Week one - introductory session

On Monday, I went to visit room 17 to introduce myself and play some introductory games. Rather than bring the student teachers along to this preliminary visit, I went alone. I find it is best to visit the class solo the first time, and then act as a 'bridge' to the larger group. 15 of us arriving en masse might be rather intimidating!

I started the session by asking children to induct me into the rules of their classroom. What would I need to know? Children told me about not running, not playing on computers over lunchtime, putting up your hand to speak and about signals their teacher uses to get the attention of the class. I made a point of complimenting the group on how well they obviously understood these rules. As we played together, children volunteered other rules to do with safety and fairness (e.g. not only choosing your friends to work with). It was clear how much work the classroom teacher has already done with this group on building the social health of the group.

As we moved into introductory drama games, it was pleasing to note that children were already familiar with most of the activities I wanted to do... The classroom teacher is an ex student of mine and I'd like to think she remembers some of the activities from her time in my class?

We played Saxton and Miller's 'warm up the imagination' game, which encouraged some conversation about where the imagination is located - between us we decided we needed to warm up the brain, the whole body and the heart. The next activity involved pretending to hold a delicious icecream - and describing to a partner what the icecream looks like and tastes like. As children did this simple mime, I was able to check out whether any of them seemed to be struggling to buy in to the pretence. We played the 'props' game, where students transformed a scarf into a range of other things. All the time, I commented and complimented the students on their controlled use of movement and the clarity of their showing.

The final activity was "into the hole" - a diagnostic game I learned from Allana Taylor at the Mantle of the Expert conference in 2009. This activity is deliberately rather 'open ended' and loose, being based on child-led, socio-dramatic play. Unlike most drama within Mantle of the Expert, this game involves "lived through" drama in which children engage and interact in a real time adventure. A sign is used to suggest a 'hole' in the floor (in this case we used the scarf again) and negotiations begin about what we might do with it. I think my only prompt was to say "hmmm, looks deep"....

The children's play involved all members of the class entering the hole (via a long rope). After feeling the texture of the walls, and feeding this back, students explored and improvised an adventure. Ultimately this culminated in the discovery of number of things: there was a treasure chest full of dynamite, a shiny red ruby hidden around one of the tunnels, a map showing the whole network of caves and perhaps most scary of all, there was a whole bunch of skeletons who seemed to want to chase us. Some of the boys were able to talk to one of the skeletons (I took on the role) and ask a few questions about life down in the caves - this helped divert them from their initial compulsion to attack the skeletons with swords! We found out some information but unfortunately had to leave the cave with more questions than answers. Back in the classroom, children were asking "why were the skeletons down there?" "Was it something to do with a war?" "Was there anything engraved on the treasure chest lid to give a clue?" "Why would someone put old dynamite in a treasure chest?" "What happens with old dynamite - does it go off?"

I felt that I got quite a lot of information about the children by doing this task. I was able to see who were the natural 'leaders' of the group, who took a supporting role, and who was most comfortable following. A few children stood out as very readily accepting the fiction and going along with others' ideas, whilst others struggled a bit. I could also see how for some boys in particular, guns and shooting were a recurring theme. From my observations, every child was involved and engaged in the game.