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.