Jess was not very well today but she picked herself up and went next to talk about the book ‘The Lost thing’ as her stimulis. She said that it would work very well with year 7 students who seem to not feel as though they belong at the beginning of the new year and the whole new school thing as well. We played a warm up game called ‘Hey Melana’ which was fun, i cant remember any of it but its like a repeat after me sort of thing that gets louder and softer as it goes.

Lucinda then presented on ‘Bullying’ she did an amzing power point presentation that was just so clear and fun looking. She wanted to show her primary school kids what a bully can look like, so she had things like ’shrek and the fairy god mother’ and the size of them and then mean girls where there was a great scene that shows a whole year level of girls who close their eyes and are asked to raise their hands if anyone has spoken about them behind their backs, all raise their hands, then again if they have spoken about anyone behind their back and again every girl in ther oom raises their hands. Its a great thing to use.

Next Jacinta did her presentation on Drug education and building up students knowledge on drugs. looked into different ways of saying no in different scenario’s like mum saying no to child, siblings saying no. We used different voices, such as angry ways to ask and angry wasy to say no, asking to borrow a bike in a winey way, asking to go out in a persuasive way. It came down to options of saying no and what sorts of pressure there is to say yes to peers. She then said there was an activity based on an advice circle were people give advice for different scenarios people could get involved in.

Suzie presented on contraception, it was really funny the way the class all of a sudden became so open about it all! She looked into going into schools as a gust teacher so that students would feel more comfortable with the topic. We did a mind map of lots of contreception types and what they were, it was really funny and i think would work really well with classes.

Nick looked at Australian history and the war. He had photos of the trenches and the men during war and showed them to us as stimulis for the topic. He looked at his lessons with the question of whether or not war was good or bad adn what sorts of things they would face at war and what the familys opinions were back at home. He had some interesting warm up activities and many good ideas but time was running out by this stage.

Zoe’s topic was ‘Youth at Risk’ she looked at how she could help the youth from the mountains and from different and trouble backgrounds. Her lessons involved teaching social skills, talked about kids on drugs and how to engage them in positive things rather than focus on the bad things in their lives. She focused in one lesson and making goals, visualising a goal and setting personal goals that can be fulfilled. She looked at a relaxation exercise that was like a medetation and told them to make a goal and then see what it would feel like if you woke up one morning and achieved your goal that day. she also taught me an interesting game called ‘Emotion Hitch-hiker’ were you have 2 passangers and a driver and there is a hitch-hiker standing on the side of the road that the three pick up. The hitch-hiker chooses and emotion and then when he/she gets into the car he/she starts the conversation with a certain emotion. The others in the car need to try and find out what emotiopn the hitch-hiker is having and try to keep the conversation going with that emotion in their voices and actions. Once the whole car has that emotion happening the driver needs to find a way to pull over and all get out of the car, and the game begins again.

I have had sucha great semester, lots of obstacles to pass but overall a really great time with the class. I learnt so many new and great things from my fellow students and lots of things that i will use in my future career. Thank-you all very much! xxx

Kathryn looked at the Stolen generation. White Australia and Aboriginal Australia. She looked into a stimulis, so bringing a bag full of stuff into the class for students to guess where they came from and what they were for. In the bag there were 2 poems, a rusted blade, some photos, black charcoal and a metal dog tag. The teacher would then come out in role telling students ‘Oh, you found my bag’ and explains what each item in the bag means to her. Then there were some task cards and in groups of four we were to re-enact certain scenes of children being taken from their homes, seperated from their siblings and stolen. We looked at Aboriginal diaries from back then and now, and the next task was that she would get students to finish some of the unfinished diary’s. Kathryn said she may even have brought in the movie ‘Rabbit Proof Fence’ later on in the unit.

In class we looked at expectations for the assignment and what we needed to include in the rationale. Very stressful times…there are so many people needing to present next week!!!

Everrything went amazingly and i was proud of what we had come up with in class in such a small amount of time. We started with getting into small groups and making shapes with bodies to create inventions eg: dishwasher, with sound, they actually did very well and the warm up was a sucess! We then seperated the class into A and B groups and got group A to begin by coming up one at a time and making a machine with their bodys and sound, they did ok, they sort of just stuck around the frriends they were comfortable with and held hands, but they did well. Once group A had finished the ‘deakin students’ were asked to get up and show an example of what a machine with many sounds and attachments would look like and then group B had their turn and did a very good job with the set task.

The next thing we did was the main activity, where we told the students that they were selected as expert science engineers and that it was up to them to design the transport of the future. This was really fun as Jo decided to take thema round the room, on a lift and into a huge coference room (all imaginary) and once they got there they sat up and listened and payed attention to the speakers that were presented to them, all four did a great job although it would have been really nice if they were all more in a character role rather than slip in and out of a character. The children payed attention and they were sent off into groups of 4 or 5 and they started drawing diagrams of their inventions. This task took a little bit of time as there were a few arguments between students as to which part of their invention would go where and do what! I was really shocked as to how well they worked, even some of the pictures that they had drawn were amazingly done…not even i could draw some of the stuff they were doing.
Next we told them that there was going to be a science fair for all of them as they had all been chosen, so they had to chose one design they had made and work out exactly what they wanted to do with that and how it was going to work with diagrams.

Each group then got up and showed the judges their work after a reasonable amount of time. They were fantastic! The children had thought about how their transport was going to work, some saying moon power, solar power…amazing things came out from their pictures and they had one person from each group explain what their transport did.

Being a judge was really fun, it made me feel like i could give constructive and possitive criticism to the children and i felt like they understood me which was for me really nice as i went in thinking that the children would be really young and non responsive. I was definitely wrong about the whole thing and i really would consider maybe even at one stage becoming a primary school teacher.

I thoroughly enjoyed being at the school and would definitely go back to do another session with the children, they were so much more responsive than i thought and the fact that i didn’t expect them to understand the lesson made it even more exciting. I now know that i can not be so judgemental when it comes to children, i should give them the benefit of the doubt and know that i will be able to do any topic within a drama class without a problem. Good stuff all!

We first looked at how the students were going to be involved in the drama…what could they be: Inventors, technicians, Salesmen, engineers and many more things. We looked into what warm-ups we could use such as playing the group game, where students get into groups of whatever number the initiator yells out and then they can continue to run, skip, hop, jump and roll around the room (whatever the instruction given is). We decided that we could do this but add on a little extra part where each group has to create a machine such as a dishwasher, washing machine or computer with their bodies. We tried out another warm-up game called ‘Museum’ where when the guard turns around the animals come alive and go back to being frozen before the guard catches them out, if the guard sees them move then the object is out but if the object gets away with it the object becomes the guard, i thought this could be fun but also a little out of control for grade 3 students. We could have done it in a toy shop etc. We looked at Robots aswell, which i thought served no purpose to be invented.

The next thing we spoke about is the students being the best in their field at something and having them be called into this conference to have to develop a mode of transport for the future. Jess then suggested a science fair which she got from the movie ‘Meet the Robinsons’ , Jo then said that was a great idea so we had planned it all pretty quickly. We were to have a machine number warm up, students would be told that they were to make future modes of transport and draw them up in groups, then they would be told they must make one design that would be entered into the science fair and a winner would be selected from the inventions they made up.

Each member in our class has a role, there is an environmental officer, an innovator, a future woman and a minister. the rest of us were to be judges giving feedback! Im sure it will go very well!

The game we played based on immigrants, it was a game based on a captain who would order the immigrants around and the last one to do the order was excluded out of the game. It was climb the crows nest, scrub the deck, the captains coming (salut the captain) , pat the parrot (who is sitting on the left shoulder). this would get students thinking in terms of boats, as many who immigrated to Australia or other countries did it via small boat.

then Jo showed everyone some photos of London and other places 19th century. Jo then took the role of a woman leaving one of the inns in the picture, we asked her many questions about what she was doing and where she was going, it ended up being that her husband had lost his job to a machine, she was asked if she had heard of Australia and she had a pamphlet but couldn’t read it (which i guess is normal for those days). then we did role plays based on the woman and her husband talking about why they should leave and why they shouldn’t. then we made a tunner of people and one at a time someone would walk through the tunnel and each side of the tunnel would have a reason for or against them leaving. At the end of the tunnel the person walking through would say they were going or they wern’t going. Then we could have done a character profile of an immigrant: Name, age, occupation, reason for leaving, family.

At one point we stood in a circle and held hands, swaying from side to side and making boat noises, this was to create a feeling of what it would be like to be on the boat.

Then we looked at the Port Official, the one letting on the immigrants looked at what he would look at. Looking at if people were sick or diseased, looking at their teeth, making sure they wont die on the long journey. Making students understand how hard it is to immigrate and what sorts of things people have to go through.

We then finished the class off by looking at making tableau’s of saying goodbye at the port, arriving in Melbourne, soundscapes on the noises of the ship, things people would say. Look at a picture of London and Melbourne and discuss the differences between the two pictures. Then we briefly spoke about what we were doing at the Primary School.

Today we started off by playing a game, this game was one that i had played before with quite a few variations. It was called ‘Zip, Zap, Boing’ and it is very funny and made me laugh very much whilst learning the ‘extras’.

The game begins with a zip being passed around the circle, you clap your hands in the direction the group is passing the zip around the circle. If you want to change directions you say zap and change the direction of the clap. If you want it to bounce back to the person who passed it to you, you can sayboing and put both your hands in the air and the clap will automatically be passed to that same person who sent it to you. This was as far as i knew the game but there is more….

Next you could add a gun, pointing your fingers ina gun shape towards any person around the circle letting them continue on with the game.

Next you could say freak out and then everyone rushes around the room freaking out ina panic and then returning to make a circle and continue on with the game.

The next one was ‘Ohhhh’, where the person holds one arm above their head in front of their face and the down in front of their body and they bring the circle together to make it small as the rest of group moves in with them making the ‘oh’ noise soft, the whole circle becomes very small and the game continues onina shoulder to shoulder circle of people who are whispering, zip etc. Then you can also make it big again by saying ‘Ohhh’ in soft then becoming loud way and everyone opens their hands up to create a big circle where the game continues.

We then could ask a question to anyone around the circle by clapping our hands in their direction.Eg: ‘What did you have for breaky’ , the person does not have to answer truthfully and can respond with ‘Green eggs and ham’.

The last one was adding in an emotion, so anyone who had the power around the circle could say ’sad’ and everyone had to continue on with the game with that emotion, and it could change all the way through the game.

You could introduce one of these to every class as a warm up activity and it would be really fun to play with students, they could even create their own add on!!

We then got into the class by talking about Boal’s theatre of the oppressed and looked into sexual harassment. We saw one group who had a classroom full of girls checking out the male teacher and asking him invalid questions that were nothing to do with the task he was setting. We watched and saw the girls asking the teacher if he worked out and if he had a girlfriend and the teacher did not respond very well as he was very soft and a little too kind to them and ended up in a bad predicament where he was left alone in the classroom with one of the female students. We then gave the player (teacher) some options asBoal did in his theatre, the audience gave feedback, so they replayed the scene and when the audience thought that the teacher could change his behaviour an audience member would yell ’stop’ and the actors would stop and take on the advice. the audience was not satisfied with the actor once more so then the audience had the option to yell ’stop’ and come and take over the teachers role, showing him the right way to do it. I thought that this was a fantastic way to work with drama and give people options.

We then moved on to literature where we looked into the fact that there was not just one form of literature but many. We then got into a line based on the first letter of our first name in alphabetical order, then our last names in alphabetical order, then middle names, which i was already out as idont have one. Then there was another line made for 3rd and 4th names!! This lead into a book about a boy with four names. He was a young boy who went to visit the old people in a home and liked one woman who had as many names as he did, he found out that she was losing her memories and so he went and asked everyone he knew what a memory was and then gathered together all of this really cute stuff to give to the elderly woman so that she could find her memories. She actually did remember many things as the things that were given to her triggered bits and pieces of her life. We looked at what else we could have done with the book to create drama: could hot seat the nursing home workers, re-create her memories, use still images, make a tableau.

We then looked at not just jumping into the text but actually making drama before reading the text and creating a world for students. We looked at a book on witches and how their evil ways can lead to bad things happening. We looked at a picture that we could re-create a scene for, all the animals, the witches etc and discussed what could be happening in the picture. Jo then left the room and re-entered the room as Bessy a kind and gentle woman who had a long story to tell about her life, being widowed, having a son who fell in love with a girl he could not be with and Bessy needed her son to help her on the farm. We then did a short role play based on this and it ends up being that the father of the girl turns everyone against Bessy as he is in a role of power and that anyone who is caught helping her will be punished but everyone is in a dilemma as Bessy is a kind and gentle healer.

Looking at the questions on the sheet that was given to us i cant say that i could answer the first question, i have not really seen any amazing drama, i dont really go to watch anyhting often enough, although i wish i did. I have watched a lot of musical theatre that has played a very big role in my life and that was what influenced me to do what i am doing with my life so i guess it had influenced me to be passionate about something!

I cant really think of any drama that is designed to influence adults but i do know that there are many childrens books out there that are very influencial. Watching the video on Boal i do beleive that that sort of video can truly influence adults into thinking deeper about situations. John O’Tool’s ‘Drama for Life’ is a fantastic way to get adults involved, i loved the way that worked for the opressed people and how they developed an understanding of what drama was through watching.

Drama is used every day to train and help adults, we use drama within work training, within CPR and First Aid training, within educational training and we use it for fun. Adults are probably very unaware of the drama that goes on in their every day lives.

I do think that most adults believe that drama is for children, that is the misconception that has always been. It is hard to get adults to understand the deeper meaning of drama, they can learn to appreciate a beautiful play or a wonderful musical but they cant seem to grasp the deeper meaning of ‘drama’. We look at John O’Tool’s drama and we can see that there is a way of getting adults more invlved.

I think that it becomes harder from this point…how do you amelioriate the factors to make drama more palatable for adult learning? They have to want to do that, you can not force someone to learn something they dont want to learn about. It is about making them aware of what drama is and how it works, how they do use drama very much in their lives and that whilst watching television and feeling captured by those characters and wishing that you too were there…that is drama!

I believe that if more work places involved role plays and more dramatic skilss within their training that adults would feel more aware of drama, teaching them about what exactly it is and how it benefits everyone in their every day lives. Even doing plays based on John O’Tools methods we would definitely get somewhere, taking real situations making them into drama and letting the audience decide how it should finish.

I think that Boals method is amazing and that i will be using this in the future for creating drama and for parents to view and get involved in, it is an intelligent way of getting people in general to understand adults.

We then moved our chairs away and sat on the floor, Jo gave us a piece of paper and texta’s and we had to draw a picture of a bully, which turned out to be quite funny as some of our drawing skills were not the best. we then ran through everyones idea of a bully, each of us explaining the qualities that a bully had, most with spiky hair and earing’s , ripped jeans and rude fingers up. This was an exercise that we would be able to do with students in a classroom so that they understand that certain ideas of what a bully stereotypically looks like could be wrong. We then discussed that it could be a pretty little girl, it could be a skinny or bigger person and really that it could be anyone who bullyie’s people around.

We then stood ina circle and one by one said something that a typical bully would say, with the option of a gesture. It was funny as some people didn’t really speak roughly but the way they said things was very sneaky and smart. We the got into pairs and did a frozen tableau of what a bully would do when bullying someone. Many stood/towered over others but some used physical violence, this was interesting to see as i would think that if students under year ten were asked to do this exercise they would all be quite physical looking images, letting them know that bullying can also be an emotional type of abuse would be very good. My partner and i decided to go with both, the hand going to grab the other and a standing over glare that could kill! We then got into groups of three or four and made scenes based on the extortion of another person, such as telling lies about someone so that others wouldn’t like them, leaving the person out by not talking to them, laughing at them and teasing them. this was a good idea as students would understand that there is a very sneaky side to bullying and it can be quite indirect and non confrontational at times. The secrets, lies and deceit behind the plan to exclude another person needs to be done quite intelligently and quietly behind the others back in order to manipulate all those around them.

We then got into groups again and did scenes based on the begginings of the bully, how the bully became the way he/she is and what triggered that side of them in their life. My group did a scene based on a father giving his daughter a doll and telling her that she was not allowed to show her mother the doll when she got home. the daughter is then taken home and the drunken/druggie mother grabs the doll off her to sell it onebay to get money for her addictions. This to us was a scene that showed neglect of the child, the child did not know any better then what her mother was teaching her and that was to steal and snatch and talk down to others. It was then sad that we made that assumption about the child, maybe the child will be very good hearted and never steal or cheat as she knows the feeling of having things taken off her, maybe she will learn from others around her, like teachers and friends that it is not the right thing to do. Other scenes included a child that thought she was amazing, she told everyone what to do and spoke down to othersbgut when she got home was ignored and pushed aside by her parents. These scenes would be great to do with students, it would help them get a picture of why certain people behave the way they do and then to realise that it is wrong and that that person does need help.

We the did a short scene about who the person getting bullyied could turn to for help, some turning to sibblings, parents, friends and teachers. Also spoke about ways that we could try and help prvent bullying, such as buddying systems, councellors, programs and awareness within schools. We then split into two big groups and had to come up with a rap about bullying, something that we could do with students to get them to express their feeling on bullying. We came up with something but at crunch time, performance was extremely horrible and we stuffed it up. The other group on the other hand was fabulous and they came up with something long and creative a great exercise that i am sure i will do with students one day.

We the walked about the room and had to do walk as a timid person, a tough person and superstar, engaging in some sort of conversation from time to time in that character. We did this and then discussed the physicalisation of what we were doing, how each shape of the body and the speeds in which we walked varied quite dramatically. We the seperated into groups and had to make a frozen tableu which i had already done a few years ago. they were ‘Louts Hang out on Local Street’ and ‘Superstar Hits Town’, we then discussed the different body shapes in each of the scenes, the ‘louts’ were slouched over and just sitting around, arms crossed and ready for a fight and the superstar was gazing towards the sky and being photographed by papparazzi who were totally in love with her, the image was very glamorous and the two were watched in a still frame and were very contrasting.

The next activity was done in pairs, i had also done this one before. The bully stands over the victim whilst he/she sits on the chair and there is a frozen image. The next thing is the bully saying…’ You know what i want, give it to me?’ whilst the victim sits on the chair. The next activity is the bully sitting on the chair and the victim approaching the bully and saying…’Excuse me, thats my chair’ and then they have a conversation based on who’s the chair is, this was interesting as it brings in a different position for the bully, he is sitting and how does he keep the power whilst being stood over? We then looked at the physicality of the bully vs the victim, the voice, the body language and the eyes.

We were then goign to continue on with something else i had already done, where one person for each group of four or five leaves the room and when they re-enter the room the group have to treat them in a certain way. So they are ignored, agknowledged, welcomed, blamed and treated like a superstar. We ran out of time at this point but i thoroughly enjoyed this session as it is something that i will deffinitely use in the near future with my students.

Looking into my Multiple Intelligence’s test i knew that i would be more of a right brain person. I am very creative and am a kinesthetic learner. We then looked at teaching science and environmental studies and looked at getting solid to plasma, we started by looking at the way a water object would move through the space and and did this until we started to turn to a solid object until we froze. We then had to create 3 different scenes. One of and ice block in a freezer, one of an ice block on a window sill and the third one in a frying pan! It was a very different way of looking at it.

We then looked at endangered species, doing still frames in groups representing an animal that had become endangered. This then led to other group work and talk about all the options that we had in order to incorporate science into drama. Drama can be used in any subject area and it lets students create and imagine and learn about certain topics in a fun way.

In the reading ‘Learning through Drama’ we look into four different types of play according to Bruce (1991): functional, constructive, games with rules, dramatic and socio-dramatic play.

Functional Play: Children explore their sensory motor activities,  repeating things and learning about their physical capabilities and their effect on the environment.

Constructive Play: Children see themselves as creators, they begin to organise their own materials and objects with the plan they are making but sometimes things are left behind.

Games with rules: Divided into two categories, table games and physical games. Both of these require the child to agree with sets of rules controlling the actions within specific limits.

Dramatic and socio-dramatic play: Demonstrates children’s growing awareness of their social surroundings and can be observed throughout their years of growth. The child acts out social interaction and experiences human relationships.

All of these sorts of play seem so clear to me as I was once a child experiencing these shifts throughout my childhood years. Playing, creating, learning new games, learning new rules. All of these are a part of growing.