I just wanted to share this fantastic response from Tammy, a teacher in New Zealand after she watched my recent ‘Drama To Inspire’ webinar! I discussed five incredibly simple methods for drama teaching (you can watch the webinar recording below). We also cover all these drama strategies – and a lot more – in our online course The Inspiring Drama Teacher!
TAMMY BEFORE:
I watched the video of your webinar last night and took inspiration.
I just want to say thank you – I have planned what I think will be a GREAT series of Drama lessons for my class of 8 and 9 year olds using Hot-spotting, Imaginarium, and Storytelling Whoosh, as demonstrated on the video, to work alongside my social studies unit on early NZ gold-miners.
I have original photos to use for hot spot and imaginarium, and a story to read for whoosh.
I’m so excited for tomorrow’s lesson, and have arranged to do the some lessons with my next door neighbour teacher in exchange for her doing something else with my class.
TAMMY AFTER:
I’ve just concluded the first lesson with my class and it went even better than I had imagined. We’re only 5 weeks into the school year here in NZ, so still building class trust and relationships. They took to the Hotspotting, Imaginarium and Whoosh SO well. Everyone joined in. The questions they asked me about my hotspot character (a 19th Century miner’s child) were thoughtful and insightful. Several children then volunteered to be in the hot seat, and did a great job answering many questions, I think it has really helped them understand something about the lives of the people we are studying in our Social Studies Unit on Early Gold-miners in New Zealand.
The techniques Who am I?, Hotspot, Imaginarium and Whoosh work so well in that order, each scaffolding the next with deeper understanding of the characters, and making it easy for the children to participate in increasingly ‘risky’ activities, from pair talking, to whole class talking, to static image, to dynamic action.
