Field Reflection

Field was a such a great experience. We did two lessons that specifically focused on the Arts and other lessons where the arts were integrated. The students really enjoyed them. We were in a classroom that had a very traditional way of learning, a lot of lectures, and even more work sheets.

Our first lesson we did was to help them wrap up their Colonial section in Social Studies. We read a childrens book about the colonial peoples trek to a new land and the work it took to make this their home. We then took several of the pages that we felt had the best potential to pull movement from, and helped the students portray different parts of the book. It was really fun to see them explore social studies and dance in a different way then they ever had before!

The next lesson that was focused on Arts was our theatre lesson we did the last day. The part that I took charge of was having them do a couple warm up circle games. First we played energy ball. This was really fun for them because its a simple but really fun activity. When a student would get really into the game and have a lot of energy with catching and throwing the energy ball we would stop and focus on why we liked that, and how that would be important in theatre.

The next game we played was catch the leader. This is the game were everyone is following a leader doing hand motions and such, and there is a person who doesn't know who the leader is and has to guess. This was really fun because they liked trying to stump someone, and all students were able to actively participate. This game had a lot of things that we could learn from it and apply to actual theatre. That was nice because not only were they having fun but they were able to use higher order thinking by having to analyze this activity and tie it theatre as a whole.

It was so fun to be able to do these activities and see how excited the students would get about learning the same old subject in a new and interactive way. I think when I get my own classroom the arts is something I really want to focus on, and make a part of my students common learning.