Tag Archive for: drama for learning

Try This – New Dramatic Inquiry resource for teachers

I’m proud and excited to tell you about a new book I’ve just finished writing with Tim Taylor. Try This … is published by Singular Publishing UK. It has fabulous illustrations by Virginia Warbrick and expert input on local history from Warren Warbrick and Virginia Warbrick: THEN – histories of Pāmutana.

Put simply, Try This … is a set of forty flexible sequences, or ‘keys’ that can be adapted for lots of different contexts. It’s a really practical handbook. For those new to Dramatic Inquiry it’s a gentle introduction. For those with more experience, it provides ways to refresh and deepen your practice.

We asked teachers from all round the world to trial the keys in Try This … See the end of this post to read some of their feedback. Colleagues in Aotearoa have found the keys especially helpful when planning to meet the requirements of the new Aotearoa New Zealand Histories curriculum.

Each key in Try This … is illustrated with two examples – one from the UK and one from Aotearoa New Zealand. You can use these as a guide and adapt to your own content. With tips on planning and emotional and cultural safety, you’ll have all you need to create hundreds of hours of quality planning using Dramatic Inquiry in your classroom.

Try This … is currently with the printers and will be available for purchase in just a few weeks’ time – watch this space! Tim and I will officially launch it during a North Island workshop tour in July (more about that in a separate post). We’re also developing a dedicated website featuring support material, videos, and a space for teachers to share planning ideas www.trythisbook.org.

Email learningwithimagination@gmail.com for a free sample key to trial in your classroom, or pre-order your copy of Try This

What teachers are saying about Try This – New Dramatic Inquiry resource for Teachers

2022 sees the first official celebration of Matariki as a public holiday. Here are two teaching resources to support you to explore the meaning of this special festival with your class.

First, a lovely playful learning adventure for younger children, created by Whakarongo Tauranga. This one is loosely based on the book Tirama Tirama Matariki. In this learning adventure, tamariki are asked to help Kiwi and friends search for Matariki, and discover the stories told about the stars. The planning supports inquiries into lots of different aspects of Matariki. Whakarongo created this for teachers in her own kura, and has generously made it available to others who may be looking for ideas. Kia ora Whakarongo! If you use or adapt this plan, please acknowledge Whakarongo and also Rebecca Larsen who wrote and illustrated the book.


Secondly, we have this resource, written by myself. It is based on the story Matariki Breakfast by Andrē Ngāpō & Rozel Pharazyn – a text from the “Ready to Read” series, which is readily available in most schools. In this plan, children step into role as Kara and her family as they prepare their special breakfast – choosing details like what’s in the pot, and what warm clothes to wear. The plan also uses simple paper cut outs and a waiata to bring a sense of magic to the retelling of a traditional story of Matariki and her children.

I wrote this plan last year, and have really enjoyed teaching it in a number of classes from year 1-6. You’ll see the planning is very detailed as it’s designed to be picked up and used by kaiako with little or no prior knowledge of DI. It also includes some information on how the planning was developed. If you use and adapt this plan, please acknowledge myself as original author and the writer and illustrator of the text.

As with all planning offered freely on this site, these resources belong to the original authors and are not to be on-sold for profit nor distributed in any other form.

This article from the UK website gives a really nice account of a teacher using drama for learning – teaching in role – the expert frame for the first time in a short ‘mini mantle’ based around the fairy tale of Little Red Riding Hood.

Could be a nice model for those wanting to “dabble”.

Sourced from www.mantleoftheexpert.com

using moe for the first time

Bolton, Changes in thinking about drama Ed

For those who enjoy a bite of theory now and again, this article is an oldie but still a goodie. Gavin Bolton (who has done more than just about anyone else to bring Dorothy Heathcote’s work into classroom practice) wrote this article in the late eighties…. I revisited it the other day and found it as vital and useful as ever (though it is disturbing to note that 30 years on the picture Bolton paints of the uninformed teacher using ‘skits’ and meaningless ‘games’ to teach drama is still one that many of us would recognise today…)

In particular, I enjoy the way Bolton offers a categorization of how drama supports learning. Check out what he has to say about the four ways children learn in drama… He suggests that children learn through

1. metaxis (a dual awareness of the real and fictional worlds)

2. aesthetic and referential attention (appreciation of drama for its own sake – and as an illustration of real world issues)

3. Subsidiary awareness / unconscious awareness (the tacit learning that happens even if teachers or learners don’t notice it happening)

4. Natural or ‘common’ understanding (the stuff we already know, which is reframed and comes to be seen in a new way)

I rather like this elegant characterisation … How does it fit with YOUR understanding of how children learn in a drama / mantle of the expert setting….?

 

I love this article from Jonathon Neelands. Written very shortly after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Neelands makes a very rational and yet passionately argued case for drama as part of a rethink of curriculum ‘basics’. Much here of direct relevance to MOTE in NZ.

I’ve just been reading some of my students’ responses to this article, and it encouraged me to share it here!

Neelands space in our hearts