Ancient Greece and the Theatre

Mention "thespian" to a middle schooler and they all crack up. Humor is such an important method to teaching the younglings, especially when it borders on the inappropriate.

Mention teaching theatre history to middle school students to most drama teachers and you might get a very similar response... Still I have decided to give teaching theatre history to Grade 6 a shot to see what happens...

My Grade 6 lab rats seemed like a great place to start particularly because they are studying ancient Athens in their Social Studies Curriculum.

Working with @bar_qu means that I also have a partner in crime allowing me to continue my xcurricular pursuits. This time around though I was sure to Incorporate the Art teacher.

To be clear what I know of ancient Greece is very similar to what most of my students remember about being thespians... It has something or other to do with myths and "phallusies".

So I asked my students directly if they would like to receive a lesson and worksheet based on note collecting from a PowerPoint I found on "Ancient Greece for Kids" or if they would just prefer to research and perform their own Ancient Greek play about "A Day in the Life of an Ancient Athenian". (credit to @bar_qu for that one)

Funny... Only six of forty said they'd prefer me and notes over self-directed research... Currently I'm battling the urge to feel hurt and the urge to feel elated.

I assigned them small groups (SOLE methodology) with one tablet per group. I gave them a Greek letter as a group name for them to look up so they could inscribe it for themselves on their books. Then I asked, "what makes for an Ancient Greek Production?"

All the World's A Stage

They have currently had only 90 minutes to work but already they are telling me about:

• Comedies, Tragedies, and Satyr


• That the Agora was a pretty cool place to gather


• That our school Theatre is actually a lot like a Greek theatre and in fact some of the names are still the same.


• That men were the stage folk, and that if we're going to be doing this we're also going to need some masks.

I am a verbose lecturer at the best of times. They could have listened to me describe these things for an hour, retained less and had less fun. I guess I'm elated after all.

Currently they are taking pictures of our theatre to compare with schematics of a Dionysian Theatre and putting it all together using "Show Me"... But mostly they are eager to to start writing their scripts.

One girl asked if I was going to let the girls act? "Of course" I said, to which she responded: "Even though that wouldn't be authentic?"

Another girl asked if they would be allowed to use the social text to gather information to put in her play.

Folks, I can't make this stuff up... Oh yeah, and THIS (what your are reading) is my lesson plan.

The art teacher agreed ahead of time to give them time to build masks. The SS teacher will use his time to research A Day in the Life... And I will use the drama time to build costumes and scenes for our burgeoning chorus of players.

And I couldn't be more pleased with the learning, engagement, and attention/retention of details. Yes, I had a couple of Spartans vying for attention as they practiced for the Trojan wars. Man were they disappointed when they discovered that the Greeks let all the action occur off-stage; another detail they'll be sure to recall if there happened to be a test on this down the road.

Next up: A blog entry on why I'm making grade 7 students do monologues from Shakespeare's First Folio...

---

The App' I discussed above is called Show Me. There are other great apps out there like this for free. This just happened to be available to the kids on the Apple Cart at school.

Getting a Mark versus Leaving a Mark

Yesterday's post included a reference to students using the latest and greatest to create better opportunities for them to succeed.  Today I noticed through my twitter account that people had started to share that information.  The feeling I got knowing that the work we're doing is being seen, understood, and appreciated by others brought about a significant positive response in me.

I could not keep the news to myself so I shared what was written, and who shared it with the students of the class the post involved.  The next ten to fifteen was a remarkable exercise in listening to students about what they want versus what they get.

I have been encouraged in the past by work being done by other teachers.  The work that SCIL is doing to publish students work with a global outreach is the number one thing in the back of my mind today because my students actually ASKED if they could publish their work publicly.  They wanted to know if what they're doing is valuable to others.  Seeing the public response to my work made them wonder if the mark that they were getting for some class assignment was as important as the mark they are leaving behind.

In a christian institution such as the one I teach in, the value of outreach (evangelism) is certainly forefront in what we do, and yet we so rarely value our students work by saying "This is worthy of publication".  Even if it is just short snippets, digital summaries, or brief vlogs it is becoming so very apparent that students are hoping their work is looked at not only for an evaluation of common learning outcomes, but for the value it has in the growing database of global knowledge, world-view, and editorial.

If I can use the world-wide-web as a place to promote strong educational practice, and curate my own sense of what counts as "good work" then I can model the practice for a growing number of students who would like to do the same.

The video embedded here is a brief example of that digital curation. It can be done so quickly and easily now-a-days.  Imagine this in the hands of students who want to show what they are most proud of...

The app used to create and upload the video is Videolicious.  It's free, very simple to use.  The only drawback is the length of video is restricted to 50 seconds.  I appreciate brevity, but sometimes it's a little restrictive.

Differentiated Structures

Resources:
For a Grade 6 Science, Drama, and Career & Technology Studies Cross Collaboration

When things don't work out in class, I'm often excited because I usually get a chance to try things twice.  In drama I am always harping on the potential of failures as the best learning experience, and the most amazing fun is had in improvisation games when people "play on the edge of losing".

Problem
How do you give Grade 6 students an inquiry project that involves group work, each task allows space for differentiation and the whole thing takes place in a huge open auditorium without the whole group descending into a scenario which might inspire a story along the lines of, oh, let's say, "Lord of the Flies"?

The struggle is allowing them to complete tasks and objectives at differentiated speeds, and keeping group members accountable to each other, when the maturity level to keep numbers of tasks, and impulse control in check.  The first time I tried this, no matter how much structure  I hoped to create, the structure would break down within minutes.

The solution came today:  Task oriented assignments, where individuals in the group are responsible for ensuring that the order of tasks are kept in place, that no one is allowed to get ahead of the group, that the sequencing is constructive, and that the objectives are given in simple, easy to remember language.

I know, not that revolutionary, but for a teacher of older students it came as somewhat of a shock when the results came in so easily.

To Begin:

• Five students in a group.
• Four groups.
• Two different assignments in the room.
• One assignment per group.

To Solve:

• Five objectives.
• One per group member.
•  Each designed to accelerate the brainstorm process, but also support the structure of the activity.

Observations
Each group met the objectives at a pace that worked for them.  Though the assignments were different, the structure for completing the assignment was left intact which allowed for easy guidance as students ran into road-blocks, or had questions.  Students who had the responsibility of guiding the first objective were being prodded by the student who had the second objective to do a good job and complete it quickly because they were waiting to take leadership for the next objective.

There was evidence of strong intrinsic motivation in the students, there was less disruption in the large room. There was more focus on the work in front of them and consequently there was more success.  Each student was granted space to be creative and work in ways that brought their personality and strengths to the group, but there wasn't so much room that they had no idea where to start, or became "overly creative".  There was accountability to each other, and I'm pleased to say that I was able to do this all in half the amount of time the second go-round.




Mystery Tales by Thomas Currie is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at docs.google.com.

Technology Abuse: A Solution?

One of the biggest problems we encountered with technology use in our school last year was the abuse of the physical technology itself.  Keys were being pulled off to be reorganized as a prank.  Students were finding ways to change the accessibility options to confuse less computer-literate students and ultimately their profiles were becoming corrupted due to an overwhelming tendency of students wanting to "personalize" their profiles in Windows.

I didn't encounter this problem in my classes... what I mean is, I did not notice this activity happening in my class, just the frustration that my students had having to deal with the ramifications of these behaviours happening in other classes.

So what was the difference?

I believe it comes from two things:

1. Having looked into Sugata Mitra's SOLE project research I have determined that the best course of action when giving students access to computers they do not own (particularly at the upper-middle class middle school level) is to assign one computer per four students.  This tends to allow students to self govern and does seem to keep them on-task and less likely to personalize.  This is particularly important for times of student-directed research.
2. Currently I am working with students on creating personal reflections.  I have had the students create an outline of what they wish to create first, and on paper, and then submit to me their ideas and explain which technology they would like to use to create the final version of the project.  This limits the amount of time they have access to the computers, and also ensures that they have a plan of action before they ever log-on.  Students are using computers now to enhance their personal responses, if the computer is the appropriate tool, and the use of the computer is happening in a more responsible manner.  Most importantly students do not appear to be "killing time" before they can take the project home to work on.

My criticism of practices that I'm seeing elsewhere is best summed up by an allegory:
When you hand a hammer to a student and say use this, they will, but not necessarily for what you intended.  If you hand them a nail and a piece of wood they'll choose the hammer because it's the correct tool to put the two together.

In conclusion, may I encourage you with this: Don't hand students technology because you want them to use the technology, hand them the project and have them choose the technology to use.  In the meantime it is your responsibility to model as many different TOOLS as you can in your lessons.