Week 12 Reflection

 This week was about creative drama based teaching.  I learned that there is a difference between theater and creative drama as well as different types of creative drama.  While theater is more focused on putting on the show, creative drama is more focused on the process and learning involved to create and improvise.  This can be used by the teacher or students.  I think using drama techniques as a teaching tool is a way to really get the students involved in their learning and maintain attention.  It also allows students to have more control over how they learn.  The article we read gave examples of students acting out different scenes and by doing that they are more likely to visualize and understand the lesson than when they hear or read about different time periods.  Giving students the opportunity to experience the creative drama can make the lesson something that they can remember because they experienced it and saw it in real life.  I would use this similar lesson when learning about social studies.  The student can be given the freedom to create scenes and act out events that have happened or be placed in the hot seat and other students can ask questions.  This can be altered based on what grade.  Younger grades can use this during a community helpers unit and older grades could use this when learning about presidents or historical figures.  The students could find a picture to print out and could wear that picture when they are pretending to be the person.  This could also be incorporated into other areas such as math as they pretend to be a chef and follow a recipe or art as they are given a poster board to create the scenery they will act in front of.  It can be incorporated into literacy when they pretend to be characters from a book.  Students could be given creative freedom to create the scenery or costumes, such as giving them blank hats that they could decorate.