Time: 6-8 weeks
This unit develops students' understanding of drama strategies and processes that may be used during contextual dramas.
Sample Topic: "The Natural World ? Canada Geese"
Suggested Resources:
Starter List of Activities
Teacher Note:
The following Starter List of Activities is intended to aid the teacher in planning mini-units and/or units. It is not possible to engage students in all of these activities. Teachers need to choose (or develop their own) introductory activities, main activities, and concluding activities to support students in exploring Our Environment. The activities in this starter list are described very briefly and are just a sample of the many activities that can be developed to explore the theme or topic. Refer to Planning the Drama for support in planning contextual dramas.
1. Introductory Activities
Research
Using books, the Internet, and other resources, encourage students to create a list of research questions about Canada geese such as:
Talk with students about the social structure and migration patterns of Canada geese. Discuss how Canada geese keep their babies in “day cares” (i.e., creches) with many of goslings to a couple of adults. Point out that geese fly in a V-formation so that they get more lift from the air currents of the geese in front and take turns when the leaders get tired. If one goose falls out of formation, one or two will fly off to see if the other is alright.
Whole group discussion
Ask the students what they would like best about their life if they were geese? What would they like least? What would they do every day?
Field trip
If possible, go to an area where geese are likely to be located. Encourage students to observe the geese and to identify as many birds and other living organisms as possible.
Invite students to talk about what they have noticed about geese and goslings and how they act toward each other. What do they look like? What might they feel like? How do they sound and move?
What do the students observe about the geese's habitat?
Teacher Note:
Teachers may choose to integrate this mini-unit with Grade 2 Science Units: Habitats and Plant Growth. Other options for integration include Grade 2 Music, Mini-unit: The Environment (Sample topic: Sounds All Around Us) and Grade 2 Visual Art, Mini-unit: Signs and Symbols, Sample Topic: Signals in Nature.
Visual art extension
Invite the students to create an installation of a wetland habitat in their classroom. Transform the room into a wetland with paper cattails on the walls and pictures of water creatures and water plants hanging from the ceiling and desks.
Ask the students to decide what features they would want in a nest if students were Canada geese. Construct a big nest in the corner of the room out of blankets and cushions or boxes. Students might sit in it at relevant points in the drama, or students might sit in it to read stories. Incorporate into the nest natural and manufactured materials such as twigs, yarn, feathers, raffia, cotton batting, dried flowers, bits of cloth, and so on.
2. Main Activities
Structure a contextual drama about the new life of Canada geese goslings that are hatched in an urban park. Before the goslings learn to fly, they are rounded up and relocated to a rural wetland area.
Structure episodes in the drama to encourage students to imagine how the goslings deal with the roundup that takes them to other lakes to be released. How do the goslings face leaving home and making a new home? Can they enjoy the new lake as much as the old lake? Alternatively, follow the goslings' experiences on the annual migration.
Narrative/Mime/Parallel play
Narrate the hatching of the eggs as the students participate in mime and parallel play. As the goslings hatch, have each one look around and see its new environment.
Continue the parallel play exploring new actions students might do as goslings (e.g., taking their first steps on land, eating grass for the first time, learning to swim, and so on).
Teacher Note:
It is important for this drama that the goslings do not learn to fly until they get to their new home.
Role
With the students back in role as goslings, ask them to form a line with the student at the front of the line in role as a parent goose. Have the goslings all follow the front goose. Narrate for the students as the goslings take their first walk, with the parent showing the goslings how to walk on land, enter the water from the shore, swim, get food from under the water, and preen themselves. Switch leaders periodically, so that other students have an opportunity to be in role as the parent goose.
Teacher in role
In role as a mother or father goose, open a map of real or imaginary migration patterns marked with supplies of food, water, and wetlands.
On the map, draw the plans for the fall migration of the geese. Where and when will they migrate? Students may need to look in books about Canada geese to see what geese eat and what kinds of places are safe to land.
Option #1 – continue the drama by planning the migration route and creating the map with an ideal destination and stops along the way. Take the journey with various rest stops and explore different situations that arise along the way.
Option #2 – shift the focus of the drama onto the goslings being rounded up and relocated to a new home.
Meeting
Prior to a meeting of park employees, the teacher in role as a park official puts up a sign saying, “Park Meeting Tomorrow to Discuss New Home for Goslings”.
Teacher in role
Enter in role as an administrator of a large city park in which the Canada geese population has increased beyond capacity. Inform the students, who are in role as park employees, that due to overpopulation of geese in the park, the goslings must be rounded up before they learn to fly and transported to another location. The goslings will continue their growth at the new lake in the hope that, following the fall migration, they will return to their new environment rather than to the city.
Ask the park employees if they have any questions. As the employees ask questions, ensure that the move will benefit the geese in the long run. The park official might make comments about the move such as the following:
Journey/Writing in role
In role as goslings, invite the students to write and to share journal entries that were made by goslings born last year, saying how they were feeling about being taken away in the annual roundup.
Let the news of the roundup spread and be discussed. Teachers may ask some students to be in role as adult geese to share what they saw last year.
Teacher Information:
The news of the gosling roundup is intended to build tension that is a necessary element in drama.
Role
Brainstorm questions about which the goslings might be thinking. Students, in role as goslings in their day care creche, ask the adult goose (i.e., teacher in role) about the rumoured roundup. The goslings ask questions such as:
Whole group improvisations/Tableaux
Back in role, explore the “Roundup Day” scene. Build a group tableau of the goslings being rounded up. Include humans and geese alike. Then, have the students decide on the mode of transport and create a tableau showing that scene. Within the tableau, pause and ask students to talk with a friend about how they are feeling and what they are thinking during the journey. Finally, show a third tableau of the release of the birds.
3. Concluding Activities
Small group improvisations
Have small groups of students, in role as newly released goslings, explore the area and report to the large group what they have found, including food, water, and shelter. Will it be a good habitat for them?
Journal writing
Ask students to write in role as goslings, journal entries to say what the goslings think of their new homes.
Sample Topic: "Dinosaur Mysteries"
Suggested Resources:
Starter List of Activities
1. Introductory Activities
Research and read about dinosaurs. Observe the skeletal details, learn about dinosaur habitats, and discover characteristics of each type of dinosaur.
Teacher Note:
This mini-unit may be integrated with the Grade 2 Science Optional Unit: Dinosaurs, and the Visual Art Mini-unit: Imagination (Sample Topic: Dinosaurs).
Create dinosaur learning centres, displaying dinosaur books, puzzles, models, and pictures of fossils. In a visual art class, create a dinosaur mural.
Read stories about dinosaurs such as How Do Dinosaurs Say Good Night? View the video of the same title. The poem explores children's bedtime rituals by looking at what dinosaurs do not do at bedtime. For example, they do not moan, groan, shout, or pout as certain humans do.
2. Main Activities
Teacher in role/Meeting
Enter in role as the director of a new museum of paleontology. W elcome those present to the meeting. Tell the students that it is an exciting time for them all: that finally, following five years of intense planning and long hours of hard work, the new museum of paleontology is looking forward to opening its doors to the public.
Inform the students that the paleontology museum's grand opening is only a month away. Tell the museum staff (i.e., students in role) that they must make and discuss plans for the opening. The director needs to get progress reports from the various museum departments .
Teacher Note:
Depending on the experience and comfort level of the teacher and students, the teacher may provide the students with roles or have students brainstorm a list and choose roles. Alternatively, the episode may simply begin without such a discussion, allowing the students to assume roles of their choice as the drama unfolds.
During this meeting, the teacher in role can address the students formally using Ms. and Mr. and their actual surnames. In this part of the drama, the students are conferred with mantle of the expert.
Mantle of the expert
In role as the museum director, request reports from the paleontology teams on how close the displays and other museum arrangements are to being ready. Students' roles may include paleontologists, museum security guards, outside grounds crew, business management team, and so on.
Following the team reports, ask the staff to brainstorm promotional ideas that will make the public aware of the museum opening. Students in role might suggest television and radio advertising, newspaper stories and photographs, TV and radio interviews, and a poster campaign.
Thank the employees for their ideas and ask which promotion tasks the employees would like to prepare, either as individuals or in small groups. Adjourn the meeting, telling the staff that they are to meet in a week to present their contributions to the advertising blitz.
Interviews/Writing/Drawing/Tableaux
Individually, in pairs, and in small groups, have the students work on the project of their choice. Some might work alone preparing posters announcing the opening; others might conduct interviews in pairs or work in small groups to create a photographic layout for a scientific journal using tableaux.
Teacher Information:
Mantle of the expert is a strategy that in a sense reverses the traditional teacher-student relationship. The teacher sets up situations in which the students assume the roles of experts in a particular field. The teacher then becomes the seeker of the knowledge that the students possess.
Meeting
When the next meeting begins, the museum staff members are ready to present their promotion ideas and work to their colleagues. The teacher in role participates in the presentations by commenting on the work and thanking the staff members for their fine contributions.
The meeting is interrupted by a telephone call. The director answers the phone and the staff can overhear one side of the conversation. They are able to hear that something serious has happened. The teacher in role, shaken, hangs up the receiver and turns to the staff telling them that the phone call was from the head of security. It seems that there has been a theft in the museum – a valuable display has vanished. They are to remain where they are; a police investigator will arrive momentarily.
Teacher Information:
There are times when the teacher decides that it is valuable to introduce tension or a surprise into the drama in the middle of a particular episode. In this case, however, the phone call could come just as the reports are completed and the meeting is about to adjourn.
Teachers can easily execute a mime as simple as the telephone conversation.
A different tension might be introduced into the drama at the time of the phone call in the form of a bomb scare. The direction of the drama would be altered. Staff would have to call appropriate authorities, produce floor plans of the museum, and so on. The drama would be quite different from the one described here.
Reflection in role
While the museum staff members wait for the police investigator, teacher and students in role attempt to understand, from what little information they have, what is missing and what the consequences of this could be. Ask questions about the theft: What could have been stolen? Could it be that the rare fossilized hadrosaurus eggs have been stolen? Why would anyone want them? Could this affect the opening?
The students have been studying dinosaurs for the past few lessons and will have some ideas about what might have vanished.
Teacher Note:
This is an opportunity to teach about rare fossils and why they are often stolen, particularly at dig sites.
If possible, make arrangements before the next episode to have an older student, other teacher, or adult volunteer assume the role of the chief investigating officer. If this is not possible, the teacher may tell the students that he/she is leaving the room as the museum director and that he/she will re-enter the room in role as a different person.
Second adult in role/Informal meeting
There is a knock on the door. A second adult in role (or the teacher in new role) enters, introducing him/herself as the chief investigating officer. The investigator tells museum staff that a rare and valuable display has been stolen from the museum. There are not many physical clues in the main gallery. Someone has cut the power. The officer says, however, the police do have one vital clue that is now on its way to the police labs. When the power lines were cut, the auxiliary generator cut in so the video recorders did work. This means film footage of the theft should exist.
The investigator tells the staff that he/she will have to question all of them, but first he/she will have to view the video footage.
Mime – small groups
Ask the students to change roles and work in groups of three or four to recreate the video footage. Give the students time to develop short silent scenes in which students recreate the theft of the rare and valuable display. Side coach as the students work, offering suggestions as necessary. When students are ready, invite them to present their scenes to others. Some teachers may wish to actually videotape the scenes.
3. Concluding Activities
Reflection - whole group
Discuss each of the scenes that the students mimed, and help them come to consensus as to which of the scenes provide the most effective representation of the crime.