Drama - Storytelling

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I was absolutely engaged by Victoria's story during this week's lecture (despite having read the story many times before, in many different forms) and am going to focus this journal entry on the traits of a good storyteller.

We discussed this a little bit in the lecture and talked about how a good storyteller:

• Embellishes the story, to make it seem larger than life.
• Varies their voice (pitch/tone/volume/range/pauses) to engage the audience.
• Makes the story their own - puts their own spin on it.
• Connects directly with the audience, by being aware of the audience's reactions and telling the story accordingly, and also by embroidering the story with facts relevant to the audience (eg. he had two younger brothers, just like you).

We also discussed, in the lecture, how there is more than one way to tell a great story. So, some storytellers vary their volume a lot, instantly engaging the audience, whereas other equally brilliant storytellers consistently use a very quiet voice, weaving the story around their audience like a fine, silvery net.

We were then were treated to Victoria telling us the story of the selkie woman. What particularly struck me about Victoria's stoytelling was the way she used body-language to enhance her voice. She paced back and forwards across the classroom, or sat down and stood up to mimic the actions and emotions of the characters. When she paused the storytelling, she also paused in her movements, which greatly increased the suspense and tension. And she gave us details of the characters not just in the story, but in her movements and stance (for example, the singing and dancing of the selkie **). All of this greatly enhanced the storytelling.

However, this is not to say that all good storytelling must utilize vibrant body-language. Some of the best stories I have ever heard came via The Moth, which records true stories told live. As I don't live in America I unfortunately have not been able to hear any of their stories live and instead have listened to their podcast. These stories are all absolutely engaging, and are spoken but not seen. I can't see the storytellers and I have no idea what body language they are using***. 

We were also encouraged, during the lecture, to think about good storytellers we know, and to talk about what makes them so engaging. The storyteller in my family is definitely my father. When I was a child he would regale with me with stories about magic paintbrushes, talking cars and aliens (which I believe he made up on the spot). He used all the 'standard' storytelling tricks - varying his voice, pausing to create suspense and embellishing details to make the story more personal.

But I believe I found him so engaging because the stories were tailored specifically for me. He wasn't telling the stories because he had a story he wanted other people to hear - he was telling the stories because he wanted to engage me in a fictional world.****

One final note about storytelling. I did a quick google before writing this post, to see if I could find any guides for good storytelling. While I didn't actually find what I was looking for, I did discover that there is a world storytelling day, and I also found that there is a NSW branch of the Australian Storyteller's Guild, which has a list of storytelling resources.

* I've added paintings of storytellers to this post to make it less text-heavy. I found the images via google search. I specifically only chose paintings that looked at least a hundred years old, to avoid copyright issues. Isn't it interesting that in all of these paintings, the storyteller is male...

** Interesting side-story. I did my prac at Concord West, where I saw Ms. Ryan teach a drama lesson, after undergoing professional experience at Sydney Uni. The drama lesson was focused around the selkie legend and, during the lesson, I saw the students dance exactly in a certain specific way. It was only during the storytelling lecture that I realized that Victoria may have been the one to run the professional experience as the students danced in the same way that she did. Clearly this combination of movement and song struck a chord with them!

***It is interesting to note that since I was not a member of the original audience, the storytelling does not connect directly with me - but I still find these stories fascinating. Yet all the other storytelling I have experienced connected directly with me, as a part of the audience, and most definitions I have found of storytelling seem to define it as something that must occur face-to-face, so there is a direct link between the audience and the storyteller (eg. see the definition on the homepage of the NSW storyteller's guild). So do recorded stories still count as storytelling?

****In comparison to my dad, my mum is a terrible storyteller. Her pacing is hopeless, there's no sense of tension, and everything she says is incredibly boring. And I think the main reason why she's such a bad storyteller is because she doesn't have this link with the audience. Whenever she tells a story, it's because she's got something burning inside her that she just has to share with anyone nearby, whether or not they want to listen. Her storytelling is not focused around the audience, or the link between the audience and the storyteller. Instead her storytelling is primarily focused around something she finds interesting. 

Music - Teaching with youtube

In class this week we were given a link to http://wrightstuffmusic.com/ which is an absolutely incredible resource.
While browsing it I discovered the Music Video Series which contains a list of engaging music videos that are available on youtube.

This made me think of another activity we did in class this week - listening to music with a "music teacher's" ear. For this entry I'll pick some of my favourite music videos (from the Music Video Series and from elsewhere) and work out which elements of music they'd be good for teaching.

Could be used to teach:

• Duration
• Changing tempo
• Difference between beat and rhythm (the lower parts have the beat, the higher parts have a different rhythm).
• Metre (strong and weak beats, recognising when beats are accented)
• Dynamics
• Distinguishing between loud and soft. 
• Discriminating changes in loud and soft and degrees of loud and soft.
• Recognising that dynamics provide contrast in music.
• Structure
• Recognising patterns that are the same.
• Recognising repetition and contrast within music.
• Recognising that music is made up of sections.

Could be used to teach:

• Tone Colour
• Classifying sound sources into categories and comparing the tone colours of these groups.

Could be used to teach:

• Pitch
• Distinguishing between high and low pitch.
• Recognising the melodic contour of pitch patterns.
• Dynamics
• Distinguishing between loud and soft. 
• Discriminating changes in loud and soft and degrees of loud and soft.
• Recognising that dynamics provide contrast in music.

Could be used to teach:

• Duration
• Recognising sounds, silences and patterns of sounds and silences.
• Recognising strong and weak beats and hence metre.
• Pitch
• Distinguishing between high and low pitch.
• Recognising the melodic contour of pitch patterns.
• Recognising that combinations of pitch make harmony.
• Dynamics
• Distinguishing between loud and soft. 
• Discriminating changes in loud and soft and degrees of loud and soft.
• Recognising that dynamics provide contrast in music.

Could be used to teach:

• Tone Colour
• Describing a variety of sound sources and sound production methods, and the tone colours produced.
• Classifying sound sources into categories.
• Structure
• Recognising patterns that are the same and patterns that are different.
• Recognising repetition and contrast within music.
• Recognising small sections within a piece of music.
• Recognising that music is made up of large and small sections.

Can be used to teach:

• Structure
• Recognises that music is made up of large sections and small sections.
• Recognises repetition and contrast within music.
• Tone Colour
• Exploring a variety of sound sources and sound production methods.
• Describing and combining tone colours of various sound sources in their own work and the work of others.

Snippets of this could be used to inspire song composition and to begin teaching about chords. Only parts of the video could be used, however, as it includes a bit of swearing.

Music - Linking with other KLAs

This week in music we discussed how to link music with other KLAs. When talking about this with other people, I found that most of us had some vague ideas about how to link music with other subjects, but since we didn't know either the Creative Arts syllabus, or most of the other syllabuses, well enough, we weren't sure if the ideas we had fitted in with the syllabus content, or if there were appropriate outcomes for the appropriate stages for our ideas.

My favourite idea for linking music with other KLAs was creating a musical instrument in science and my goal for this journal entry will be to work out how I can fit this in with the Science and Creative Arts syllabus content.

My first thought is that there might be something in stage 3 science about how the size of a sound wave effects the pitch of the sound created. So I'm going to start by looking in that part of the syllabus.

I decide to look in the Draft NSW K-10 Science syllabus, as that is the syllabus that I will need to use when I am teaching in schools.

Unfortunately, I can't find anything in Stage 3 science  related to sound. I also can't find anything in Stage 2 related to sound. But in Stage 1, under the Physical World outcome I find:

Science Understanding

• Light and sound are produced by a range of sources and can be sensed.

Students:
- use their sense of touch to feel vibrations from familiar objects and infer that sound is made when an object vibrates such as vocal chords, a stringed instrument, rubber bands
- produce different sounds from familiar objects using actions such as striking, blowing, scraping and shaking
- compare the loudness and pitch of sounds made by musical instruments and the actions used to make the sound

These all link quite clearly with music and have potential for a joint science/music lesson!

Next I need to go to Stage 1 Music in the creative arts syllabus and see which outcomes or indicators might link best to these science indicators. The following indicators seem appropriate:

MUS1.2
- explores ways of making different sounds on instruments or sound souces.
MUS1.4
- identifies simple musical features of music eg. pitch, tone colour etc.

Using the science and music indicators I could possibly plan lessons around:

• Rubber band orchestra.
  Students can, as a class, pluck rubber bands to perform a piece of music together and then can write up a procedure about how to get the best sort of sound from a rubber band (this would show the students' understanding of how vibrations create sound).
  
  
• Music storeroom exploration.
  Students need to pick three instruments from the music storeroom and play with the instruments, working out two different ways to play each of the instruments. This can be followed by a class discussion about what made a strong sound, what made a weak sound, and what exactly it is that happens to the instruments when a sound is made.
  
  
• Sort the instruments.
  Students are grouped, and each group is given a number of pitched musical instruments. The students must then sort the instruments by pitch, either into groups (high, medium, low) or along a scale, depending on ability.
  
  
• Make a recycled instrument.
  Students are given jars, sticks, rice, string, rubber bands and other recycled equipment. They are to design and make their own musical instrument, then are to present their instrument to the class, using appropriate language (pitch, timbre etc.) to describe the sound their instrument produces and how it works.
  
  

Drama - Mantle of the expert + teacher in role

I really enjoyed exploring teacher in role and mantle of the expert this week, and these are tools that I would like to use in my own classroom.

As a student in the tutorial, I loved the sense of sponteneity and freedom that came with donning the mantle of the expert. I felt like I had the freedom to express whatever crazy ideas I came up with, no matter how bizarre, because everyone was in role (including the teacher!) and so nobody could tell me I was wrong.

In chapter 4 of Beyond the Script, we are warned that this sort of lesson requires careful planning. A lot of this planning comes from knowing your class, what they're interested in, how they'll behave in certain circumstances etc. This isn't exactly something I can think about just yet, as I don't have a class :)

But other parts of the planning come from setting the scene appropriately in a way that clearly defines the teacher's role, sets up the setting and the problem, and gives the students an idea of their roles.

This week, we saw two examples of scene-setting. The contaminated spaceship and the DEC advertising campagin. Each of these examples

• Gave us (the students) a context: Where are we? When are we?
• Gave us a problem: What are we doing here? What do we care about? Where is this all going?
• Gave the teacher a role.
• Gave us a role - but an open-ended role, so that we know what type of person we are (someone who works at an advertising company) but are free to fill out the specific details.

I thought it would be fun (and good practice) to do some scene-setting of my own (with the goal of including all the relevant information, in an engaging, natural way).

The green children
I want to let you all know that the Sunday Times really appreciates you all coming here. We're hoping to publish a special edition focusing on the mystery of the green children and I know all of you have something to offer. Some of you have been intimately involved with those poor green children, and I'm really looking forward to hearing what you have to say. I've also invited some scientisits, folk-lore experts, priests and historians to this meeting. The head editor is hoping that by the end of today we'll have gotten to the heart of the matter, and the Sunday Times will be able to let the world know all about what's really going on.

Designing a new uniform
As the representative of _______ school I'd really like to thank Zing Design for taking on our project. We've been wanting to have our school uniform re-designed for a while now and we're delighted to be working with such talented fashion designers! The school principle asked me to pass the following on to you all:
- We want both a summer and a winter uniform.
- The uniform should be modern and trendy.
- But, the principle can be a bit old-fashioned, so the uniform also needs to look like a standard, traditional uniform and needs to use the school colours (blue and yelllow).
- We want the overall cost of the uniform to remain as low as possible, so please keep this in mind when choosing materials.

By the end of today I'd like to have five draft designs to take back and show to the school community.

Antarctic blizzard
I'm afraid I have bad news. This blizzard is so strong that we've completely lost all outside communication. I haven't been able to contact the main base at all. So I guess we'll just have to wait the storm out. We all knew there was a risk of this when we came to the inland Antarctic outpost. I'll be spending my time trying to get the communications system back online, which means that everything else will be up to you guys. You're all scientists, and all specialists in the field, so I'm sure you can work out how to make our food and water supplies last. We'll also have to sort out how to generate enough heat and electricity until the storm is over. Perhaps the best way to start would be to compile a list of supplies. I'll be heading back to the communications room, best of luck to all of us.

To build or not to build
Local council members, we've gathered here today to vote on Cole's proposed new shopping centre. I'm sure you've all seen the proposed plans [perhaps a sheet with the details may be handed out as part of the drama] but just to summarize - Coles is seeking development approval to build a new, five-level shopping centre in the area that is currently Queen Elizabeth Park. They've proposed to include a children's play area as part of the shopping centre, though they have no plans to replant the trees they will have to cut down.

After discussing Coles' proposal, we'll hold a vote at the end of this meeting. We can either vote to accept the proposal, to reject it outright, or to reject it and suggest some changes. There's no need to write anything down during the meeting as I will be taking minutes.

Final note
Both of the examples of mantle of the expert that I've seen this week have been structured as discussion forums, where the students get to take on a role and speak with authority about a certain subject, possibly arguing for a certain point of view. I am not sure if there are other ways to give students the mantle of the expert, and to challenge them by taking some authority away from the teacher. A quick google finds me mantleoftheexpert.com but it currently appears to be down. I also found this website, which has ideas for using mantle of the expert as the scaffold around which an integrated unit of work is planned. This looks really interesting and is something that I'd love to try implementing in the classroom.