Sept. 21-25 First Week in the Classroom!

Wow, what a week! It was great to finally get into the classroom and meet all of the students, and see how our first round of planning played out in the reality of the three classrooms.

One of the things that came out from our first plan is that Mrs. Meyer stated that, as I was really steering the ship for the first day, she got to observe her students in their classroom setting, but from a completely different perspective. For example, a girl in class is very quiet, but raises her hand to answer questions consistently. She does not regularly get called on, as she is drowned out by the enthusiasm of her peers. Mrs. Meyer noted that she kept an eye on her later in the week, and made sure to call on her more often.

At the beginning of my time I did a brief introduction of myself, showing some pictures of plays I had been in and talking to the students about some of the things we would be doing with theater in the classroom - there was good general excitement.

While the students were gone at their specialist, the teacher and I discussed how the kids were doing energy-wise that particular day, and how we would break up the afternoon.

We began with a game called "Introduction and Applause". A very simple activity where each student came up in front of the class, introduced themselves, then bowed, and had to stay up in front of the class while the students gave them a round of applause.  - This was good for both the students as presenter, and as audience. It is a good icebreaker for teachers at the start of the year.

We then went on to the Prezi presentation I put together called Creating a Character. I was most concerned about this portion being boring for the kids, but it was very well received. The students were asked to look closely at the images and answer in depth about the "Big Question" being discussed. For the three images at the end, they were asked to answer as many of the Big 6 questions as they could, and explain their reasoning.  This is something that the teachers can use and update, or re-create year after year in order to drive home the  6 Big Questions (who what when where why and how) The Prezi:







We then proceeded with the team building games - Zoo day, the mirror exercise, and the Human Knot. I believe these are also exercises/warm ups that the teachers can use at any point throughout the year for focus, creativity, and team building.

We have our outline for next week all set up, and it just needs a bit of ironing out and specification on the activities.

I am, at this point, feeling as though I need a bit more experience in lesson planning.  All three of my teachers are really helping me, but at the same time, with so much planning to do I cannot ask them to take extra time to teach me out of our 2 weekly planning hours. I would find it helpful to have a 101 lesson planning training, so that I can be thinking about strategies for implementing Theater into a teachers curriculum over the 12 week period in the most effective way (also the way that will mirror how the teacher will be implementing it in the future)


I have really enjoyed having my first experience the different energy in each of the three classrooms, as well as the differences  and similarities  that Cindy, Lisa and Elizabeth bring to their teaching.