MAKING LEARNING VISIBLE IN THE DRAMA CLASSROOM

USING ART & DESIGN TOOLS OF REFLECTION

Version 1/July-Oct’12

A DRAMA INSTRUCTORS’ HOW-TO GUIDE

towards using art and design toolsto enhance drama-based learningin the classroom

reflection

observation

voice

expression

breath

THIS GUIDE IS BUILT FOR YOU

AND YOUR DRAMA CLASSROOM TO

c) Devise your own lesson plans using these tools and apply them in your own classrooms

a) Understand the importance of Making Drama Learning Visiblein the drama classroom

b) Know how to make drama learning visible using specific tools from the field of art and from the field of design

what this guide explains/one

Why should I make spontaneous learning visible?

Is my class going to become an artclass with drawing and painting?

How can I make sense of art& design being an actor-teacher?

Glossary of Terms Used in this How-To Guide

DIE: Drama-in-Education

Tune in: A warm up activity conducted at the beginning of the drama session to increase focus in the classroom and loosen stiff bodies.

Engagement: The main activity planned for the drama session. This activity contains the aims and objectives of the lesson and hopes to fulfill them.

Freeze: A code word for students to stop moving/assume stationary postures of statue.

Freeze Frame: A code word for a scene in which all the actors assume positions of statue in their assigned posture and act as per the Director’s next instructions.

Improvisation: Reacting spontaneously to an instructor’s directionsand building connections, dialogues, situations andcharacters on the spot. Scenes built in this way arecalled ‘Improvisational Scenes’.

ContentsWhat this Guide Contains

MLV: What Does It Mean? Why is it Needed in a Drama Classroom?

MLV The Processfor Drama:

Step One: Defining Defining for and After Lesson Plan Two: Planning, Questioning, Re-Structuring Examples of Tools to be used

Three:Building Connections through Reflection

Four: Re-Applying Three Important Classroom Tools Looking Back at Reflection

MAKING LEARNING VISIBLE

What Does It Mean?Project Zero defines Making learning Visible as a process of creat-ing and sustaining powerful cultures of learning in and across classrooms and schools that nurture and make visible individual and group learning.

Learning in groups develops critical human capacities for participating in a democratic society-the ability to share our views and listen to those of others, to en-tertain multiple per-spectives, to seek connections, to change our ideas, and to negotiate conflict.

MLV addresses three aspects of learning and teaching:• How observation and documentation can shape, extend, and make visible children's and adults' individual and group learning.• What teachers and students can do to support the creation of learning groups in the classroom• How teachers, students, and others are creators as well as transmitters of culture and knowledge.

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MAKING LEARNING VISIBLE

Why is it needed in a drama classroom?

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MAKING LEARNING VISIBLE

Why is it needed in a drama classroom?

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Drama as a process of learning provides an immersion experience by creating a rich sensory environment for the child. It does this through the use of objects, sound, movement, images and role in order to build an imaginary fictional world.Within this fictional world students:

a) Inquire into the rea-sons for and the con-sequences of human behavior as a way of understanding their own and others’ lives.

b) Receive holistic ex-periences that allow them to link their prior knowledge and experience with dif-ferent roles and per-spectives, which chal-lenge them to think and act differently.

The learning that happens through a drama process often tends to be intangible. Drama encourages students to:

1)Be CreativeEncouraging creative, out-of-the- box think-ing through finding

multiple solutions, valuing imaginative thought and unex-pected outcomes

2)Value risk-taking

3)Value personal responsibility of situations and their consequences.

MAKING LEARNING VISIBLE

Why is it needed in a drama classroom?

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Since these learning outcomes are fairly intangible in nature, there is a need to make these visible to both the student and the teacher. Through this, you can assess how much of the sensory process of drama is seeping through the student. This in turn, will help you structure your lesson plan or your next class better, simply because you have been able to un-derstand what learning has happened

So,as an instructor, using the following art and design tools outlined in this guide youwill be able to:

a) Run the process ofdocumenting parallelywith the processof creating content through drama without losing infor-mation through verbal translation.

b) Provoke the classto ask meaningfulquestions aboutthe activities they have

been through.

c) This questioningwill lead to theformation of strongerconnections betweenactivities and out-comes in the students’ minds.

d) These connectionsgive you the opportu-nity to develop lessonplans with dramaactivities that empha-size these connec-tions,leading to extensivelearning.

MAKING LEARNING VISIBLE

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Our Definition for Drama

Making learning Visible in drama-in-educa-tion is a process of creating and sustaining powerful cultures of learning in classrooms that nurture and make visible individual and group learning. This visibility of learning is achieved for the student and the instructor through a specific set of art and design tools that connect to the overall objectives of the drama-based learn-ing process, thereby strengthening this culture of learning.These art and design tools are a set of activities and questions that are based on the process of REFLECTION. This process holds Reflection at the crux of its structure.

The Process

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Step One: Defining

Define for Your Lesson Plan1) Define a Context, a Subject and a Time span

What is the activity about?How much time will it take?

2) Define Objectives of your Drama-Based ActivityWhat does it want to achieve? A better sense of understand-ing the body? A certain word?

As a drama-based instructor, this is the part of the lesson plan that comes most naturally to you from the actors’ rehearsal process that includes body, breath, voice, improvisa-tion and other basic acting techniques. You have been using these as your main methodsof ‘engagement’ in the lesson plan already.

Define for DuringYour Lesson PlanFrom these objectivesyou have just defined,work out how manystudents will be involved in yourdrama activity.

Divide that number by half.

Now appoint one halfof the group to bethe ‘Do-er’ group.

This group is respon-sible for the actions,the movement, theperformance of theactivity.

The other half is the‘Reflector’ group.

Appoint this group to be responsible for tasks likeobservation and documentationof all the importantevents that happenduring the drama activity.

If your activity is scene improvisation,and two charactersget into a majorconflict, the Reflector groupis supposed tomake a note of this.

Ask them to notethemes and specificinstances.

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Step One: Defining

Define for Your Lesson Plan1) Define a Context, a Subject and a Time span

What is the activity about?How much time will it take?

2) Define Objectives of your Drama-Based ActivityWhat does it want to achieve? A better sense of understand-ing the body? A certain word?

As a drama-based instructor, this is the part of the lesson plan that comes most naturally to you from the actors’ rehearsal process that includes body, breath, voice, improvisa-tion and other basic acting techniques. You have been using these as your main methodsof ‘engagement’ in the lesson plan already.

Define for DuringYour Lesson PlanFrom these objectivesyou have just defined,work out how manystudents will be involved in yourdrama activity.

Divide that number by half.

Now appoint one halfof the group to bethe ‘Do-er’ group.

This group is respon-sible for the actions,the movement, theperformance of theactivity.

The other half is the‘Reflector’ group.

Appoint this group to be responsible for tasks likeobservation and documentationof all the importantevents that happenduring the drama activity.

If your activity is scene improvisation,and two charactersget into a majorconflict, the Reflector groupis supposed tomake a note of this.

Ask them to notethemes and specificinstances.

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Step Two: Planning, Questioning Re-Structuring

Here are some choices to make while planning these tools.

How can I use reflective processes that enhance the visibilty of the learning that happened last class?

a) Is it through drawing and visual mapping of the out-comes of the activity?b) Is it through talking, sharing and observing each others’ work and making con-nections based on group re-flection?

How can I plan my next session based on theObservations from the last session?

How can I use the questions that came up to provoke further questioing?

How can I use more art & design tools and structure my drama activity around them?

c) Is it through using technological tools like video-based documentation that records the drama-based activity and then shows the learning by watching and critiquing in a group?

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Step Two: Planning, Questioning Re-Structuring

The Empathy Map to map out the behaviors, words,thoughts and emotions that came up in an improvisation

Appointing one person with one question to generate reflection points parallel with the activity.

Displaying the questions, the maps and the results of groupmapping for group sharing and discussion

Step Two: Planning, Questioning Re-StructuringVarious art and design tools of individual and group-reflection

VISUAL ART/DRAWING BASED

Asking students to recall one major learning from a specific drama activity and illustrate it

GROUP SHARING/GROUP REFLECTION

(Reflectors and Do-ersinterchange roles)

MAKING SENSE OFDISPLAY

Categorising the outcomesof the reflection activitiesin a way that uses thequestions asked and generates themes

OBJECT MAKING/DESIGN BASED

Asking students to connect the drama learn-ing from an activity on using body parts with making an object that fits into these parts.

PERFORMING THE OBJECTWITH THE THEME OFANY ONE QUESTIONGENERATED FROM THEOBSERVATION MAP

Using actual generated reflection in the classroomas a connection pointinto performance.

ASSIGNING INDIVIDUALROLES AND GROUP ROLES as a method of doing andreflection parallely.

Step Two: Planning, Questioning Re-Structuring

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An Empathy Map is one design tool that outlines and makes visible the ab-stract thoughts, feelings, emotions and behaviors of characters that might have been generated in the scene improvisation activity.

In the same way, there are various other art and design based tools that make intangible values concrete.

The Working Handbookcontains a whole listof such tools for you to make use of in your classrooms.

www.dispmlv.wordpress.comAt this stage, it helps to look at the results of the Observation based Reflective tools and the tools used inStep Two all together.

Examples of various Observation and Empathymaps generated from scene improvisation

Step Three: Building Connections through Reflection

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How can the material produced from the warm-up session of one specific activity lead to you guiding a connection for the students towards using the same material for the engagement part of the next session?

What other permutations and combinations of interconnections between ‘Tune in’, ‘Engagement’ and ‘Reflection’ can you think of?

After viewing the material generated fromObservation based Reflection and group reflection, the class will automatically start landing on some major reali-sations which can be termed as Insights.

You could choose tocategorise the previousmaterial in the insight mapas shown in the picture OR

You could ask themfive questions that take offdirectly from the EmpathyMap:

a) What is the one bigrealisation we have had?

b) What is one connectionwe can form b/w SAYINGand DOING?

c) What is one connectionb/w THINKING and DOING?

d) b/w FEELING and DOING?

e) How can we take thisrealisation forward?

Step Four: Re-ApplyingReflections made by the instructors based on visible data from students/ CASE STUDY

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Re-application of one learning outcome, an idea or a concept into another context is also an active conse-quence of deep reflection.

In one version of a visual art making re-flection exercise, this re-application was a natural consequence of reflection. The students were taken through a body-based drama exercise where they had to use specific body parts in combi-nation with others’ to make specific objects such as ‘a teapot on a table’ or ‘a fork and a spoon in a Chinese restaurant’.

The objective was to make the students think and express through their bodies and reduce shyness in using their bodies in the drama space. The reflection exer-cise was to illustrate one strong memory of the exercise- one point in the exercise where they felt they connected with someone or some-thing and learnt something new about their bodies. One stu-dent made a figure of two boys, wrapped in an embrace with their lips touching each other, as if waiting to kiss. The background had other children playing and was

decorated with flow-ers and hearts. The boy chose to not sign his name on the drawing. This drawing was noted by the class teacher, who was observing this lesson with me and she passed it on to the Life Skills teacher who used the picture as a starting point for discussing the theme of homo-sexuality in class.

Step Four: Re-Applying

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Although the tools are varied and context-dependent, there are sometools that are a must in any drama based classroom applyingthis methodology:

A Surplus of Basic Stationery

A Basic Memory Map/Any Sheet that can be used to instantly document observations using post-it notes or quick imagery, word association and the like

A Basic Question Map/ any sheetwith a heirarchy of easy to toughquestions- superficial to deep andbroad. This can be changed onceevery three drama sessions.

Step Four: Re-ApplyingAfter you finish one Unit Plan of atleast 4 drama sessions using this methodology, refer to these pages to re-look at your reflection tools.Although repeating the same tools will benefit retention in students, too much of the same thing will get immensely boring and you will face what is known as ‘Reflection Fatigue’ in the classroom. Mix and Match your tools for the mosteffective lesson plans.

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TYPE OF REFLECTION WHAT IT ENTAILS

1) Journal Writing Writing of personal beliefs, atti-tudes and experience and how they interact with attitudes and values of an individual

2) Directed Writing Writing to fill specific request that can support a reflective session.

3) Object Reflection To reflect on an object that can tell the story of an event in class

4) Pre-reflection Conducting a reflective session prior to the experience of the play.Pre-reflection gives contrast to what is believed is about to happen and what actually hap-pens. It is this contrast that deepens insights and focuses discussion that is more meaning-ful to the participants