So Many Factors To Consider When Designing A Lesson

Stacy Deemar, ITA Creative Drama Division Representative

 

Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness;

But direct them to it by what amuses their minds,

So that you may better able discover with

Accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.
- Plato

Can I tell you a secret?  Promise me you won't tell anyone?  Good.  I knew I could count on you.  Phew.  This is the first time I have told this to anyone.  Just thinking about disclosing my secret gives me goose bumps down my spine.  I hope I don't shock you or give you the wrong impressions, but the truth is, I have been differentiating my drama lessons since I first started teaching.  I had never heard the pedagogical jargon "differentiated instruction" in any of my education classes, staff development workshops or meetings eighteen years ago.  Yet the concept that every student's ability to learn varies has been apparent from the moment I entered a classroom.

 

Whether I was teaching at-risk 17 to 21 year old students in an alternative New York City high school, a Chicago vocational high school, or numerous elementary and middle school classrooms in Evanston, the children filling these classes vary in socioeconomic status, culture, religion, language, gender, personal interest, ability and disability, maturity and motivation.  With so many factors to consider when designing a lesson, it is the educator's responsibility to accommodate each child's learning needs and adjust the lessons accordingly so that each student will achieve success.

 

As a novice to teaching creative drama and/or theatre, making alterations may appear to be overwhelming.  The thought of having to modify a lesson for a dozen students in a single class looks impossible at a glimpse.  But once you have developed strategies for different types of learners, you will be able to apply your plan by tweaking it to meet the needs of each student.  This process of making accommodations will become a simple routine.

 

In a drama class of twenty-four students, the types of learners can include hearing impaired, visually impaired, learning disabled, emotionally disabled, English as a Second Language (ESL), autistic, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), extremely shy, selective mutism, and gifted.  Over half the students in each class will need specific accommodations in order to flourish. 

 

The philosophy of teaching creative drama in District 65 Evanston/Skokie is that the work is improvisational and processed centered.  The drama specialist guides the students to imagine, enact, reflect and be respectful audience members. 

 

In a sixth grade drama class where a processed drama may be the primary focus of study, the teacher uses a story telling approach to tell a scene, model the characters, and block out the scene on the stage.  Students cast themselves in their desired rolls and work improvisationally to present the scene.  There is no rehearsal and a discussion follows each scene.

 

Each student is responsible for remembering the sequence of the scene, blocking, and creating dialogue for the character while using pantomime, facial expressions, body language, and sustaining commitment and believability.  Students not participating in the scene are required to listen and watch the entire presentation with focused attention.

 

Visual learners can benefit substantially from the teacher modeling a scene.  In this format, the teacher improvises each character's facial expressions, body language, blocking, and pantomime and plays the entire scene and all of the characters for the class.  A list of discussion questions, detailed information about the scene, and drama/theatre vocabulary words used during the discussion component of the class, is also helpful for visual learners.  Learning disabled, hearing and visually impaired, shy, autistic and ESL learners can prosper from utilizing these methods.

 

Because students cast themselves in the parts they want to play as opposed to being assigned a part, students who are unable to remember the sequence of a scene, all of a character's dialogue, or are frightened to speak in front of a group, have the option to select pantomimed parts only. 

 

Gifted students can spotlight a scene as a model for the class.  Gifted students can also assist in working with autistic students.  When an autistic student is in a scene, a gifted student is selected to stand behind the autistic student as their shadow.  The gifted student explains and models the pantomime, facial expression, blocking, etc. for the autistic student while the scene is in progress.

 

Shy, hearing impaired, selective mute, ESL and autistic learners who are uncomfortable or unable to make an oral comment using theatre/drama vocabulary can be afforded the opportunity to make their critique in writing.  For those students who are unable to make a critique orally or in writing, they can make a critique in the form of a picture.

 

Allowing an ESL learner to improvise a scene in his native language can be beneficial for the entireclass.  Although the class may not understand the language, the ESL learner can be assessed on his tone of voice, facial expression, body language, concentration, and pantomime and the audience can focus on those elements too during discussion.

 

Hearing impaired learners should be seated close to where the teacher models the scene and where the scenes are presented.  For those who have hearing apparatuses such as microphones, the teacher must wear the microphone during the modeling of a scene and during class discussion.  The main character presenting a scene should also wear the microphone.

 

Sitting close to the presentation is a requirement for all visually impaired students.  Larger fonts are used in both the information on the board as well as handouts.  Visually impaired students are also given the option of having a shadow work along side them during a presentation.  The shadow models the character's facial expressions, body language and pantomime in addition to assisting the visually impaired learner with the blocking.

 

Giving attention deficit hyperactivity disordered (ADHD) learners specific jobs in the classroom that require them to get out of their seat can be extremely helpful in getting these types of learners focused.  At the beginning of class, ADHD learners can take attendance, erase the board and/or assist in setting up technical equipment.  These types of learners can also be assigned the role of writing the name of the students next to the characters they will be playing in the scenes.  Once presentations commence, ADHD learners can have breaks to get up and stretch in addition to having paper and pen to doodle.

 

Now that I have shared some of my secrets with you, I hope you will be adventurous and implement my strategies in your classes.  The "one size fits all" mentality has no basis in a differentiated classroom.  Whatever strategies you utilize for one specific learner may not have the same great success for a similar type of learner.  Therefore, you must try different accommodations until you find one that is effective for that learner.  With so many factors to consider when designing a lesson, I hope that you will find truth in this ancient proverb, "In teaching others, we teach ourselves."

 

#theatretheorignalsocialmedia

by Ernie Nolan, ITA Professional Division Representative

 

During a break in tech this past winter, I went backstage to check on the five young actors who were alternating as Things 1 and 2 in Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat.  They had been quiet that day...surprisingly quiet...like the "quiet before some sort of deliciously devious prank to pass away the tedious time of tech" quiet.  Hoping that our stage manager's nerves wouldn't be more frazzled than they already were, I headed to the Green Room to remind the young professionals that I was always watching, just like Santa.  When I entered, much to my surprise, the five fifth-graders were all silent, sitting in a row on the couch, each with an Apple computer product in their hands. When I made a remark about the assortment of iPads, iPhones, and iPods, I was corrected by one of the young professionals that he had an iTouch, a digital music device with internet capabilities, camera, and games, not just a regular iPod. He then showed me how he was in the middle of "liking" something on Facebook.

 

As I walked to ask the adults who were smoking outside, "Doesn't anyone read paperback Judy Blume books from the library anymore?," I realized that it's not only my technically savvy young cast members, but also my young audiences who have hardly known a world without broadband Internet, Wi-Fi hotspots, smart phones, and social media.  Today's young audiences live in a Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, App infused world.  They are Generation Tech, connected, entertained, and informed with the flick of a finger on a glass screen.  "Instead of whiling away the hours discovering wilderness with friends, young people are exploring in solitude the less pristine warrens of the Internet," remarks Teddy Wayne in his New York Times article "...Youth's New Wilderness."  Wayne not only reveals in the same article that Justin Bieber has the power to reach out to 36 million young fans with the swipe of his iPhone on Twitter, but also that a 2010 Kaiser Family Foundation report reveals that children ages 8 to 18 spend 77 minutes per day more with entertainment media than they did five years ago.

 

Although still relatively uncharted territory, similar social and entertainment media studies have found that adolescents who demonstrated Facebook and Internet addiction scored higher for obsessive compulsive behavior, generalized and social anxiety, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, introversion, maladaptive behavior, and a state that has been labeled Facebook Depression.  Another study of adolescent girls found the more they used texting, instant messaging, and other social media to discuss their problems, the more depressive symptoms they represented.  The ease of technology allowed the young women in the study to "co-ruminate," that is dwell on problems without trying to create solutions.

 

In addition to other obstacles, our theatres try to reach a fast paced, 4G audience that now communicates in sound bites and code.  The poetry and word play of our playwrights collides with texting vocabulary like "PAW" (parents are watching), "NOOB" (new person), and "BCNUL8R" (be seeing you later).  Can our theatres battle and break this new millennial Da Vinci code?  When entertainment and answers are at the fingertips of so many, what do we as theatre artists really have to offer and say that can't already be found on YouTube?  How can we sift through the bad and ugly power of social media and harness or celebrate the good?

 

Perhaps the idea isn't to harness social media, it's to throw the harness off of ourselves as artists and celebrate the fact that theatre is the original social media.  As defined by Webster's, "social media is a form of communication through which information, ideas, and personal messages are shared."  But wait... isn't that what we are trying to do as institutions for young audiences in this country?  Give information?  Ignite and inspire ideas?  Share our own personal messages with our audiences?  Their parents?  Our community partners?  Our country?  Our world?

 

Do we need an Internet to connect us?

 

Moments before Finnegan Krukemeyer's inspiring closing night speech at One Theatre World 2013 in Cleveland, I sat talking with friends in the house.  I suddenly noticed an email on my own iPhone from a colleague wishing me congratulations on the completion of construction of Emerald City Theatre's Little Theatre, the country's first theatre space specifically dedicated to the very young.  Earlier that evening my company's marketing team had posted photos of the toddler friendly space in an e-blast and on Facebook.  Not only did my phone light up with other well wishes, some from others sitting in that very theatre, but I was able to be a proud papa and show everyone around me the pictures of the beautiful new space on my phone.  I fully celebrated having an Apple device much like my young actors did during tech.  I received and scrolled through comments on Facebook from colleagues in Germany, Australia, Canada...even Iceland.  Perhaps some researchers would call what I was doing "co-ruminating."  Others might say that my international colleagues were showing "virtual empathy."  Either way, I was certainly not in an Internet isolationist state.

 

After I read my flurry of technological kudos, the lights dimmed, I put away my phone, and the eloquent Tazzie, Krukemeyer, took the stage.  Even though moments before he spoke I thought I felt connected to others, it was Finnegan's very human, very eloquent, and very insightful real information, ideas, and personal message that connected me to the others in the room, to my theatre, to my audiences, to the ASSITEJ network of artists, and to the world.

 

Like many modern conveniences, the Internet isn't entirely bad or entirely good, but it isn't neutral either.  As we navigate our new relationship with both it and the way we use it to communicate, just remember that the Festival of Dionysius had the idea to connect large amounts of people first, not Apple or Mark Zuckerberg.

I have always been into the performing arts.  After performing magic shows in my living room with my brother, my parents enrolled me in a children's theatre class at the College of DuPage when I was in the second grade.  I was in my first professional production as Tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol in the third grade.  I also remember seeing my first Broadway production-Donny Osmond as Joseph in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.  I quickly became addicted to the soundtrack (on cassette), and I knew then that I always wanted to be involved with the theatre.

This is a tough question to answer.  I'm proud of all the work that I've done so far.  As of right now, I would say that I'm most proud of performing the role Princeton in the Chicagoland premier of the musical Avenue Q.  Other than the Broadway production, this was the show's first production performed in Illinois, and I was thrilled to play such a fun role in this hilarious musical.  I'm sure that pretty soon my greatest theatrical accomplishments will be those of my students.  I'm grateful that I'll have the opportunity to work with them in the classroom and on productions after school, and I'm looking forward to watching each of them grow, explore, progress, and achieve greatness on and off the stage.

The next theatre project that I have already started to work on is writing a curriculum for the Acting I, Acting II, and Children's Theatre courses, and directing the 2013 Fall Play The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) at Bartlett High School.  It's going to be a busy school year, but I'm looking forward to working on all of these projects with the students. Unfortunately, my acting career has been postponed, but I'll get back into it soon enough.

I am a huge advocate for the value of theatre in today's society and in the lives of individuals, which, coincidentally, is part of the ITA's mission statement.  I'm thrilled to know that the ITA aims to support theatre artists and communities, and I hope that the Facebook group "Illinois Theatre Association High School Theatre" will do just that.  I'm looking forward to collaborating with other artists, educators, organizations, agencies, and communities.  I am also a proud ITA member due to its annual production of the Illinois High School Theatre Festival.  I've attended most of the festivals since 2000 as a student, actor in the 2002 All-State production of The Pirates of Penzance, an ISU All-State chaperone, workshop leader, and teacher, and I'm thrilled that I can continue to bring my students to such an incredible event.  I'm honored that I can be a member of the theatrical community.  It's a place where a group of people from all walks of life can come together to create art.  There are no right or wrong answers and people are encouraged to try new things and take risks.  It's a supportive community that truly brings out the best in each individual.  I've been blessed to have been part of this community for most of my life, will continue to do so for the rest of my life, and am excited to begin this next chapter of my life as a theatre educator.  I hope to instill the same passion for the theatre and be a positive influence for all of my future students.

 DesignLab Chicago