My Pedagogy

My inquiry beliefs were put to use during my time at Highlands Elementary.  Throughout the 10 weeks I focussed on bringing theatre games and exercises into many different units and subjects, including: a Grade 3 Social Studies unit on Canada, a Grade 3 Language Arts unit on Charlotte’s Web, a Grade 4 Science unit on weather, and group scene writing and collaborative theatre performance in grade 3 and 4 Drama.

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(Grade 4’s Social Studies mini projects building inukshuks)

One of the most challenging but exciting projects I did with my grade 3’s was a Charlotte’s Web video that we screened for the whole class (the grade 4s) and sent to the parents.  The ten grade 3s got into partners and wrote short scripts, interviewing each other.  One was an interviewer, and one was a pig (Wilbur, or whatever name they chose).  They performed them on camera, and I edited it for them, adding pauses, sound effects, text, and slow-downs and speed-ups.  The children loved it, and I was so proud of them.  This further demonstrated how technology in the classroom can expand collaborative and creative ideas, and allow the students to have more hands-on and expressive freedom while still covering the required curriculum.

Below are some examples of the parts of the scenes/scripts written by groups for the drama unit.  They were put into groups (decided on by myself) mixed with grade 3s and 4s.  The students chose a theme to focus their scene around, and the theme they chose was “school.”  This seemed like an obvious theme at first, but after discovering that they could be creative with it, the groups took their “school” settings to various different places. The past, the future, space, and made up places.  I would call upon different groups to perform what they had devised so far, and give them feedback afterwards.  The feedback would become more specific (involving performance, costumes, script development) as the weeks went on, and at the very end of the 10 weeks the scenes were performed for their teacher.

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