Week 1- Drama for learning across the curriculum response
The major differences between the two lessons were evident in the choices of drama strategies and conventions used by the teachers. The lesson were developed in accordance with their choices and the success that follows with the two different choices is quite obvious.
What was very apparent to me was the beneefits of using ‘Teacher in Role’ to assists with keeping students on task, classroom managability and focus. It was obvious in Chris Johson’s lesson that the students worked with more efficiency, order and with more respect of the task. I belive that the use of teacher in role establishes a safe working enviroment that places the students and teacher on an equal playing field, this provides the student with a degree of responsibility which I believe brings rise to ownership and respect of work. It was shown through Derek’s lesson that guiding the lesson, or interfearing with the excercise from outside the created working enviroment can be difficult, his levels of control were diminished through his decision to take a non-active observer role.
Derek’s lesson failed to keep students on task due to a combination of poor explanation of task and excercises designed to expand understandings. The theme/issue of the lesson - pollution, did not appear apparent to his students. I think this is because the introduction to the theme/lesson did not connect to the students personally resulting in them not finding the following exercises important. The drama excercises were purely imaginitve based, which further removes the relevance of the issue awy from the lives of the students and the lesson lacked reflection time so they had no opportunity to make any connections between the work and the importance of the issue to their lives. Johnsons lesson had students researching the issue and actively solving problems and making decisions. This also assisted with the establishment of a safe working enviroment as the parameters of the work are set and as a result the students made deeper levels of understanding. The importance of placing work within a relevant context for students and to build the excercises with the purpose of expanding their understandings is of obvious importance to students learning. comparing the two lessons.
FOCUS AREASÂ
Knowledge based - Pollution - Focused area
Skill based - group/individual work, self reflection, co-operation skills, listening skills, speaking/listening skills, negotiating skills. - Focus areas-group/individual work.
Cognitive development - enviromental/social awareness, moral problem solving, critical thinking, debating skills.          Focus area- Enviromental awareness.
Incidental - awareness of self/kinaesthetic spatial awareness, negotiation, transfer learning skills.
Imaginitive play
From my experience imaginitive play works best when a safe working enviroment is established. It is essential to have a purpose for the work and multiple opportunities to clarify and refine the understandings being learnt, in a sense creating an open forum where all participants have control and can guide and shape the work. Johnson’s lessons does this well through his building of activity tasks to further understandings and the inclusion of reflection time. One problem for teachers working with imaginitive play may be time managemnt, is was shown through Johnson’s lesson that clear guidelines assist with time management, as it provides confines for the students to work withinand limits the time spent thinking up ideas and not actually working and experiencing the activities. I believe that it is essential to give students guidelines and then freedom to explore their own ideas within them when working with imaginitive play.
ELEMENTS OF SUCCESSFUL GROUP WORK IN DRAMA
-A collaborative and relaxed classroom enviroment
-Encouraging student co-operation in group work
-Mixing up groups to include a variety of different learners and abilities
- Engaging students with problem solving task
-Clear instructions of task - Feedback