Term 3 Week 2 - Guest Blogger #2 Hanani & En Ting (2T1)

Helo!! I'm Nur Hanani and beside me is En Ting… we don't know why we love drama.. But we love love love it!!! Very enjoyable and very fun... During English Lesson, we will all show our talent to the class.. We played a lot of games such as Freeze Frame and lots more....I forgot some of the games because we were having a lot of fun... We enjoy acting the most but we are really shy to act... the most favorite part is our teacher, Miss Islin and Miss Feng, they plan very well... and they also bring some of us to see a play or a musical by other schools!! Yippee... that is what we all are hoping for since we are going to perform on a big stage next year. I hope we will do very well in our performance... When it is English period, they all will say "Yeh!!! It is drama time!!" We all are glad that we are having drama class!!


What about me, En Ting? When we were in Sec 1, we never do activities like this!! But sometimes the class would make noise so that is very annoying.... Drama is supposed to be fun and interesting but sometimes the teachers have to stop the drama class... I am happy that we do not need to do any practices after school. We want to thank our teachers, Miss Islin and Miss Feng, for creating the games and the enjoyment... thanks for everything!!!

Term 3 Week 2 Guest BloggerShaffy & Fadzly (2T1)

Heylo, I’m Shaffy, and my friend here is Fazdly. We are best friends and we are happy and enjoying ourselves during our English lessons, because we are doing something different for this year. My teacher is going to do drama and English together for the lessons. On 2 July, our lessons are conducted in the Black Box! We have fun because our classmates were acting in front of all pupils in our class! Then we learnt something about drama, like what should we do while we are acting. For me, Shaffy, I have never had a thinking to do drama in my life because to me, it is like a girlish thing to do, coz I’m a type of guy who likes sport only, but as time goes by in the drama lesson and English lesson, I actually learn a lot about drama and it is something I am getting very interested in. And I’m very happy about it. Thanks to my teacher Miss Islin and Miss Feng (=



For me, Fazdly, I have fun during my drama lessons, coz my teacher is very kind to do this drama programme! On 3 July, we were told to get five people in a group so we formed a group. I, Rizwan, Shafiqah, Zakirah and Hadi in one group - but something made me angry! You know what? My teacher ask us to shift coz our group, all are Malay, so my best friend Rizwan, he was sent off to other group, and Zakira too. After few minutes, I try to work it out with my new group, and at last we made it. We were told to act first, and during the acting it was smooth and steady. Tata (=

Term 3 Week 1 Update: A Promising Start

This being the first week back from the long hols, we wasted no time and got all our students ripe and ready to jump right back into the swing of things...



Before getting started, a short Improv session on various scenarios derived from the comprehension passage that they are about to embark on for the week (they won't be told what the passage is about yet) is done, with students randomly chosen to dramatise the scene (one short scene is derived from each paragraph of the passage) using elements of drama. They are only told their characters, their objective for the scene and the setting - the rest was up to them.

Character motivation and scene development were really rich and interesting, students tapped a lot into their own experiences and perceptions of the situation given to them, and showed their creativity in developing their scenes and very telling insight when dramatising their understanding of the chosen issues and situations.

Neil, Shaffy, Dahliana, Thaqifah and Hanani preparing to simulate a scene in the Principal's office where teachers are proposing to the Principal to bring their EL NT class out for an Overseas Learning Journey at the end of the year.


Basil, Firdaus and Vijen re-enact a scene of students in a gang planning to pick a fight outside school with another gang of students and talking through why they should and should not go through with the plan.


The class is always structured into a Learning Circle with performers in the middle - after the scene is finished, the class will be facilitated through a general critique of character motivation, authenticity, issues raised, acting styles, and a hotseat with a chosen character will follow to allow the audience to interact with the character and inject third party perspective into the scene.


Umar, Iryuni and Md Noh show their Improv of a scene where the student (Iryuni) is caught for smoking, and her father (Md Noh) is going to the Principal (Umar) to explain his accountability for his daughter's behaviour.


Strategies like Hotseating, Tableaux, Role Play, Spontaneous Improv and FreezeFrames not only made lessons come alive, it gave the students a platform for expression and understanding the text in new ways that was not available to them before.

It gives them a reason to engage with the text (comprehension passage) in ways that they never realised before, and it became easier for them to make meaning from what they were reading because they were experiencing it, and thus becoming more involved in the text without them even realizing it as they delved into scene adaption, character motivation and elements of drama like setting, mood, tone etc with minimal prompting from the teacher - like fish in water!


Ibrahim studying the passage given intently without prompting - thumbs up!


Rashmi and Ibrahim leading their group in deriving elements of drama for their assigned paragraph from the passage and discussing how to dramatise their paragraph with their own interpretation of character motivation, scene development, moving the plot and storyline and showing the interaction between characters and the issues surfaced.


Syafiqah, Hadi and LuYao respond to Shaffy's ideas as they engage in their group's creation of their dramatisation based on their assigned paragraph.


The teachers, needless to say, were very pleased with the flow of the lesson and the almost natural way the students seemed to take to poring over the text in their groups. Discussion was lively and flowing, with almost all groups actively engaging themselves and their group members with the paragraph they had been assigned to, and the room was a constant harmonious buzz of engaged and interested learners who were learning without even knowing it.

The main objective of all this is to, of course, give students the skills to better approach the answering of comprehension questions once they were able to get a better understanding of the text given. Through drama strategies, their interaction with the text took on a different level of engagement, one that was intimate and interconnected across themes - that would allow them to tackle not just the EL NT exam paper common 5 WH- questions that follow a comprehension passage, but even other components of the paper that require an understanding of the reading material presented - cloze passage, stimulus questions, even narrative writing.

Comprehension questions were assigned as a homework task to maximise student-teacher interaction time, peer learning, experiencing and making meaning from the comprehension passage through drama techniques and benefitting from 'live' peer & teacher feedback in real-time during the EL class.

We didn't hear anybody complaining though :)







Looks like things are falling into place for the SWiSS TLLM Drama programme ;)

Upcoming posts will feature sample student work, reflections and student guest bloggers - stay tuned!

The First One

Well, as the saying goes, nothing ventured, nothing gained...

So here we are. At the brink of a new venture. How will we fare, you ask?

The best is yet to be. For sure.

--

To our 1T1 and 2T1 students, from all of us at Team SWiSS:

Congratulations for facing all that has come to pass, and we continue to believe in you to be all that you can still be for the future.

Keep moving forward and don't give up.

Feel free to leave your comments after each post, we look forward to your feedback!