TO /WITH/BY IN CREATIVE DRAMA CLASS

GOOD MORNING EVERYONE!  Last week was the first week of Creative Drama class.  This is a class that I created last year, as an enrichment class.  I have usually about 25 students in the class, and they meet three periods a week for a quarter.  This year I am trying to work with some new concepts I learned in the summer institute in York.  I thought I would share how it has been working so far.

On Friday we began a poetry writing and speaking unit with the students.  I decided to use the "Gradual Release of Responsibility" again, just the way I had used in my music class last week.  I began by reading aloud, in dramatic voice, of course, a poem by Billy Collins called "On Turning Ten".  Of course, Billy Collins uses words and concepts that are accessible to all, that is why I love his poetry so much.  This poem is particularly appropriate for the age group, because it discusses the idea that when you turn ten you are just about to lose all sense of balance and joy, because you are two digits, not one.  It talks about how you have to give up child-like activities, like imaginary play, and toys and super heroes.  I love to discuss it with sixth graders, because they have recently experienced this phenomenon, and they want to talk about it.  They want to say that the poem is depressing, and that it has no reality to them, but I eventually get them to see some of the value in at least the moment of realization that it is the beginning of seriousness, if not more than that.  We had a lively discussion about the poem.  We also talked about Collins' use of metaphor and simile in the poem.  For a moment, I thought I was a language arts teacher, but then I quickly remembered what my purpose really was that day.  On Turning Ten by Billy Collins

From the discussion, we began to write a poem together.  We had discussed at the beginning of the period what exactly a poem is:  It has short lines, a title, a subject, stanzas, and it might rhyme but it doesn't have to.  On turning Ten is definitely a poem, we decided.  So as a group, we wrote a poem, about childhood also, called "Candy" Here it is:

       Candy

  by 6th grade Creative Drama Class

So sweet, so innocent

Happiness as sweet as

You want to have it so fast

But in the end

You wish you had saved it

It can be chewy or crunchy

Salty or sour

At first you play around

like there is nothing wrong

In the end,

It’s all gone

So bitter so bold

The bag was full and now it is empty

  No more candy.

We all contributed to this poem.  At that point, I let them go from here:  Write your own poem that you will share with the class.  You should be passionate about the subject, you should write about something you want to write about.  You should be willing to read it in a dramatic voice! It should have all the attributes of a poem that we discussed.. I am very excited by the poems I have read so far, no one is finished, yet, but I have the beginnings of poems about narwhals, about families, about wolves, about nature, trees, seedlings, you name it.  I am convinced that the gradual release of responsibility works.  Thank you to all those who supported me in class this summer!