Ok so I think I’ll try a different approach to last week’s posts, trying to combine the session outline with the questions.

We began the class today by drawing a self portrait of ourselves because the class was really about self reflection especially in relation to teaching and learning and how this self reflecting can help us be better teachers. We then began looking at a picture story book Luke’s Way of Looking, we started by reading the first page of the book and discussing what we saw in the picture and how it was drawn. The picture lacked colour except for a shade of yellow and the picture was drawn with cross hatching. Continuing reading the book it was about a boy who during art class drew and painted things differently and his teacher was turbo angry about it, Luke never spoke back to the teacher when he got angry. After reaching this point in the story we were told that even though Luke didn’t respond in class he kept a journal and we were to write what Luke wrote in his journal that night after Mr (I forget his name) yelled at Luke for painting a blue apple. I have to scan that in but it will be here sometime today I’m hoping. Anyway after writing Luke’s journal we read some aloud and continued the story, the story continued as it had but this time when Luke painted what was outside and it wasn’t what the teacher wanted he tore up his picture and broke his brushes. After reaching this point we performed some short impro’s scenes that showed what had happened to the teacher to turn him into the rigid draconian mean teacher he was. We then under took some duo impro’s about various things, between the teacher and another member of staff, the teacher and the principle and the principle and Luke. These impro’s showed a heap of possibilities about what could have happened in the story which is not told. After these performances we finished reading the book, Luke went to a museum and found a place that looked just like he saw and then returned to school and painted a picture so ‘wow’ not even the teacher had anything to say about it.

We looked at this book in relation to Multiple Intelligences and Preferred Learning styles because it showed that students see things in different ways and this impacts how they learn. The teacher in this story only taught in one way and wanted everything the students completed presented in one way. Teachers need to reflect on their own and their students intelligences and preferred learning styles so not alienate students and to give them the best opportunities to learn. Thinking about my own multiple intelligences, on the test we got my first intelligence from people (11), logic/maths (10), body (8), space (8), word (8), music (6) and self (5). On the left/right brain test i scored the middle brain with a 12. I think it is important to know this as a teacher because a teacher will naturally prefer to work and teach in their preferred ways but as a teacher we need to be diverse so not to limit our student’s ability to learn. Understanding our own intelligences and learning styles helps us to reflect on our teaching practices to see how we teach and then alter the ways we teach so to make sure all our students have the same opportunities.

The second half of the class we looked at different ways of teaching within the domain of science and the environment. The first thing we did was look at was the changing of state between matter; so as in from solid to plasma. We did this firstly by starting at a level of water moving through the space at a reasonable pace and then changed to a solid slowing the pace right down moving into the centre of the room until a stop. After that we began to change again moving faster and faster until all areas of the room high and low were covered that of a gas. This would be a way of showing students how matter alters through the states of liquid to solid back to liquid and then gas. After this we did a task that would test how well students understood the change of states in matter. We had to create three different scenes one of an ice block in the freezer, one of an ice block on a window sill and the last an ice block in an frying pan. I really liked this idea because science is never taught in this way, it is generally just words and maybe some diagrams. We then set about in our groups discussing what other science principles could be taught through drama, Jo suggested the solar system to us and we thought that it could be done mapping out each planets rotations like a dance with music on an oval or something and the music could be used to depict the passage of time. The other ideas that came out were acting out body systems and their functions and other I forget. In these cases the intelligences being used were mainly body and to a certain degree space, the preferred learning style would have been kinaesthetic and it would have been a more right brain activity. Was just searching for the drama science week that Jo was talking about on the net but I couldn’t find anything, oh well.

After looking at teaching science through drama when then focused on the environment, we started by thinking about all types of endangered species, we jumped into groups and selected one endangered animal and showed a series of stills reflecting why the animals had become endangered. After this we got back together and Jo said that this could be accompanied with research but led us onto another task which was to make a short scene showing how in some amount of time that animal would be saved from extinction. My group’s scene involved something ridiculous about China economic problems and hippies with lots of money but if we would have had research to back us up and a bit more time I’m sure our response would have been more plausible. I think if this was run in a classroom there would need to be research involved or the students could just as easily fall into creating a magic solution and no real worth while learning would take place.

Drama is defiantly more right brain then left because it is much more creative and uses a more tactile and kinaesthetic approach to learning, this is defiantly a good thing considering that a great deal of the curriculum tends to focus on left brain style of learning. I think that teaches should defiantly use the entire range of learning styles no matter what they are teaching because this gives each student the best opportunity to learn not only in their preferred learning style but in styles they may not necessarily prefer preparing them for all sorts of experiences through out their life. The reading really highlighted this point showing that the kinaesthetic and tactile learning styles that are often left out of subjects like science and maths, but they really shouldn’t be because there is so much opportunity to use them throughout any area of the curriculum. Drama is one subject in which I would defiantly say that kinaesthetic and tactile learning styles are used more and probably preferred to be used. Because of this Drama really develops the bodily intelligence (as in from Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences) because there is so much learning through movement and use of the body. I would defiantly argue that Drama also develops Interpersonal intelligence due to the need to work in groups and with a whole host of people, space and visual intelligence because of all the work undertaken with space and being aware of the space you’re in. I would also argue to some point that Drama develops Word intelligence because of the work with text, self intelligence because of the reflection that can often take place through the use of drama and music if looking at musical theatre. I really think that drama is a great tool for learning through the kinaesthetic and tactile learning styles as well as being so diverse as to help develop a whole range of a person’s multiple intelligences.
I reckon that’s about it for now so I guess next time I’ll be posting is in about 3 weeks.