Dance/Drama in Langauge

One of the greatest take aways from my Drama/Dance classes at Brock is realizing that there are so many opportunities for cross curricular learning. Below are some of the ways that dance/drama were incorporated into Language.

One of the group presentations I most enjoyed was called the Drama of Voting where students used role play to host an election at different levels of government. Certain students were assigned a role (Prime Minter candidate, Premier candidate or Mayor candidate) and they had to write a campaign speech to rally for votes. Other students in the class had to develop questions that they would ask to each candidate regarding policy issues. At the end, students were allowed to actually vote for the winners. I liked this activity because it differentiated the roles. Students who felt more comfortable in drama could be a candidate while students who are not so comfortable could be in the audience asking questions. They connected this lesson to language in presenting and oral language but it could also be connected to social studies and the formation of governments. 

When my group presented our drama lesson we focused on Goldilocks and the Three Bears. We divided the class into groups and gave each group a character to focus on. They had to complete character mapping to establish the character traits and defend a specific position using collective role. They then came together as a group and had a debate about if Goldilocks was guilty of breaking into their house. They took on the role of their character and spoke from a collective voice to defend their point of view. We focused on the writing component of language arts where students would have to complete a character map and write down their points using the voice of the character they were portraying considering how their character might talk, act, think and feel.


Finally we did an activity where the class was split into four quadrants and each space represent wind, fire, earth, and water. As we moved through the four quadrants we had to move based on the elements. When we were in the wind space many people used swaying and gentle motions as compared to the fire space where people were doing faster sharper motions to represent the crackle of the fire. This lesson was connected to FNMI learning and could be connected to the Language Arts and Social Studies curriculum. I liked this activity because it was clear to see how our movements changed as we moved from space to space.