How They Express Themselves

I’ve been working with five Grade One classes, taking a Performing Arts specialist slant on their How We Express Ourselves unit. We have not completed the unit yet (about halfway through), but I need to write about what we have achieved so far. Blown away by these students ideas!

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I’m using the same central idea that the homeroom teachers are using:

We can create, interpret, and appreciate art in many different ways.

Key concepts: 

1. Reflection (How do we know?)

2. Perspective (What are the points of view?)

3. Form (What is it like?)

Related concepts:

1. Technique (How do people create art?)

2. Interpretation (What might this artwork express?)

In previous years, I have focused on the ‘art’ of music. This year, in order to create more balance across the curriculum and because I just needed something NEW, I decided to focus on drama. I also decided before we even started the unit that I wanted to take an action-focused ‘change the world’ angle when asking the students to create a piece of drama for their summative assessment. Little kids, big ideas. Student voice is incredibly important to me, so I was extremely keen to give the students free reign over the content of their final performance. 

We started by learning about six different drama conventions/techniques:

1. mime

2. tableau

3. monologue

4. hot-seating

5. narration and

6. physical theatre.

For each of the conventions, the students were asked to first respond to a drama performance describing its characteristics and explaining what they noticed. They were then given time to ‘play’ with the techniques and were able to create short pieces of drama (that they could choose to share in class – or not). Throughout this process, we were constantly referring to the attitudes of enthusiasm and empathy.

Once the students had acquired the vocabulary and understandings about the six drama conventions, I introduced the summative assessment.

Task (in groups): Choose a message you care about. Create a drama performance to express your message.

We watched this video:

The students LOVE this guy!

Then I asked them the BIG question:

Each student wrote their individual ideas on Post-It notes. We collected all the notes together and sorted them into ideas that had similar themes. We had four or five main big ideas for each class. Students then chose which of the big ideas they cared about most… and so the groups were formed.

Each group was then asked to form their big idea into a message. An important sentence that they wanted to communicate with the world. I’ve collated the ideas from each class (1A, 1B, etc) into the Haiku Deck at the bottom of this post. Incredible HUGE ideas. Serious stuff. I love that these students are taking this task so seriously. I know I am pretty serious. I mean, I take them seriously… I believe in giving these six-and-seven-year-olds a platform to communicate messages that MATTER. While making the learning FUN, of course!

So, they have chosen their messages. They have already started to acknowledge different perspectives on the messages, with many of the groups engaging in empathy. They have also started to identify exactly what they mean by their message. The groups have started talking about why their message is important. Students are also discussing other ‘mini’ messages that go under the umbrella of the big message – what they are asking people of the world to do. LOTS of active talking happening! I just sit back and quietly observe the groups – it’s AMAZING to watch. 

The next step will be for each group to decide how they are going to present their message through the language of drama (focusing on the PYP Learner Attribute ‘Communicator‘ here!). They will be choosing to use one or two of the drama conventions that we have learned to communicate their message. I’ve told them we will be videoing these performances and sharing them with the school community, and maybe even the world.

I (seriously) can’t wait to see what they create. It’s going to be an exciting few weeks!

Grade 1 Messages – Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires;

#serious #Inquiry #drama #HWEO #PYP #grade1