Laura Bottrell General, Play-Based Learning, The Arts

Drama in the Classroom: The Good Kind

When thinking of drama as a subject in our curriculum, it is easy to think of it only as a skill that can be learned and mastered. There are a lot of fundamental concepts that we teach – role play, character, relationship, time and place, tension, focus and emphasis. Our students love creating scripts, making tableaus, improvising, performing and playing all of those fun drama games. Not to mention the social and personal skills that children learn when engaging in the creative process! Some students excel in dramatic arts and love to perform, but that isn’t what its all about.

Aside from being its own subject, I (mostly) see drama as a meaningful instructional technique. When we no longer think of drama as a stand-alone subject and consider it a teaching tool, we open our programs up to wonderful things. By incorporating dramatic arts into all subject areas, we are handing students a powerful processing and communication tool. We are also increasing their engagement, motivation and adding physical activity to our teaching. Dramatic role play combines so many important functions at once – physical movement, facial expression, verbal and nonverbal communication and self awareness. The best part about using drama as an instructional technique is that it is dynamic – it can be applied to nearly any concept. The most natural fit for drama tends to be in language arts, as it so closely relates to storytelling. I’ve found, though, that some of the best drama experiences come when I incorporate it into my mathematics, science or social studies instruction.

Last week, my grade twos transformed themselves into atoms and moved themselves around the classroom, filling the space as a liquid, a gas and then a solid. I could see, right in front of me, their understanding of the concept when they changed their body movements and direction of movement to reflect the different properties of the states of matter. In math, we used drama to process concepts in our money unit. My students created a store, took turns being cashiers and customers, and used money manipulatives to make transactions. The process was entirely student directed, and allowed me to both observe and engage in their role play. By role playing and taking on the characters of customers and cashiers, they were applying their math learning to simulated real world situations. The opportunities and ideas are endless.

Every child can engage in drama. Dramatic play is a natural part of childhood and there is little difference between children playing superheroes on the playground and children engaged in drama activities in the classroom. Any Kindergarten teacher or Early Childhood Educator could list dozens of skills and schemas being process by a child engaged in dramatic play. Dramatic play is how children process the world around them. It’s also easy to think that dramatic play is something only early primary students engage in – but if you listen closely on the playground, you’re likely to find that even our older students are creating and leading their own dramatic play. Last month, during some free time outside, I was delighted to observe my grade three students pretending to be Early Settlers in Upper Canada. Our play structure suddenly became a log cabin and students took different roles as blacksmiths, carpenters, fishermen, hunters, farmers and school teachers. This was their natural way of internalizing and processing the concepts they were exploring in social studies. As teachers, we need to remind ourselves that drama is not only a skill to be mastered, but a natural method of communicating, processing and relating.

Unfortunately, drama is often a rotary subject and is not taught by homeroom teachers. I challenge you not to let that stop you from using drama as an instructional tool in your teaching! You’ll be amazed at what your kids will do.

Beverly Papove Outdoor Learning, Play-Based Learning, self reflection

Organizing the Flow of the Day

We have clocked in three months in our kindergarten class so far, and on the whole, my ECE partner and I feel there are some really strong aspects of our day – the outdoor learning blocks at the beginning and end of the day, for example, and weather permitting, outdoor time in the middle of the day for a small group activity (today it was raining and the puddles were the big attraction).

Since we are with the students for the majority of the day, the two of us have worked at creating a ‘flow’ to the day. Nonetheless, we find we are still constantly making adjustments to the classroom set up, to activities, and to the overall schedule. For example, we have trimmed our circle times considerably since our students sit as a large group for music and games in French with their two other teachers each day. What we occasionally do now is have a quick everybody-to-the-carpet for a regrouping or a message before an event or activity, with the time spent sitting limited to about one or two minutes maximum. Sometimes it is just a chance to have a ‘huddle’ for a reminder that we are about to do something together as a class – tidy up, wash hands, get ready to go outside, or line up for library. The message is simple and clear and helps the students prepare for a transition, and we have sometimes used it as an opportunity to ground the group if the energy has risen towards the rafters.

Considering that the model of Full Day Kindergarten (FDK) is mandated to reflect the structure of the preschool day rather than a Grade 1 classroom, we often have to remind ourselves of the board directive for a play-based program as we leave behind longer, teacher-lead, large group lessons. However, this can sometimes lead us to feel as if we are not adequately preparing our students for reading and writing activities in the Grade 1 program. Thus, we are at odds as to the delivery of our program – preschool exploration or preparation for seatwork using alphabet and number systems, or a possible blend of the two? (for insightful articles discussing this conundrum in kindergarten, please see, “The Joyful, Illiterate Kindergarteners of Finland” from The Atlantic, as well as the blog, “Why I Don’t Like Play-Based Learning.”).  

In our classroom, I guess you could say we have attempted a blend of large group circle time for music and games balanced with opportunities for individual inquiry and play-based (i.e. student-driven) learning. Keeping in mind that managing to get a whole group of jk and sk students to sit quietly in a circle while we deliver a lesson does not necessarily mean that the whole group will learn what we are delivering, we have found that we are more successful gathering a small group of students for a smaller, more intimate and focussed lesson where we can attend to and assess each one of them individually for a shorter amount of time. Expectations for group learning are still met and we can easily target what we want to achieve. To do this, we have designated a floating time during an exploration time block where we will invite a few students at a time to come and visit us for a short activity or task. We try to select the students who are ‘free’ to dedicate their attention to the activity, that is, those who may be travelling from one centre to the next, or those who are just finishing up a snack, so that their play is relatively uninterrupted. We have found that when we are set up for a task we regularly get visits from other students who may not have been invited but are curious as to what we are doing and ask if they can join in. As we observe them, we can see that this curiosity and voluntary participation is ideal to include on a report card as evidence of Problem Solving and Innovating.

So while we seek to achieve a balance between true, play-based learning and the expectations of a program ‘aligned with the curriculum’ in our classroom, my partner and I feel as if the flow to our day has genuinely begun to reflect the most positive aspects of both, offering the students as many opportunities to learn how to learn.

Beverly Papove Outdoor Education, Play-Based Learning

Here we go with the snow

Monday morning, we went to school in the first blizzard of the year. It was bitterly cold, and the wind howled around, blowing the 20 centimetres of snow into small drifts. Was there ever a question that our outdoor learning block at the beginning of the day would be cancelled? I am not comfortable just automatically calling for an indoor morning during inclement weather, and usually tend to have a Big Think if I do. So, making sure that all my students had the requisite cold weather clothing, we set out in the morning as usual.

In a previous post, I mentioned how baking hot the kindergarten playground is during the warm and sunny months, but I had no idea how miserable it could be in the cold. With the cold weather, it turns into a wind tunnel, creating a crusty surface of snow and ice. WIth the climbing structure now closed, there is little to do when the conditions are so unfavourable. The only shelter is a small plastic playhouse in a corner, and the rest of the area is open to the elements as the wind whips up the hill from the river and blasts the yard. If a student drops a mitten, it creates mayhem as they run squealing after it before it gets pinned by the wind to the chain link fence at the other side of the yard. Hilarious.

So, I admit that while I was hollering the students’ names into the wind in order to be heard while I took attendance, I began to have second thoughts about the idea of staying outside for the morning block. I am glad to say that we decided to stay outdoors, but not in the kindergarten yard which was so inhospitable. We decided, instead, to go on a walk in the snow around the school where we could at least get out of the wind and allow the students to have some fresh air and fun. Having taught in an Inuit community at the top of Hudson’s Bay, I remember recess time on the tundra where it was often cold and blustery and staying indoors was not an option. You dress for it, and without making a point of whatever opinion you may have of winter, you get out into it and enjoy yourself.

As we trudged through the drifts, I was so impressed with the children’s resilience in spite of the cold. There are some students who have never been through an Ottawa winter and who have to borrow warm clothing each day for our outdoor block, and yet, there they were, laughing as they would try to walk in the deep snow and fall into their friends, or as they made snow angels for the first time. We climbed the mountains of snow the plow had pushed to one end of the junior yard, then rolled down the hill at the back of the school into a field of fresh drifts.

It took us over half an hour to navigate the complete school yard and make it back to the fenced-in kindergarten yard. The wind was still howling and a couple of mittens had fallen off during the climbing adventures, so, looking at the rosy cheeks and running noses, my ECE partner and I started a slow filter indoors for any students who were ready for a change of environment. While most children filed into the classroom, a handful wanted to stay outside and asked me for the toboggans. Since we were all well-dressed and well-prepared to continue staying outdoors for a little while longer, the tobogganing was a bonus activity that saw the students continue to independently explore a host of different ways to slide down the hill. Reflecting on what the students were learning, I easily made anecdotal notes for all for the Four Frames, excepting LIteracy and Mathematics Behaviours. What’s more, the students looked out for one another before heading down the hill, patiently took turns, and helped each other up the hill if they struggled with their sled. They were a very happy crew, and when we made our way back to the classroom, although many of them would have preferred to stay outside a while longer, everyone brought their sled back to the shed and stacked it properly without a complaint.

When we got inside and they were peeling off crusty mittens and snowy boots, you could hear sighs of, “That was so much fun!” from the cubby room. It’s only the first snowfall, but I am really happy that it was a positive experience for all the students. I will remember that the next time we get walloped by winter weather.