A rationale to support the teaching of Anthony Browne’s ‘ZOO’
Anthony Browne is a very prolific children’s author and illustrator, whom some of the children may already be familiar.
It is possible to use this familiarisation to discuss with the pupils reoccurring themes within Anthony Browne’s books. The anthropomorphism of his characters and the use of motifs, such as bananas and hats, are prevalent throughout his books. This is a quality that adds an extra-textual element to Browne’s work, as the reader already has a wealth of prior knowledge to bring to the picture reading process (Duncan, 2009).
It is this wealth of prior knowledge that I intended to incite via the lesson starter. It is assumed that most children have, by the age
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This approach works very well when teaching skills to pupils, but, as Winston (2004) suggests, this strategy does not work so well for other important areas of learning, such as moral and social concepts; the likes of which Browne presents to the reader in Zoo.
Using dramatic conventions to express and challenge these somewhat complex issues allows the children to feel as though they have “lived through, or have actually witnessed the experience…allowing their talk to be situated within the experience, as well as being reflective of the experience under discussion.” (Winston, 2004:21). This “experience” should, in turn, produce a meaningful and informed stand point from which the pupils can express their opinions and understanding of the issues.
The idea of using drama as a tool to provide genuine contexts for reading and writing, speaking and listening, flows strongly through the lesson. Its intentions are to enable the child to make a comfortable transition between speaking and listening, and reading and writing, whilst discovering their interconnectivity.
Drama provides a “reflective experience” (Winston, 2004) that reveals a child’s inner voice, or ‘inner speech’ (Vygotsky, 1978), required so that pupils are able to produce critical developments within their writing. Bearne (2002) explains that the inner voice must first develop through a network of meaningful social interactions
As the children engage in dramatic and imaginative play together, they are creating stories. These stories are then told to and transcribed by Paley (1990) and acted out on a pretend stage by the students in the class. Each student or storyteller in the eyes of Paley (1990), chooses classmates to perform the roles in his or her story, and each story is re-enacted at least once, if not multiple times. For example:
As well as the quality of spoken language that children hear on a day to day basis will have a vast impact on the grammar and language they use. Therefore teachers and all teaching staff should ensure they continue to develop children’s confidence when it comes to communication by developing the skills needed to explain their understanding this is also vital when it comes to understanding and explaining of books or other recourses. All children should have access to and be encouraged to develop their role in drama. Pupils should be able to adopt, create and sustain a range of roles, responding appropriately to others in role. They should have opportunities to improvise, devise and script drama for one another and a range of audiences, as well as to rehearse, refine, share and respond thoughtfully to drama and theatre
The timeline of the drama program is it would start in October and end in May. The program will include teachers and community members as volunteers. Ideally, the people who volunteer would be interested in the arts such as: music, art, dance and acting. But, experience in those fields is not required. The students will have the opportunity to learn reading comprehension skills such as: sequence of events, vocabulary and summarization. The students will choose one book to read and study per month, and the activities will coordinate with those books. The books the children will choose from will vary in topic and difficulty, but will be on the 2nd grade reading level. The drama techniques that will be used are: hotseating, role-play and tableaux.
Dramatic play is one of the most important and useful center for children in the classroom. By playing in dramatic play they can develop their physical, cognitive, linguistic, social and emotional domains. In the article “Supporting Language: Culturally Rich Dramatic Play” the author state” Mrs. Ramos invites them to talk about their weekend activities. Rodrigo says he and his grandmother went to the panaderia (bakery). Two children ask, “What is that?” Juanita explains, “That’s a bakery where you buy bread and cake.” Mrs. Ramos says she and her mother used to go to the panaderia when she was a child. The children smile.” This a further proof of how children can develop their cognitive, linguistic
In a previous lesson, the teacher demonstrated a “Think-Aloud” strategy with Gary Soto’s short story “Seventh Grade,” to teach students the elements of a plot. The teacher read the beginning of the story and then stopped to ask the students to identify information about the characters, the setting, and the background information that establishes the exposition of the plot. She repeated this process with the rising action, the climax, the falling action, and the resolution. The students recorded notes and observations in a graphic organizer.
The famous Shakespearian play “Romeo and Juliet” features multiple forms of conflict. Conflict is defined as a fight, battle, struggle or argument and can occur in the form of group, inner, physical or verbal. To gain a better understanding of the conflict that occurs in Romeo and Juliet, one must analyse the scene and discover the dramatic language technique used by characters. Techniques such as metaphor and personification are used to add depth and are found throughout the text in order to communicate conflict
Dr. Rekha S. Rajan writes about how she implemented a twenty-minute structured dramatic play into class time to encourage children to learn to solve conflicts on their own. She first does this by gaining insight on the children’s feelings with a personal story time. Each child tells a story that made them particularly sad, mad, upset, or happy. She then takes those experiences and creates a pre-determined scenario to which, the children will play different roles, share ideas, and come up with a solution.
Well-written and inspirational literature not only has the ability to carry a reader into another world but they are able to accomplish this feat while simultaneously delivering deep messages that surpass the written text. Children’s literature is sometimes overlooked in terms of reaching these standards and being considered worthy of critical analysis; this genre is often perceived as having juvenile storylines and concepts portrayed through simplistic language. However, the common writing styles in children’s literature, often being either illustrated books or picture-books, offer the genre with a unique opportunity to achieve deep themes and messages through the dynamic
Throughout modern history, parents have often taken their children to the zoo or circus to go see wild animals that they might not otherwise see in person. This practice is viewed as an innocent and exciting way to teach little ones about the animal kingdom. However, the child is introduced to the idea that animals, no matter how large or deadly, are for the entertainment of humans and should be treated as such. Zoos are only one example of how humans are practically in direct control of the fate of wild animals. Even in the wild, animals are left to the mercy of humans due to our insatiable desire to carry on expanding as Jon Mooallem illustrates in his magazine article, “What’s a Monkey to Do in Tampa?”. According to, Mark Prigg for
Drama is a heavy genre to talk about. There are many puzzling situations that affect dramatic
The Story Pirates Theater Troupe is a nonprofit educational sketch-theater group known for teaching kids the art of storytelling through writing. The group offers in-school and afterschool theatrical programs in New York and Los Angeles. These programs are “designed to create a safe space for students to express their most outlandish ideas and develop their creative writing skills” (DeBlasis, 2015). There were doubts whether this group would be able to continue to thrive in the age of the common core state standards and rigorous accountability expectations. However, they are!
drama therapy could support children on the spectrum to develop in the safe space of a drama group. The necessary social skills could be practised in drama class and appeared to support the integration of appropriate social behaviour (D’Amico et al., 2015:22).
I chose to read and comment on Barbara Kiefer’s “Envisioning Experience: The Potential of Picture Books.” Kiefer’s main point in writing this essay was to get the message across that children enjoy picture books that allow them to identify and make connections with the characters or the plots, and that while reading and analyzing the pictures, they gain a better sense of aesthetics and how to interpret them.
The second oldest form of literature after poetry is drama. Dramas have changed a lot over the years. They use to plays that were wrote to be performed in the theater, and now they are mostly written to be performed in a movie or a television show. There are many dramas today that most people would not considered to be drama. Before reading the information in our text book, I thought drama was basically just a story or movie between people who had problems with each other; but that’s not completely true. Dramas can basically be anything that has a hero or dialogue to a certain extent. For this paper, I choose to write about the drama in the movie The Hunger Games. This movie is not just only drama, it is also adventure and sci-fi movie.
Despite the claim that Drama in Education ( DIE) as a pedagogy dimmed its popularity in the Western world since 1990 until 2016 (Gallagher, et al. , 2017), in the year of 2011, Morrow, et al. included it as one of the best practices in literacy instruction. Some of the teachers who had the experience of trying process drama in their classrooms found that the pedagogy improved students’ participations, pushed students to use their imaginations, performed deeper understanding of the topics being learned and made the students learn to have empathy ( Long, 1998). Do the voices from the classroom resemble to what researchers and theories have to say on process drama?