Week 3: Drama

Our last drama session examined ‘Reader’s Theatre’, and I was blessed with an opportunity over the weekend to practice this with a group of children! The story I was reading was not from a picture book, so required the children to concentrate and use their imaginations. As I read the story aloud, I was very conscious of my voice…as we learnt last week, emphasising various qualities of our voice (e.g. playing with the pace, pitch, tone, volume, accents, pauses, etc) is probably the most important thing we need to remember whilst reading aloud. Overall, the Reader’s Theatre experience with this group of children was positive; they appeared to be engaged and were actively involved in the follow-up activity. I look forward to any of the opportunities ahead where I can further practice and develop my reading skills.

The drama tutorial this week was extraordinarily interesting. Our first task involved arranging ourselves into small groups of four people, and we were provided with laminated photocopies of five different illustrated pages from Shaun Tan’s book ‘The Arrival’. We were instructed to arrange these in an order that would tell a story. Then, after a period of time, each group presented their arrangement in the form of ‘oral storytelling’. Every single group in our class had a different arrangement, which was rather fascinating! And the stories that the groups told were all captivating; isn’t it quite remarkable how creatively minded people can be! Below is the arrangement that my group proposed:

In the second half of the tutorial, we were instructed to write three words that described 1/something that is valuable, 2/something that is silly, and 3/something that is ugly. Then, in our groups, we were told to create a ‘still image’ of one of those words, but also decide upon a way of how to say that word. We chose the word ‘metamorphosis’ . Our still image involved each person taking the form of a different stage in the butterfly life cycle (egg, caterpillar, pupa, butterfly). The way that we said the word ‘metamorphosis’ aloud served as a difficult task, however! Eventually, we decided to begin the word at the whisper, and then gradually get louder (crescendo), so that it ended in a loud and almost glorious way, to depict the formation of a butterfly.

Week 3 has now also come to an end, and we do not have EDMT5530 until week 9 – a whole month and a half away! In the meantime, I will continue to work on the skills that I have learnt in both drama and art, continue my newly acquired hobby of sketching/painting, and take hold of any opportunities that may arise inside or outside the classroom where I can put what I have learnt into practice.