The last few days have been a little hectic, and consequently I have not actually gotten round to writing on here. Wednesday (26th) was PE and Drama. We learnt more about how to organise a PE lesson for different abilities within a group, and a few games to help improve everyone's skills (rolling, kicking, throwing, batting etc) It's good for me to learn, because I never enjoyed games at school - and I hope that I can learn to teach with the encouragement that lacked in my education. Drama was my all time least favourite lesson. It was (and I guess still is) a popularity contest. The more popular people are generally more confident and so gain recognition from the teacher. I did not enjoy drama. I will always remember hating my teacher for forcing me to perform in front of people that I did not like or trust, and I think drama is all about trust in yourself and the audience. It is deeply personal, it is a time when you have to let down your defences because that is the only way to become a character. And if you do that you leave yourself open to be hurt. That is why I hated drama. The lesson therefore was walked into with dread. After the intro, we played 'hand touch' which I am awesome at it turns out, and then we did some improv - which I find really difficult (thinking on my feet.... probably a skill I should learn) and then we did some activities around a scene. The scene was a 'character passage' about being survivors after a long journey, and making this new place our home. No detail of where we were, or had come from, where why we moved or what happened in the journey. And we split into four groups. My group was creating a map of where we had come from, the second group did a set of two freeze-frames with thought tapping of the scene prior to leaving and whilst fleeing. The third group did four freeze-frames depicting the journey, and the final group did hot-seating of the thoughts post arrival. Finally we finished with a conscience alley. It was a lot better than I anticipated, and I actually look forward to the next lesson. I still don't like drama, but I will keep an open mind at least.
27th: Science and Music today. Music is always an odd one for me. On the one hand I love songs, and singing (I'm not sure I can sing, but I enjoy singing!) but in the other hand, I really can't play instruments.... I guess teaching music therefore makes me feel rather nervous! We started with warm up music games, which seem pretty simple - and were rather fun! Next we learnt different techniques for building up children's confidence with beats and rhythm, as well as pitch and harmony. Science was all about making the subject interactive - we did junk modelling to create the inside of the human body.
Thursday evening, was also matriculation. So, nice pretty dresses, lovely meal, and a strange ritual of Latin/Anglo Saxon (?) words whilst drinking wine from an African Horn.... Only at Cambridge.
28th: Today (because now I am caught up) is, as always English Friday! Poetry to be specific, we learnt different techniques to encourage and entice poems from our class, and a huge array of poets to read up/teach. One great resource is:
http://www.poetryarchive.org/childrensarchive/home.do It is definitely worth some time - there are recordings of poets performing their work and interviews about works, and just thousands of poems! We did write our own poem (a group work) taking elements from the different games/lesson ideas we had been taught. Ours is a haiku, and I hope you enjoy it!
The wild cake robots
Blotted out the summer sun
darkness envelops
S x
