Teaching Television: Reflections on a new curriculum

Teaching Television Blog

A reflective practitioner case study attempting to teach key aspects of media education through process drama

Change of Plans

This entry was posted on 8/19/2006 12:00 AM and is filed under uncategorized.

Saturday, August 19, 2006

Well, the big news is that in the end I did not get the permission I needed from the school that was visiting Inner City Arts. So, I cannot use it for my dissertation study. This is of course frustrating, but I think it comes with research in the education field. Protection and the child’s education come before all research needs. So, I have to be patient, but it’s a tough process. The next class my bosses' offered me is a group of 2^nd graders. My curriculum was developed for the 4^th grade, so at first I was hesitant, but now I see the value in modifying the curriculum to fit a younger age. It is actually one of my favorite age groups to work with—they easily buy into the idea of process drama and the importance of it all. At first, I worried that they would not be able to produce the kind of writing I wanted to work on, but I think that will be the more important challenge for me—instead of relying on writing-based activities, how can we physically investigate media in the moment dramatically?
   How will my current lessons shift to accommodate for the age change? My first instinct is to cut the creation of the network and focus only on the creation of a television show. The good thing is that this class will have only 20 students, as opposed to 30, so there will be more opportunity for whole group activities.
    I have been working with these kids for 6 weeks—one time a week—teaching an hour and fifteen minute drama session. We’ve been focusing on poetry revolving around animals. I think this will help prepare them to jump into more work with me, and I won’t have to spend as much time developing the classroom drama community.

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8/12/2007 12:52 AM Selena wrote:
Did you end up finding that, as you predicted, it was a benefit to work with students you'd already been doing drama with for some weeks? What would you suggest a classroom teacher working with students who aren't used to doing drama or who are reluctant to do drama would need to do to scaffold a unit like this, in terms of getting students willing and able to do Process Drama? Were there specific things you'd already done in your poetry unit that prepared the students for this project? Would you say that generally this is a unit that might be better taught in the middle of the year, rather than the beginning of the year, because the types of activities necessitate a strong sense of community?
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8/15/2007 3:02 AM blue danube wrote:
This is a blessing in disguise! Now you'll really have to prune what you're planning, and you'll find it more rewarding, I think. Why do you think you need to cut out the writing-based activities? Second graders love physical activities, sure, but they can handle age-appropriate writing ones as well, especially if they have already been writing poetry.
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8/15/2007 10:01 PM graham wrote:
UGH. That's really awful. To some extent it makes you have to understand and command your material even better, such that it can be adapted to this very different audience. But it also speaks to that school's dedication to improving their classrooms through the arts. I'd be very curious to know where you place the culpability here - was it Inner City Arts' failure to convince the school of the merit of your work, or the school's fault for not adequately preparing for your involvement? Is there anything to learn from this, that it might not be repeated? I can't tell you how many times peers of mine have complained of similar happenings.
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