Learning in and through drama block IV reflections

  Intense! That's what I can say. The warm up was challenging. We took it from doing regular warm ups like stretching and breathing to intense workouts like planks and other uncomfortable possitions. I think that Kabelo is practicing scaffolding with us. We used to do just stretches and breathing excercises and games to get our bodies, but now we are slowly getting into the intense part of warming up. Kabelo says this is what they do in drama, which is very hard to excecute but easy to believe. It teaches me that if we want our learners to get to a certain level of development or to gain a certain skill, we need to slowly teach them, until they are able to do it wihtout whining. For example, in the begining or the year, we used to complain a lot about getting tired during warm ups but we quickly got used to it and started enjoying. Even with this, adaptation is what will cure us from this difficulty we are facing.   Today we continued exploring the subject of newspaper theatre...

 I think that the one word I can use to describe and explain this topic it 'art'. It is a beautiful to witness and produce, but it is also difficult to create or in this case, copy. Just like art, verbatim dialogue requires you to be creative. It is a creative process that in this case, needs you to produce exactly what you witnessed, without critisising any characters, but being able to execute an act that is clear when performed. It needs you to also think of the audience and how you can convey messages or meaning to them. It is not explicit as you do not mention the names of the characters and what the dialogue witnessed was about, the audience needs to be able to grasp these ideas from the performance. Just like instructed, I evesdropped on a conversation I heard in the school bus. It was easy to stay in character and not engage since these were strangers and I was sitting in the seat in front of them, with my headphones on. They were discussing the recent email we got from...

 This day was more than ordinary, considering that I hadn't intentionally exercised in more than three months. It felt fun and energising, but also straining on my muscles. We started with stretches, then did some activities that we are familiar with to get our bodies moving and interacting with other individuals. We did the activity where we found the people that we were born in the first month with and stood with them in groups. Then we did lines with people who drink the same amount of water as we do.  These are some of the activities that make me realise that it is important to warm up before we start our lessons. No matter how fatigued we might feel, we need to get our minds back into our bodies and in the space that we are in. This is a strategy I intend to implement in my classroom. Today we learnt about newspaper theatre. What I got from this lesson is how we can take reported or experienced information and transfer it into visual and verbal representations while adapt...