Today Rachel and I facilitated a drama workshop with a combined Bluegum and Rm 2 group - seated on the floor in Bluegum. I was a little nervous. We had done the preparation and the plan. Bring in goat, meet the children, play his song, sing along, pass out goat coats and beards, pass out bells. Sing the song again. Sing the song again. Do a hand and foot warm up - try and get the children moving like goat....
Well it mostly worked...It was great to see some of the children really enjoying acting out being goat. Some children were enthusiastic in making the noises and knew all the words to goat's song. All children seemed to respond well to the music and being able to use the bells. It was challenging to work with such a big group. Just seeing all the children and staff seated in a semi-circle felt like we needed to summon performance energy. This was somewhat at odds with the discussion Rachel and I had in the car about needing to have the confidence to allow the children to be in control of their own experience.
Second session was drama with Mrs Jone's class. It was great having a smaller group to work with.I was still nervous. I think some of the angst for me has been working out what to do when I can't rely on words to be the key to the imagining/somatisation. This is such a strong association for me when working with drama. "Imagine you are in a deep dark forest walking softly on cushiony moss..etc. etc."- Not that we can't work into that - but we need to find a different way in. A light bulb went off - when Deanne talked about the importance of modelling. That we need to fully model what we are asking the children to do. I suppose when we are actually performing this is what we do - but still it was an insight that struck me more fully in the context of trying to facilitate a drama lesson. Later in the afternoon we facilitated a goat "make and do"session - where we made the goat masks that Francis had developed and prepped earlier. It was really cool to see the children enjoying making choices about the color of the wool and horns and playing with the box of wools and horns and forelock fur. It was also gratifying to revisit "being goat"- building on what we had done in the first session and using the masks that the children had made. I could really see the development from one session to another and how they built on each other. It made me really happy to see Lucas and Aiden and David moving around like goat with their masks held in front of them. Lucas in particular was enjoying wearing his mask and looking at himself in the mirror. We managed to get photos of all the children wearing their masks.
Well it mostly worked...It was great to see some of the children really enjoying acting out being goat. Some children were enthusiastic in making the noises and knew all the words to goat's song. All children seemed to respond well to the music and being able to use the bells. It was challenging to work with such a big group. Just seeing all the children and staff seated in a semi-circle felt like we needed to summon performance energy. This was somewhat at odds with the discussion Rachel and I had in the car about needing to have the confidence to allow the children to be in control of their own experience.
Second session was drama with Mrs Jone's class. It was great having a smaller group to work with.I was still nervous. I think some of the angst for me has been working out what to do when I can't rely on words to be the key to the imagining/somatisation. This is such a strong association for me when working with drama. "Imagine you are in a deep dark forest walking softly on cushiony moss..etc. etc."- Not that we can't work into that - but we need to find a different way in. A light bulb went off - when Deanne talked about the importance of modelling. That we need to fully model what we are asking the children to do. I suppose when we are actually performing this is what we do - but still it was an insight that struck me more fully in the context of trying to facilitate a drama lesson. Later in the afternoon we facilitated a goat "make and do"session - where we made the goat masks that Francis had developed and prepped earlier. It was really cool to see the children enjoying making choices about the color of the wool and horns and playing with the box of wools and horns and forelock fur. It was also gratifying to revisit "being goat"- building on what we had done in the first session and using the masks that the children had made. I could really see the development from one session to another and how they built on each other. It made me really happy to see Lucas and Aiden and David moving around like goat with their masks held in front of them. Lucas in particular was enjoying wearing his mask and looking at himself in the mirror. We managed to get photos of all the children wearing their masks.
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