, unity

23. Follow the Drinking Gourd Jeanette Winter 3-6 Slaves/freedom

24. Tar Beach Faith Ringold 2^nd gd. How you feel about the place

25. Magical Garden of Claude Monet Laurence Anholt 1-6 Art History

26. A Story for Bear Dennis Haseley 3-4 Joy of Reading

Jim La Marche

I better reference this. Arts: drama lessons webpage, Brigham Young University, viewed from http://education.byu.edu/arts/lessonplans/drama.html, viewed on 06/06/07, last updated 2007

Ok even though I was here and posted the reflection for the class I never got around to doing the activities because assignment snow under bogey. I was also going to cheat and write up my planning notes for the lesson plan assignment but I would rather get some stuff together separate. I also forgot my book and both copies are out of the library and just looked up the book so I’ll be back to this post later.

So I’m in the library with the book and will go for the topic of the Australian government (VELS civic and citizenship):

Brain storm (no lines): House of representatives, Senate, constitution, prime minister, governor general, queen (sovereign), referendum, republic debate, government officials, two party preferred system and . I think I’ll go with the referendum debate because this has an overall theme and allows all these other things to be discussed and incorporated.

The brotherhoods: Republican ‘yes’ voters are all of those who hate the royal family, who feel Australia would be better off without a sovereign and think that Australia is troubled and needs a change.

Republicans ‘no’ voters are all those who love the royal family, who feel Australia will be better off as a sovereign nation and think that all is going well so why change it. There are certainly more examples which could be thought up for the brotherhoods example.

The reverse: The republic debate is as much about staying the same as it is about changing, is as much about a referendum as it is about government officials discussing, is as much about the royal perspective as it is of the people of Australia and is as much about Australia as it is Britain. Again I’m sure there are heaps more that could be added to the list.

The unanswered question: Why did people vote no on the republic referendum, was the queen and governor general surprised by the result, who wanted a republic who did not, why didn’t the government just make Australia a republic? Again there are so many more that could be thought up and probably better then this as well.

Time before, after and within:

The time before the referendum: government officials deciding to take the decision to a referendum, pressure groups leaning on government to change to a republic and the Queen visiting Australia.

Time within: people standing in cues waiting to vote, people filling out ballots, people reading the question and preamble, people handing out material before entering the polls, families discussing the result before they are released, watching the results on the television.

Time after: disappointed republicans and happy royalists, people continuing they lives (nothing has changed) and the queen pleased with the result.

Visual Imaging: a. Where am I: standing in line waiting for my turn to fill out the ballot, b. what do I see from below: shoes, What do I see from inside: confused faces trying to decipher the question, what do i see from the outside: a building with people lining outside of it and walking out of it.

So we will go with what do I see from the inside. What am I doing: standing at the exist next to the ballot box, What is in my mind: My feet are killing me I can’t wait for this day to be over, What am I about to say: Thank you, have a good day, To whom am I speaking: citizens who are placing their ballot in the slot and leaving, How can I take this into drama: I have no idea I’m starting to think that this subject is even too dry for

I’m not sure I have done this right; I think I’ve used multiple models to come up with similar ideas. Anyway this topic is so very dry and boring I’m really stretched for ideas on how it could be made accessible and engaging for students. The topic focus is going to be the republic referendum and as I have put together there is a few ideas that can be used here. I guess my ultimate plan would be to have the students go through a simulation/role play where they all get the chance to fill out a ballot and submit it. A couple of teacher in roles one being a republican and the other royalist. A senate role play between various senators putting their case forward for the referendum or against or for a republic or against (these would have to be researched), their could be the honourable member who has to control everything and then they would all vote like in the senate. Tableau images of the queen visiting Australia. Whole group improvisation/ gossip circles of families standing in line together waiting to vote. A small group scene about a divided family at home watching the referendum results being counted on the television.

There’s a few idea’s there and I’m sure enough it could be sued to pull together a couple of classes on the republic referendum, as dull as it more then likely would be. I’m a little confused about this model of creating process drama because I’m really unsure is it a step by step approach or si it just use whatever you can and see what you come up with altering and changing it as you go. I guess I’ll have to read their book.

Well I have defiantly left this way too long but assignment due dates always due that to me. Anyway in the last two weeks of class we had the presentations of our units of work or lessons for drama for learning across the curriculum. In week 12 we had fewer people presenting and got to go home early although week thirteen had quite a lot of people to get through and Zoe and I ended up having to rush through ours.

In week 12 there was some lessons on Caroline Chisim which was really interesting considering my knowledge on her was very limited but it is defiantly something I would like to get my hands on and have a look at to see what I could do with it. There were two different lessons planned around the stolen generation, one was based around the play ‘Stolen’ and designed for ESL students which sounded really interesting and even though I have never taught ESL I think it would be great to adapt for a regular English/Drama class looking at that play. The other persons were a more loosely based series of lessons around the stolen generation and the exercise we did used flash cards and tableau image. I think by looking at both of these together a great deal of work could be developed. I reckon I forgotten one but that is the ones I can remember.

In week 13 there was a whole range of great presentations, the two that clearly stick out in my mind is the lessons based around drug education and the sex education, I thought approaching those topics through drama would be good because I remember looking at those topics in Pd at high school and they were so dry, boring and pointless. So that’s a real good way to jazz them up. There was a group of lessons centred on the book ‘The lost thing’ which dealt with issues of self and other awareness, a great way to look at them. Although I haven’t read the book it seemed like such a good pathway to lead into this subject. Another set of the lessons was about something to do with religion and persecution which I found quite heavy going and hard to understand but i think it would have been easier if I could have looked at the lessons laid out. There was mine and I think Zoe’s was the only other one which I think was about bullying or acceptance but the thing we did involved making scenes and bringing them to life with a phrase (both on a flash card).
I thought my presentation went reasonably well, I think it’s really difficult to express and explain all you have put into the lessons in such a short time frame. I reckon I could have spoken about the intricate details of mien for ages but I guess that is the point of the exercise just to get us thinking beyond that so if we were discussing it with a group of teachers we would have to be to the point and exact with what we were saying. I’m pretty sure I covered all the material I needed to and all the main points. The rest of the class seemed to receive it well so I think it was generally a success.

Overall I think all the presentations were good, there of course was some waffling on but that was too be expected. It is really hard to take on board so much of what was talked about and so that’s why I’m hoping we can get a CD with all the lessons on them so I can have a look and use them in my own teaching.

I asked two teachers seperatly to discuss whether they believed that the devleoped section of my portfolio adequatly displayed the 7th VIT attribute ‘Graduating teachers reflect on, evaluate and improve their professional practice’. The first i discussed it with was Robyn a first year out primary teacher. Robyn saw my second draft and since discussing it with her i further changed my lay out again. In the first draft i tried to display a lesson plan with teachers and students comments alongside with some annotation to show where the attribute was being displayed. I struggled immensly with this format and decided to scrap the idea and start over. The second draft i decided to pick out speciffic areas of the VIT attribute and use teachers, students and others comments to show that i was working towards best practice of the attribute. This is the version that I showed to Robyn, Robyn said i had the right idea but due to the fact that i was trying to rpesent it on A4 sized paper it made everything to cluttered and the information hard to decipher. She said adapting the idea to be in an A3 format with the attribute in the middle and all the information surrounding that would make it less cluttered and easier to understand. She also commented that formating it in a style that went through each A3 sheet would add consistancy and further make it easier to follow. So I took Robyn’s advice and rearanged everything so that the specific area of each attribute was centered on an A3 sheet with some of my own comments written in Italics under it describing how i was working towards best practice. Around this i stuck all the comments that illustarted the points i had made in italics. I was much happier with this lay out because it definatly looked much clearer and consistant. I showed the third draft to Robyn and she said that it was definatly clear as to how and why i am working my way towards best practice. The second teacher i showed the portfolio piece was to a tertiary trade (mechanics) teacher of who teaches apprentices and secondary school VET students. His name is funnily enough also Robin. Robin had a little difficulty seeing how it all came together but after actually describing how it all worked he agreed that this piece definatly showed how I was workign towards best practice. He did comment though that high lighting certain sections would definatly make speciffic points stand out and draw peoples attention to staright away. So i guess this si what i’ll submit and see how it all goes.

On Monday we had the opportunity to go to Essex heights primary school and run the workshop we had devised in the previous classes with a group of grade three students. The workshop we developed had no changed from last week and was focused on inventions. The space we had been given to work in was not particularly very big but beggars can be choosers, so we just got in there and had a crack. I think overall the workshop went really well, the warm ups activities were received and played out really well. The first one which was getting into certain numbered of people groups and making an invention and sound was good to see how they made a washing machine or whatever and what sound they would put with it (if any). The second activity (machines) was good as well but the first group really didn’t get the idea of extending the machine by using other participant’s bodies, they also tended to have similar actions and sounds. After showing an example, the second group’s machine had more variation in their sounds and movement. Both these activities went really well and the students picked up quite easily how to they were played out.

We then started the main drama which lasted for the rest of the workshop, this involved firstly enrolling the students as experts and telling them that they were going to be playing as scientists engineers and all that jazz for the drama. The first step was for students to generate characters for themselves but this was scrapped as Jo felt it would distract and make the next process too difficult. So instead they went on a little journey to get the conference. During this journey one or maybe two students said that they weren’t really going anywhere. We discussed this after the workshop and Jo said that it was probably the student’s mechanism for showing to us that they weren’t stupid and knew that the drama was only imaginary and not just a students trying to disrupt or destroy the drama. They were brought into the conference room where the four ministers were; all of these as teacher in roles. I don’t know how successful the teacher in roles were because firstly I think that Susie broke the role when she started asking questions as bringing the relationship back from scientists/conference delegate to student/teacher because I thought that the idea of a teacher in role was to remove the previous relationship. I didn’t really have much to say because Zoe said a heap of the things that I was planning to say so I just tried to kept it brief and to the point but I’m pretty sure my message wasn’t really that clear. Anyway the student’s did take on the information and well enough to move onto the next task which I guess couldn’t really be called a failure.

So the student’s got cracking on their designs and they came up with so many good ideas, digging trams that repaired the damage after it was done, shrinking cars, teleporters, hover boat cars and flying trams and the best part i reckon was the way these vehicles were fuelled some examples were moon power, rain power and solar power. How they work I’m not sure but that wasn’t the idea of the exercise the exercise was to dream the impossible and they did that very well. After their short design period they were told of the impending science fair in which all their ideas had been picked for. They were then told they had to pick one idea and make either a model of diagram and explain to the rest of us how it worked. I was a bit disjointed that only one group choose to show (with their bodies a.k.a working model) because their presentation was fantastic. The other groups did well but I would have preferred if every group presented with a short drama/working model of their invention. I think with more time we could have got the students to do this but I guess (and I’m only guessing) that some of the students would have been extremely unwilling to perform. After they had all presented that left the conference building and we came together and talked about what we had done. This although was short lived because we had very little remaining time.

Overall the workshop was a success although if I had the chance to run it again i would want to add more drama because I felt the students could have presented something more dramatic rather then just talking over the top of each other. The workshop reminded me again of how careful as a teacher I must be not to assume student’s acquired skills or knowledge and this was especially the case walking into a grade three class which may have never done any drama in their entire schooling career. I also couldn’t help but think about Slade and Childs play and when he comments that Child can begin to perform for audiences and should not just be involved in play. The process overall I think was rewarding because it has shown me that planning for drama can be used on any topic and it just needs to be implemented to see if it works or doesn’t or what should be changed.

So on Monday we came together to further plan what we will be doing next Monday. Just to recap we are running a workshop on inventions for a class of grade 3’s at their school. Using the idea’s we had brainstormed we began to think about how we could present and impart some knowledge on these students. We started by thinking abut how we could start it, the first thing discussed was what type of experts the students could be in the drama. A big list was thought of inventors, technicians, engineers, designers, salesmen, consumers and more. I’m not really sure if we discussed the warm ups first or the suggestions for what was being invented and for what reasons was it needing to be invented. I think it was the warm ups. Jo detailed some games that involved students getting into groups and building inventions with their bodies so like cars, jets, washing machine etc. I also think machines were suggested at this point as well which is when the groups build a working machine with a sound and a noise to accompany.

When then attacked the problem of what invention we could go for and what was the reason for needing it. I believe inventing new toys came up first and Darcy threw in a suggestion for a good warm up game in a similar motif. It was called museums or something similar but we would change it to a toy shop. In the shop when closing a cleaner would be cleaning the shop but the toys were alive and had to try and touch the cleaner without her noticing. We decided this wouldn’t work that well with grade three’s because they wouldn’t grasp the idea of the acting as a specific toy within the context of the game that well. We discussed toys for a bit throwing ideas that the students were at a conference for the innovation of new toys. The idea didn’t really get far because it lacked a dramatic structure, so we moved on.

The next suggestion was robots which was ultimately not taken up for various reasons but got us more focused on the purpose of the invention and why it needed to be invented. A few suggestions were thrown out and the idea of transport was quickly taken up and expanded on easily so it was the theme we stuck with. The idea was that the student’s had been called together because they were the top of their field for engineering, design, inventing and the like to develop idea’s which may not be viable now but will be in the future for transportation, this following in the step of Leonardo Di Vinci and his design of a helicopter. Jess said something about a movie about a child inventor ‘meet the Robinsons’ I think and told us about a science fair in the movie. This got Jo onto the idea of that and soon enough those who had attended the meeting had been given a grant and they had to bring their machine to the fair and show how it worked. So we pretty much had the lay out of the lesson which was the warm ups - machines and the machine body building, students create their own role (name, occupation), conference with 4 teacher in roles (I’m playing the innovation and future guy), students to design a invention for transport that takes into account current situation of the world in groups, they are then to come back to the conference as their characters and discuss what they have designed, then they will all be awarded grants and have to attend a fair to showcase their ideas doing a little drama about it, finally we will discuss what they have learnt.

That was pretty much the lesson, except my home work is to come up with about 30 seconds of dialogue for my teacher in role which I’m still thinking about.

This post is about a week late, so I’ll see how I go with remembering everything that took place. We began the class with a discussion about the article Dramathink or how to take the source apart looking a the first model which was the mind map but we shortly shifted focus and Jo talked about how objects can be the starting and focus point for creating drama’s. The idea that came up was about convicts which I’m sure was related to the first model in the reading. We discussed what kind of objects we could use as focus items. Ideas were thrown about passports, official documents, items of clothing pictures and probably other things i can’t remember. The idea was that items such as these can be put into ‘our immigration basket’ and used in relation to immigration. Jo asked us if anyone had been to the immigration museum and the response was pretty much no all round. So she told us there was this red pleather suitcase at the museum that had someone name on it and a story. I don’t know about anyone else but at that point my brain clicked on and said of course suitcase/immigration that works. Anyway she proceeded to tell us the story of a Vietnamese immigrant who had left Vietnam during the war for Australia but she didn’t have anything except the clothes on her back and a wedding ring. She didn’t want to arrive to her new home wearing nothing so she ended up selling her wedding ring to buy a red pleather suitcase. Inside the suitcase she packed nothing but at least looked like she had things when she arrived. Later she gave the suitcase to the museum with her story.

We then spoke about how at the museum there is this section that is like a recreation of a boat from three different eras, them being the 1850s, 1950s and another one but i ant remember. There have been many immigrants in Australia’s history since European settlement. So if you were going to look at immigration a specific period would have to be looked at, we were going to look at the 1850s and Britain assisted immigrant period. Jo spoke about using warm-ups to get students thinking about a topic before they actually know they will be working on that. The warm up we undertook for immigrants had a name that I can’t recall. It involved students being ordered by a captain to do a list of different things and the last one to do it would be left out or not. The order were climb the crows-nest- which was like climbing a ladder on the spot, scrub the deck - wouldn’t believe it but acting like scrubbing the deck, the captain’s coming - salute the captain, pat the parrot - pat the parrot on the left shoulder and when calling either port, starboard or the other two directions for the boat - you must move to that assigned area. This exercise in relation to immigrants would get student’ thinking in terms of boats (especially for the 1850s) and the areas and names of a boat and also that the captain is the one in charge of a boat.

So after we enjoyed the warm up we sat back down and Jo pulled out of her basket some pictures of London from the 19th century, it was in fact a drawing by someone there at the time. So we all talked about what we could see in the picture and the main points were that it was crowded and dirty. Jo then took on a teacher in role of a woman who was leaving the one of the inns in the picture. We asked her a heap of questions and ended up finding out she was from up north near the border and came to the city because machines had put her husband out of work in the agricultural sector. Although he was finding it hard to get any work and the work she was doing was barely putting a roof over their head letting alone feeding them. We asked her if she had ever thought about leaving and in response she asked where would I go? Have you heard of Australia we asked? Yes she responded and she was giving this flyer which had details about immigrating to Australia on it; that is when we found out she couldn’t read. A great opportunity to impart some knowledge on the students because they may not have been aware that many people in the 19th century couldn’t read. Anyway after we told her what the leaflet said she went on her way but the exercise could have carried on for longer. The picture and teacher in role give a great opportunity for giving insight into the world of England in the 19th century and since there is personal interaction they may retain the information better.

We were now asked to take on roles as the woman and her husband debating over if we should go or not, this was short but again could be extended. The next exercise was a thought tunnel in which the class would be separated onto two sides and someone would walk through the tunnel. As the person walked past each person would give a reason for going or not (depending which side they were on and it was fine for things to be repeated) and at the end of the tunnel they would say that’s it I’m going or I’m not going depending on the reasons given. This exercise was really good for summarising reasons for or against anything really because it shows there are two sides to any story and in this case that immigration was a really tough choice because life was bad in England but in Australia life was unknown.

We skipped the next step which was to create roles for ourselves as students but in this section students can draw themselves and make up a name, occupation and reason for immigrating; reinforcing what they had been learning about immigration in the previous exercise and moderation may had to have been made for names or occupations which were too modern. Their characters would then be used in the next scenario. Another teacher in role was used but this time as the port official who had come to meet the people wanting to immigrate. The port official was pretty hard and mean type of character who endowed the students with a bit more of knowledge about how hard the journey was the only type of passenger they would take because diseased people would certainly make a mess. The one thing I really liked that Jo said was show me your teeth because teeth are a big indicator of health status.

So we pretty much just talked about the rest of the workshop which involved getting students to write letters home, using a captains log to make scenes about life on the ship, tableau’s of leaving the port in England, if these blanks could talk - a sound scape that captured what life on the ship sounded like and then when they finally arrived we looked at a picture of Melbourne and discussed the differences between their and London. Comparing these we discussed what had changed and the possibilities for dramas after this. The big thing here was that the artist had three aboriginals in the foreground of the picture and then we spoke about the impact of immigration on the flora, fauna and indigenous population. I did forget one little exercise we left out was standing in a circle arms around each other and swaying side to side with eyes closed and making ocean and boat sounds to give the feeling of actually being on the boat. That was good but Jo said it can and usually does get quite out of control.

The final thing we did before leaving was to discuss what we will be doing in a week at the primary school. I think I mentioned in an earlier post that the theme was inventions. Anyway we sat down and used Inventions as the middle of a mind map and began to talk about things that related to inventions adding to the map. The ideas that came up were quite vast from specific inventors to the impact of inventions. We kept the list to use this week for designing the lesson we will use next week.

The book I was working on in class (or just reading) was automaton which was about a boy whose sister was sick and had to go and work in a factory that was making dolls (more like robots) that could walk and talk. It was Thomas Edison’s factory and the book was set in the 19th century and supposedly based on a true story; maybe not the boy’s experience but the failure of the dolls to be accepted by society. In the book every character seed to be like every other character, all the bosses looked the same and the workers all looked like the boy, this seemed to point towards the workers becoming like robots because they were doing repetitive work day in day out for pittance (they were building robot/dolls but actually were making themselves robots/dolls). It also brought up issues of oppression of working class (communism), completing all the work and having no ownership over it, also that they were the ones in need of more money and help but got none because of their status. This also raises issues of child labour and social welfare; is it right to send children into the workforce to support an otherwise poverty stricken family. I could even go so far to say that the non-acceptance of the dolls in the story reflected that people were not designed to work in such conditions.
I guess the key question for me is ‘is it right to take advantage of the working class and children that have no other options?’ Now how to make the drama meet this objective?
- still images of working at the doll factory
- scene showing how the little sister became sick
- what happened to the family after the doll factory was shut down
- two different teacher in roles, one of a struggling man who needs to support hsi sick wife so his son or daughter must work as well and one of a child worker who life is so bad because he has to work.
- Movement sound piece depicting what the doll sounded like and how it moved.
- paired impro’s between the boy and his sister or the boy and his mother or the boy and the boss with his silver teeth
- actually the conversation between the big boss with silver teeth and the boy on his first day, their meeting.
- students could show scenes of the dolls non-acceptance or acceptance when they got one (playing the rich children who didn’t have to work in the factories)
- a whole group protest against the factory, maybe because of the dolls or maybe against child labour
- students could write an obituary (I know that’s a bit morbid but when death is an issue grief is an emotion that should be stirred) for the little sister who dies
- students could write a letter of complaint to Thomas Edison about the dolls
- the students could stage a debate between factory owners and workers about whether it is right or wrong to employ children.
- Documentary style or report style drama on the lives of those involved in the dolls factory.
- moving sequence with sound showing a production line at the factory, one starts then next goes in and then next until all apart of it.
The more I think about it the more and more ideas that keep coming into my mind but I’ll leave it at that before I get really carried away. I think it could be added with research or documentation about medical facts of children working in factories and built towards a morale choice for them.

It seems from the reading that when Simons conducted this drama with three different groups similar ideas came back to her through her student’s reflections. The first group of Yr10 students reflected on how much the drama made them aware of their own and others ideas. Some of the second group (pre service teacher) also reflected on how the drama made them feel about their own ideas of life, death and religion. This not being Simon’s intention for this group rather it being to focus on the actual processes of the drama and the meta-cognition associated with that. The third group of in service teachers tended to reflect on how this technique of process drama would work with their own students and ended up developing and critiquing each other’s ideas of lesson they could run. These examples highlights Simons points from the beginning of the article that as a drama teacher you begin to develop skills of the craft of drama in education in which to identify learning opportunities within drama’s, how to empower students, look for potential metaphor and guard students against potential hazards created by the drama. I think this really Simons idea of teacher as artist and development of craft knowledge makes a whole lot of sense because like an actor who is continually developing, honing and polishing her craft a teacher is doing the same. Within drama we find these are the skills and craft that depict a good teacher from a mediocre one. I identify with her description at the start pf the article that beginning teacher hide behind the security and safety of rules and lesson plans, it is one thing I identify is the need to be more flexible. It is something I am consciously working on but no it takes time and experience to develop.
Thinking about Simons article the first thing that came to mind is that it struggled to get published because it could be seen as the bear committing suicide and that the first thing that some people said about the book in class is that the bear committed suicide. Working with her Yr 10s she asked them to think about the ending in another way apart from suicide and depict it anyway they chose. This is great because after we read the book in class I interrupted that the bear didn’t kill himself but instead escaped to bigger and brighter things. I think she made the right move because their is so much more in the book rather then when life is hopeless, just quit.

I think the possibility of using drama to introduce students to the world of a text are limitless but the two that I have been thinking of are ‘To kill a mockingbird’ and ‘1984′.
To kill a mockingbird is about the ignorance of racial segregation because of fear of difference. Setting up a historical or even timeless drama about prejudice would work equally well so that students can understand what it was like to live under racial bigotry in a divided state.
A drama could involve:
- splitting the class on eye or hair colour making one group sit at the back so they are disadvantaged when a reading is done
- frozen images of what students see difference, segregation and oppression are.

1984 on the other hand could be done setting up a series of dramas in which totalitarianism as the theme.

So we finished the learning the super warm up which was great and then jumped into having a look at Boal’s theatre of the oppressed. For the people that weren’t there, a vague description was given and we off to design a realistic short scene around sexual harassment that could be played over and over. The first group’s scene was a bunch of girl’s sexually harassing a teacher and then climaxed with the one student alone in the classroom with the teacher remaining. We did the first step in Boal’s theatre of the oppressed where audience members can give the actors their suggestions, we then proceeded onto the next step where spect-actors took the place of the actors and played out the scene. The class came to the conclusion that telling them its inappropriate was the way to go and then i was told to get up and have a go and everyone shot me down and said no no no that’s wrong; you screwed it up. Which when I think of it now reminds me of an example Boal talks about in (I think) ‘100 games for actors and non-actors’ where the situation involves a woman being treated like crap by a husband. A woman in the audience gives her solution but another man but in and says no that’s wrong and then she says ‘how could you possibly know what it likes to be in that position’. Boal then uses the example to talk about the strength of gender oppression and to see it actually taking place within the theatre of the oppressed itself. WE played the other two scenes but it was really just actually being able to try the theatrical style and not the content itself which was the important part. Theatre of the oppressed can be a great tool for empowering people and working through oppression with groups of people that have suffered. The difficulty is really finding a good scene which can be performed and changed. Having done this little bit makes me even more want to have ago using the unit of work i devised on it.

After theatre of the oppressed we moved onto briefly looking at what is literacy? We said that their is not just one literacy but multiple illiteracies and these multiple illiteracies involved understanding, using and evaluating anything that could be considered a text. Now a text is not just a written piece text, text on the other hand involved a whole range of things and so illiteracies themselves were diverse. We maintained that there were oral, visual, cultural, gestureal, spatial and critical. This conversation led us onto using children’s literature as a means for creating drama.

Jo introduced us to a game that was related to the book we were about to read which was about us ordering ourselves from the beginning of our first name a-z in a line, then second name and finally third name (not surname) if we had one. The book turned out to be about a boy with four names who was naive about what memories were and was trying to find out so he could give them to his elderly friend who was loosing her own. He got many suggestions was other people and went and found these things and when he gave them to his elderly friend they inspired her to remember many things. After we read the book we discussed the different approaches we could take using this book as stimuli for creating drama. Some ideas that went forward were making still images of her memories, playing out some of her memories, hot seta people that work at the nursing home and the list can really go on. Jo then gave us a hand out that contained how a source can be used to create drama. We were then asked to grab one of the other books that she had brought in read it and start devising some for that. My group ran out of time we only were able to read the book; which was called automaton and was about dehumanisation in the industrial world.

The final section of the class we looked at another approach of drama using literature as a source. This was aimed at using novels or plays which are pretty heavy going to just jump straight in and read. The idea is to investigate the world of the book first using drama. We then looked at a lesson devised by a heap of crew. It was about witches and how through jealousy and anger can lead to terrible things. The first step was discussing what ideas came to mind when we thought about witches and we could have made a list but limited time meant moving on quickly. Then we were told we were all archaeologists and had found a poem from the 16th century, we read the poem and discussed its meaning and who had written it and for what purposes. We then got a picture of these three women hanging and another with a trial and all these evil looking critters all about and were asked to discuss what was happening in the picture. Then Jo became a teacher in role as Bessie, she was a nice women who was known as a healer because she knew a lot about natural herbs and stuff. She helped us all with our aliments (it was funny when I said I had leprosy and Jo responded by saying i know when you have leprosy parts fall off then giving me two walnuts) and then we found out that she was recently widowed and had a boy named jimmy helping her on the farm. Bessie left and we found out some more info that the lairds (mayor) daughter was in love with jimmy but her father wouldn’t allow it and Bessie needed jimmy for help on the farm. We did a short role-play between Bessie and the daughter as the daughter wanted to meet jimmy. The lesson continues to a point where the laird says that Bessie has turned his daughter against him and any man caught helping Bessie will be punished. At the end of the lesson the students are asked to stand by either Bessie or the laird and are faced with the moral dilemma of do I support the laird and not be punished or do I support this good woman and sacrifice myself. The lesson could be used before starting to read the crucible because these are the themes that are present in this book.