Week 7--Body Movement and First Final Performance Rehearsal

I'm really understanding what it takes to be a teacher and it requires a LOT of planning. And not the kind of planning I thought planning was, it is inTENSE planning. Like anticipating how students may act up and how to combat it. Or figuring out how to rehearse a short play where if some of the students aren't in on the action all the time, finding a way to keep them engaged 100% of the time.

It's a big job.

I'll admit today was one of the toughest days in Mrs. Larsen's class. I think the kids had a lot of extra energy because of all the "inside days" so it was good we started off with some movement exercises.

The first was a warm up. I went through all the different areas of the body (feet, legs, hips, arms, shoulders, neck, face, etc) and moved them in different ways. Then we did a levels activity where I counted from 1-10 and depending on how fast/slow I did it, they had to get from laying down on the ground to standing straight up.

Their favorite part was the second time through when I mixed it up and counted really fast at first and then slowed down or vice versa. Kids love it when you try to trick them.

The next activity I was supposed to do (but in my rush of worrying about if we would have enough time for our last activity, I didn't look down at my notecard and I accidentally jumped to the next activity) was called "Talk With Your Body." The kids spread out around the room and use different positions movement, and levels to portray different ideas like:

• I'm tired
• It's freezing in here!
• I'm so excited for Christmas!
• I'm scared

while reminding them to think about what happens to your eyebrows/mouth/eyes/legs/arms etc. when you feel all these different things. Then you pause them and have them look around the room (with their eyes only) to see the unique ways other kids are portraying the same thing.

Then we played "Character Sculpt" where I drew 2 names out of the class jar and one student is the "clay" and the other is the sculptor. The sculptor draws out an emotion (like last week's activity) and they have to shape the "clay" in a way that the class can tell what the person's feeling just by looking at the position of their body. I was impressed with all the different ways the kids came up with portraying the emotion. The kids loved it and wanted to do it longer. Looking back, next time I would probably split the whole class up in pairs and have them all pair up and do the activity.

Then the last part of the lesson, I had Mrs. Larsen split up the class into 2 groups and we started rehearsing for our final performance! Here are the two stories we'll be performing:

I just LOVE this story and it lends itself VERY well to a performance!

This is the best one I could find, although our version is going to be closer to the original Grimm brother's tale.

We assigned parts, acted out the basic storyline, and had the kids use their bodies to tell the story. This was the hardest part of the lesson because a few of the kids in my group weren't able to sit still without being disruptive and loud. I tried a few different tactics that worked for a little while (pulling the main trouble-maker aside, using our "tick-tock" phrase and even stopping and having a little chat with them.

One of the greatest things about this program is getting feedback from people who have been teaching a lot longer than I have. I sure appreciate Doug Allen coming to the class today and giving me lots of good tips on how to make this last activity better. Here were a few of the suggestions he made:

• Always have a "surprise" up your sleeve so-to-speak so the kids wonder what's next. Whether this is cue cards, visual aids, hats, or whatever it might be, to have a physical something to make them wonder what's going on.
• It might be helpful if from the start we push the desks off to one side of the room so the kids know it's time for drama and we aren't stuck in one corner of the room.
• Involve the audience somehow in this performance. Maybe have cards for the audience to clap or something so the kids will be more involved that way.

I also talked to Becky and she gave me the idea of keeping my one trouble-maker always busy somehow, whether that's helping out with a related project or whatever it might be or something else. But I just need to always have something that the kids who are not on stage can be doing something.