School’s out for summer. It’s time for the Pocketbooks haiku challenge.

Haiku: a Japanese verse form. Three lines, 17 syllables in the pattern 5, 7, 5. Usually expresses a single thought, feeling or idea. Can become an addictive pastime.

DRRRRING! scrape, whoop, push, shove.
Quiet falls, breathing gently…
…school’s out for summer.

My end of term haiku aims to capture something of that moment when the building empties of students for the summer break and everything is transformed.

Competition
This week and next we’re running a School’s Out For Summer Haiku Competition. The first prize is a 5* holiday to 5 Teachers’ Pocketbooks of your choice and a pack of 12 Pocketbooks postcards.  Four runners up will each receive a pack of postcards. (You can check out the full range of Pocketbooks and the full range of postcards on our website: www.teacherspocketbooks.co.uk)

How to enter
Send us your original haiku (see rules above) on the topic School’s out for Summer.  Ideally you will post it here on our blog, but if you’re too shy to share you can email your entry, along with your email address to info@teacherspocketbooks.co.uk

Closing date: Midnight, August 6th 2010.
Winners will be notified by August 13th 2010

I look forward to reading your poems

Pocketbook Linda

Interview with Drama for Learning author Brian Radcliffe

In today’s interview, Drama for Learning Pocketbook author Brian Radcliffe tells us about his teaching career and his involvement in promoting drama techniques and brain-friendly learning.

Author Brian Radcliffe

Can you tell us a little about yourself?

I am a writer and teacher who has specialised both in the delivery of innovative assemblies and the use of drama techniques to promote active learning. For 12 years I was minister of a Baptist church, focusing particularly on culturally relevant communication.  Since 1998 I have been a part-time member of staff at Fallibroome High School, a high-achieving Specialist Performing Arts School in Cheshire.

What was your first job?

I began as an English and Drama teacher at an 11-18 comprehensive in Nottinghamshire. It was the year that the school leaving age was raised to 16 and the school was a newly created combo from a boys’ secondary modern, a girls’ secondary modern and a mixed comprehensive. The school was located on three sites and we were taxied to and fro!

How did that lead to where you are now, and to your interest in this subject/topic?

I was heavily influenced by changing horses six years later to become a church leader. Working outside the conventional education world, yet still teaching across an age group from 3 to 93, allowed me to experiment widely.

How have things changed in this field since you first became involved in it?

Drama has become both a discrete curriculum subject and recognised as a series of techniques for use across the curriculum.

How do you see it developing in the next 5-10 years?

As we learn more about how the brain works and learning styles then I would hope that drama techniques become more and more widely used as they are so ‘brain friendly’.

What changes would you like to see?

A less prescriptive curriculum that allows time for teachers to experiment (and fail a little) and develop their teaching styles.

Professionally, what has been your most satisfying or inspiring moment or achievement?

The following account of a moment I’ll always remember was published in a TES Best and Worst feature in 16/02/07. I’d like to share it with you here:

Jamie had always been small, the runt of the litter. In school he was the victim of jokes, the bullies’ slave, the last picked for the football team. In Drama no-one actually chose to work with him; Splodge was his inevitable partner, Hardy to his Laurel.

We’d discussed child labour in Victorian England. The task was to create a mime of two chimney sweeps gingerly climbing, using body language to convey the appalling conditions. Twin vertical spotlights in a darkened studio created the chimney.

Splodge understood his job perfectly. He was the immoveable base. Jamie began to ascend, using Splodge like a climbing frame, his body twisting and contorting. With knotted muscles he hauled his partner after him, ever higher through the intricate bends of the brickwork, although they never actually rose above the studio floor.

The class was engrossed. Through Jamie’s climb they relived the terror, the struggle and the pain. His desperation to succeed was the story of his life. Only the small, the insignificant, shrugging off the bruises and grazes, could truly know the abuse. And the class recognised this.

With a final burst of energy Jamie hauled himself onto Splodge’s shoulders, raised his arms into the cone of white light as if reaching for heaven and, eyes closed, basked in the glow of succeeding.

There was a second of silence.

Then the class roared.

Moving on to your Pocketbook, what was the hardest thing about writing the Drama & Learning Pocketbook?

The stringent editorial parameters. There were many rewrites until I got it right!

And the most satisfying?

The high quality end product.

What did you learn in the process?

That I am a better writer than I am a teacher.

Available from Teachers' Pocketbooks at £7.99

Which elements of your book have teachers found most helpful?

The book has been integral to the whole process of CPD courses delivered by the school where I teach. A copy is given to all those who attend. Different subject specialists find different parts relevant to them. In fact, it’s the sheer variety of the techniques that makes the book work.

Thinking about professional development then, what are your top tips for teachers?

I would encourage fellow teachers to understand the way the brain works and to work with it rather than against it.

(Note from ed: Look out for the Learning & the Brain Pocketbook due to be published in January 2011)

What key attributes would you advise teachers new to the profession to acquire or nurture?

I believe it’s important to have the courage to experiment and to give yourself permission to fail. It’s part of the learning process for us as well as the kids.

What advice would you give to teachers who want to develop their expertise in Drama?

Do it!

What have you learnt recently that has contributed to your own professional development?

I’m trying to understand and utilise the concepts lying behind co-operative learning techniques.

And finally, what are you working on at the moment?

I’m developing a set of ideas for using drama techniques in RE.

Brian’s Drama for Learning Pocketbook is available at £7.99 + p&p, from our website www.teacherspocketbooks.co.uk or via email: sales@teacherspocketbooks.co.uk or phone: 01962 735573

Drama for Learning

The Tony Awards

When I was writing this blog the winners of the American Theatre Wing’s ‘Tony’ awards were being announced. (Well done to Catherine Zeta-Jones for best performance by a leading actress in a musical.) The award is named in honour of Antoinette Perry (1888-1946), an actress, director and producer (quite something for a woman in those days) and was first awarded in 1947 for distinguished stage acting and technical achievements.  In the first two years the winners received a scroll and a small memento -  a gold money clip for men and a compact for women. For more information visit the Tony website.

Drama in Schools

Most teachers feel that their job requires them to be at least part actor. Acting skills are called on daily to get through some lessons and to deal effectively with a range of situations, and, let’s face it, being with a large group of students who are looking at you expectantly requires a degree of performance, whether you’re centre stage or directing from the wings. But, in fact, drama has a much bigger role to play in schools. It’s a role that Brian Radcliffe, author of the Drama for Learning Pocketbook, is passionate about – drama as a tool for learning right across the curriculum. As he says:

A drama-based activity is student-centred. It’s a TOGETHER way of learning. TOGETHER, students:

• Engage with different personal perceptions and values
• Listen to and challenge one another
• Explore new horizons
• Negotiate compromises and the best fit
• Provide mutual support
• Give feedback and review
• Create synergy

Drama can bring a number of processing centres in the brain (sometimes referred to in lateral terms for simplicity) into action:

Left Brain                   Right Brain

Problem-solving          The big picture

Sequencing                   Imagination

Detail                             Music

Logic                               Rhythm

Analysis                         Colour

Ideas

Drama for Learning Pocketbook

Brian Radcliffe has over 30 years’ experience in teaching, training and lecturing, from pre-school to adult education. He has specialised in implementing the use of drama as a teaching resource across the curriculum.  In his Pocketbook he presents seven banks of drama techniques and explains the aspects of learning they each enhance. He shares more than 150 creative ideas for using these techniques in primary and secondary classrooms in both cross-curricular and single subject contexts. If you are apprehensive about using drama in your classroom, there’s a helpful opening section of drama games as a way of easing you into things.

Drama for Learning Pocketbook £7.99

To give you a broader flavour of the content, here are a few of my favourite activites selected from across the Pocketbook:

1. Drama Games

As a mental warm up this is a great game. I have played it using the names of pop bands:

Countries (or names of characters/sports stars etc) .

The first student names a country. A second student names (within a given countdown) a country beginning with the last letter of the previous country and so on. The countdown adds playful pressure.

Eg: Ireland Denmark Kazakhstan Norway, and so on around the group.

2. Narrative

A narrative is an account of a series of events and it occurs in many forms in the curriculum. With drama techniques these events can be enacted in a multi-sensory way. Narratives are great for reviewing previously learned processes or story lines or at the end of lessons as a round up. For example:

Battle of the Somme

Three students describe the battle in the following ways:

1. From British high command 10 miles behind the lines
2. As a German soldier looking over the top
3. As a rat in the bunker

By breaking something down into its composite elements and dramatising it, students get to examine each narrative event separately, consider the effect of intervention at key points and hypothesise about alternative outcomes.

3. Analogies (or ‘To put it another way…)

In a drama context, analogies ask students to transfer previous learning into another form or context, encouraging them to move beyond the activity of knowledge and understanding to application, analysis and synthesis. To create an analogy, students need to understand what has been taught.

TV Documentary

Students spend say 10-15 mins preparing to make a presentation of a topic in the style of a particular tv channel. Give students the basics:

• Two interviews giving opposing points of view
• An expert opinion ( in role)
• Re-enactment of events in mime or slo-mo
• Photographic evidence (still images)

Make available resources such as flip chart, OHP, etc

Less extrovert students are usually happy to read from a prepared script.

4. Dilemma and Options

Decision-making is a key skill for young people. The techniques under the heading ‘dilemmas and options’ offer a variety of ways to help students understand a range of options; to explore the consequences of different choices; to provide different structures within which students can demonstrate their personal decisions. Pupils get to express opinions in a verbal and non- verbal context and to make decisions publicly without peer group pressure and high visibility.

Conscience Alley

Following a class discussion, students form two lines representing different opinions. All students devise a sentence they will use to persuade the listener to choose their opinion. The listener then walks down the alley while classmates whisper their statements. The effect is to weigh up points of view before coming to a decision. Hearing whispers is more effective than shouting out opinions.

These are a just a few of the ideas in Brian’s book. Even if you’ve used some games before, it’s good to understand the rationale behind their use and to push yourself as a teacher to use more advanced techniques to put drama in the classroom to even greater effect.

In keeping with the theme, I’m ending my blog first in the style of Ilsa in the film Casablanca:

‘Good-bye, Reader, God bless you.’

and now in the role of Scarlett in Gone with the wind:

‘I’ll think of a way to get my readers back. After all, tomorrow is another day!’

Jenny

PS Look out next week for our interview with Brian Radcliffe. In the meantime, if you’d like to buy the Drama for Learning Pocketbook you can do so through our website www.teacherspocketbooks.co.uk or by emailing sales@teacherspocketbooks.co.uk or by calling us on 01962 735573.