Guest Posted August 21, 2011 Share Posted August 21, 2011 Last year my Reception class had a drama teacher for 30 mins each week, this year I have to do it. In the class in relation to books I always do hot seating and act them out. I am trying to work out my drama planning and am thinking of relating it to Nursery Rymes. Does anyone have any ideas relating to this and to warm up games and working collaboratively. I know that my new class are quite challenging. Can you recommend any books to help me with this, thank you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted August 21, 2011 Share Posted August 21, 2011 Last year my Reception class had a drama teacher for 30 mins each week, this year I have to do it. In the class in relation to books I always do hot seating and act them out. I am trying to work out my drama planning and am thinking of relating it to Nursery Rymes. Does anyone have any ideas relating to this and to warm up games and working collaboratively. I know that my new class are quite challenging. Can you recommend any books to help me with this, thank you. Warm-up Games: Find a friend - Find a space, look carefully at everyone and form pairs with others who are the same in some way - you could then make groups of four who are the same in some way. Guess Who - Sit in a circle, blindfold a child who will sit in the middle. Children silently change places. The blindfolded child points to someone and that child says 'who me?' in their normal voice. If the child recognises the voice they change places and repeat. People Bingo - Have a card with 9 squares, in each square write e.g. someone ... wearing a dress ... with brown hair ... taller than you ... with brown eyes etc. Each child has a card and has to write the name of someone to fit the criteria - no name should be duplicated. Set a time limit and see who has most. All these games could be easily adapted and came from 'Ready to go! Ideas for Drama' Alison Chaplin (Scholastic, 2001) - not sure if it's still in print. An A4 64 pg book which is aimed at KS1 P1 to 3 but could be easily adapted. Hope this helps! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JacquieL Posted August 22, 2011 Share Posted August 22, 2011 I can wholeheartedly recommend this book by Lesley Hendy https://www.amazon.co.uk/Supporting-Drama-I...442&sr=8-29 Whilst games to promote co-operation can be a good warm up for a group, drama is really so much more, engaging imagination, empathy and struggle. The word Drama itself means struggle or action. If you look on Amazon there are quite a few books dedicated to drama with young children, with lots of ideas you could use. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
millhill Posted August 22, 2011 Share Posted August 22, 2011 (edited) Is there a reason why you have to do whole class drama in Reception? It must be hard to cope with the whole class at once. Did you ever watch the drama teacher's sessions. Our music teacher left half way through the year, but luckily for me (I only thought this after she left) I was required to sit through all her sessions to supervise the children, I learnt a lot from her and just continued from what she was doing. Edited August 22, 2011 by millhill Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted August 22, 2011 Share Posted August 22, 2011 Thank you for your help, I never watched the drama lessons as I had PPA. I have never had to teach drama like this before. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
millhill Posted August 22, 2011 Share Posted August 22, 2011 Are your colleagues in the same situation? Maybe you could come up with ideas with the Y1 staff thinking about progression. I think the reason why it is difficult to get ideas for foundation stage drama, is that there isn't really a requirement for it. I was a bit sceptical about whole class music lessons when I started at my school but it turned out to be Jolly Music, which is mostly singing. I think the children benefit much more from being in the class, doing drama naturally through role-play situations/small world. This is where I get most of my creative development evidence from. Would you be able to discuss the possibility of not doing drama sessions with your SMT? Early years is very different from KS1 and 2 as they get lots of opportunities to express themselves through drama within the class. I'm wondering if many other reception classes have to do drama sessions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JacquieL Posted August 22, 2011 Share Posted August 22, 2011 This article from the FSF archive by Lesley Hendy may give food for thought. http://eyfs.info/articles/article.php?Revi...inative-Play-97 Also this Reception whole class drama from the archive http://eyfs.info/articles/article.php?The-Farmer-Drama-96 An apt time to remind everyone that there are some very good articles in the Articles section. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted August 22, 2011 Share Posted August 22, 2011 Thank you for the link to the articles. In the past my drama always related to the role play and to different stories, having a 30 minute slot each week is more difficult to plan for. I teach in an independent school and the teacher who did drama last year was a drama specialist, she has now moved on but the Head still wants to offer drama. I am going to order the book which you have recommended, do you think I could relate it to Nursery Rhymes, I am trying to do a medium term plan. Thank you so much for all your help. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JacquieL Posted August 23, 2011 Share Posted August 23, 2011 I don't think there are any specific plans for nursery rhymes but she does give an example of working from Jack and the Beanstalk. She also discusses the use of simple drama conventions such as hot seating, freeze frame and of course the best device to get drama going with young children, teacher in role. There is another book, Drama and Traditional Story for the Early Years (Toye and Prendeville published byt Routledge 2000), which contains some lesson plans. At a quick glance there are a couple of ideas in it for creating drama from nursery rhymes. For example Jill seeking help from the Superhelpers (the group) to find Jack, who has disappeared after banging his head, when he is found he has lost his memory and Jill laughs at him, he feels sad and the Superhelpers have to decide what to do to help. I like the idea for Little Miss Muffet which starts with the group seeing a poster for a lost child. The children look for her and find her hiding from the spider. She explains her fear and the children decide what to do about it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted August 28, 2011 Share Posted August 28, 2011 Hi, These book ideas are really good. I ran my own business doing drama sessions with early years children for last few years. All about developing empathy, character, story and self-confidence rather than 'jazz hands' and performance!. The 'teacher in role' method works best with this age group, you take on a character perhaps using a hat or cloak and lead the children through the story. The best drama always has a 'tension' or problem to solve together . Start by building up a sense of community together e.g you are all the little pigs busy building your houses, work alongside them" I'm sawing the wood. it's very long. Do you need to borrow my hammer? Oh, Gary, mind your finger! What colour shall we paint the house, let's roll out the carpet.' Then you can all go into your individual houses and you are just settling down with a nice cup of tea when.....'what was that? Did you hear something? I thought I heard a sort of huffing sound... Did someone just sneeze?" Then lots of tiptoeing around as you all decide to hide/build a barricade/ set a trap for the wolf. The wolf can be completely imaginary. Later weeks can lead to the wolf needing a dentist, the wolf having nowhere to live, teaching the wolf some friendship skills etc. As well as the Hendy book would also recommend a fantastic American book called 'Improvisation with favorite (sic) Tales' by Ruth Beall Heinig and 'Drama and Traditional Story for the Early Years'. Keep the warm-up games short and snappy. Start with physical games for the shyer children and then something involving voice-Anna Scher -'101 games for Drama'(or something like that) is good. The important thing set very clear rules for stop/start signals as it can get noisy and feel a bit chaotic if you haven't agreed your rules and stop signal at the beginning e.g 'When I am wearing the cloak everybody looks at me and listens'. Practice 'freezing' mid-action very frequntly as that is a good chaos control. Good luck and enjoy yourself- it may soon become your and their favourite subject! I went on a course run by a Headteacher from Warwick. The majority of the school Literacy, Science, History, Geography and R.E curriculum is taught through the medium of drama. They turn the classroom into a Victorian factory or a castle community and each child takes on the role of squire or maid for several weeks of the project. Amazing! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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