Week 2: Programming and Drama

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09 July 2018

During this week, we have looked at both Dance and Drama, and their connection with curriculum, literacy and numeracy.

Dance

In dance, we have looked at a few sculptures and variety of movements. We have viewed some sculptures including:

Degas’ Ballerina 

Wicker Sculpture

Henry Moore’s Family Group

And a few others...

We then tried to recreate movement of the sculptures. We imaged they have come to life - we tried to replicate the movements they'd make if they actually come back to life.

Drama

In drama, I remembered learning about focus, mood and expression. We explored these elements

through a few activities. First, we had a warm up with mirroring movement. With this, we tried to acted out our daily activities: waking up, brushing, showering, breakfast and off to class.

For the second activity, we played bag of emotion where everyone got up and wake around the class meeting with different people and have them guessed what emotion am I wearing. We focused on mood and expression.

Dance + Curriculum + Literacy and Numeracy (Tute's notes)

In class, we've explored the correlation between dance, curriculum, literacy and numeracy.

Dance is taught as an individual art form.
It appears within other Art forms.
Dance be utilized to suit other area of learning as well. For example, HSIE or Music.

Literacy is much more than just the ability to read and write: it is also about understanding 'purposes'. As such, in dance meaning is often conveyed through movement using symbols and gestures. Therefore, dance be used to reinforce students understanding of different text types including factual and literary texts; descriptions; recounts; procedures; discussions; personal responses; narratives etc.

Space, time, relationships and structure are directly links to mathematics.

Drama + Curriculum + Numeracy

Learning in Drama involves students making, performing, analysing and responding to drama, drawing on human experience as a source of ideas. Students engage with the knowledge of drama, develop skills, techniques and processes, and use materials as they explore a range of forms, styles and contexts. - Australian Curriculum

Dramatic play allows children to experiment with purposes for literacy they've seen at home.

Dramatic play allows children to recognize that different tasks require different texts.
Dramatic play allows kids to produce a wide range of variety of texts.
Dramatic play builds comprehension by allowing children to act out familiar stories.

We explore numeracy when looking at space and shape awareness, direction, the elements of drama, sequencing and structure, size plains, movement pathways, probability, proxemics, budgeting, the elements of production, set design, given circumstances of characters, and dramatic forms.

Alternation:

Tehereh did a mirroring activity as a warm up that focuses on expressing ourselves through trying to act out a certain situation. E.g. waking in the morning or drinking coffee. I think, for a warm up activity, I would go with 'Follow The Leader' where a nominated/volunteer could do some kind of body and facial movements and everyone follow it.

Reflection:

By the end of the lesson, I have a better understanding of the importance of dance and drama in the aspect of learning. Dance and Drama not only promotes literacy and numeracy skills, it also develop (non-cognitive skills) a better study skills, social skills, strategies, teamwork, response to stress, and even goal setting.

Resources