I arrived  a little late this morning.  For some reason I had thought 1030 not 1000am was our starting time.  Don’t know what this was a result of. When I realized it was actually 1000am start,  it was already 945am.  I dropped everything a booked it out the door.  Thankfully traffic wasn’t too bad and the fact that I don’t have too far to travel.

Now on to Drama class.  Phil had mentioned earlier in the course that we would be covering the Holocaust.  I really wondered how we would be covering such a topic in Drama.

I really like what Phil mentioned at the start of class about the warm-ups he’s been supplying us with: Remember to  “adapt the warm-ups , don’t just adopt them”.  I think this is a very important point to make.  I believe that this also hold true for everything we do or take part in.  Personally I like “adapting” other people’s great ideas which fits well with the saying “you’re  not supposed to reinvent the wheel”.  In a way I think we owe it to our “colleagues” to adapt the ideas they have shared, or at the least give them credit for their work if we didn’t need to adapt the idea.  Sometimes though I think it may be easier to at least once, try the idea with not alterations.  Seeing as in class it has never been one of us introducing warm-ups, it will be when we are in front of our first students.  I think as we get more comfortable with Drama and using others ideas and see the responses from students, that we can then start to adapt more creatively.

Today’s Line up:

-Warm-ups

-Handout:  Holocaust Drama

-Story Drama: Rose Blance:  Expanding on the idea of a Tableau, we looked at the book called Rose Blance.  Phil had each page printed out onto overhead projector sheets.  See there is still reason to keep OHP’s around.  I found another reason the other day in Art class too.  A higher level Art class used OHP’s to create detailed silhouettes of themselves that were life size.  Anyways enough about that.  As we continued through the story on the OHP Phil would have us stop and would guide our own thoughts of what was happening.  He would draw our attention to the lady standing with the child, he drew our attention to the three men on the stairs looking down and over everything.  I don’t think I’ve ever really consciously taken the time to “smell the roses” as some would say.   We did this routine a few times with a couple different pictures from the story.  We then created Tableaus of the picture we were looking at.  We then invited one person be Rose Blance and act out her finding the concentration camp and the questions she asked of the children behind the barbed wire.

I REALLY enjoyed this activity structure.  I can see many cross curricular uses, from Literacy to Dance to Art to Social Studies.  I will definitely remember to use this structure throughout my teaching career.

For today’s warm-up:

-Mill by numbers 1,2,3:  This game is all about awareness.  We were all to Mill about the room until we hear “freeze”.  When Phil says “ Mill by numbers 1”, this indicates that only one person in the class is to continue moving, and once this once person decides to stop, another 1 person is to continue until they stop, so on and so forth.  Should we hear “mill by numbers 2” this simply implies, that of the 30 frozen classmates that 2 are to continue moving, following the same idea as for 1.  This holds true for 3 as well.  Remember no talking.  I liked this game, it really did force us to get a good angle on the room so as to see people move.

-Circle sit with standing partner; nod and go:  Half the class forms a circle with their chairs.  The other half of the class stands behind one of the chairs.  The goal is to communicate using only eye contact.  Once the people sitting in the chairs make eye contact with someone else sitting across from them they initiate a chair switch.  The “guards”, the people standing behind the chairs, are to tap the shoulders of the person in the chair as soon as they start to move, halting them from moving from their chair.  If the person in the chair escapes without being caught they can legally change seats.  This game starts off slow, and as others start to get it more join in.  I find this happens a lot with these games.  There are always the few that want to see it demonstrated first and then decide to join  in ( I can say I am like this myself ), and then there are the few that always will get up and demonstrate in front of the class.