Lesson Number 1

Today marked my first day as a full fledged BYU Arts Bridger! I have had limited opportunities to work in the classroom, and so getting this opportunity to get small doses of being a teacher over this semester is exciting. Before jumping into what I did for my first lesson, allow me to share a little bit about myself. My name is Emmy, and I'm from Carson City, Nevada. I am studying Elementary Education, and integrating the arts into the classroom became a passion of mine ever since I took the required arts credits: Drama, Dance, Music, and Visual Art. What I knew before my art classes is children love to move, wiggle, dance, and be weird. What I learned in those classes is that we can take those movey, wiggley, weird children and cultivate that energy into actual learning through the arts! And that is exactly what I am trying to do in Ms. Merris's first grade class at Sunset View Elementary School.

To prepare myself, I had Ms. Merris send me her class list of names and photos, the class rules, and her class cues. I wanted to be as effective as possible right off the bat, and I felt knowing every student's names, knowing the class rules, and already using the cues the first graders were used to from the moment I walked in the door was the best way to start. This week we decided we would just focus on introducing her 24 first graders to the idea of drama through some fun Drama games. So day one started out by having the children come gather on the reading carpet while I read to them Where the Wild Things Are. I tried to incorporate lots of voice and interactive parts to this book. There are parts that talk about the Wild Thing's "terrible teeth" or "terrible claws", and I would ask the students to show me their most terrible teeth and most terrible claws.

After the book we moved into our first drama game:

Yes Lets!

I started this game by having the children spread out throughout the room. Then I give an instruction by yelling "Lets all be (fill in the blank)" and the children yell back in unison "YES LETS!" Children then are the thing that I told them to be for about thirty seconds as I side coach the children. For example, one of the things I yelled was "Lets all be Dinosaurs!" and then as the children were pretending to be dinosaurs, I side coached them by pointing out cool things I saw different students doing ("I love how Kevin's made his fingers into terrible claws") or by suggesting different ways children could be dinosaurs through different levels, speed, or movements ("Are some of you maybe very small dinosaurs that are close to the ground? Or maybe you are giant dinosaurs that take giant steps"). Here some other examples of things I yelled out:

…be dinosaurs

…bloom like flowers.

…soar like birds.

…swirl like tornadoes.

…move like a sharks.

…float like clouds.

…move like monkeys.

…move like a king or a queen.

…ride horses.

…drive race cars.

…ride a bike.

…paint a house.

…walk in deep mud.

After we had fun discovering different things we could be with our bodies, we moved into the next game:

Pet Show!

I asked students to find a partner and sit down looking at me when they had their partner. Once everyone found a partner, I had one partner stand up. The partner standing up was now the pet trainer and the partner sitting down was the animal. I gave them a couple minutes to decide 3 things:

1.) What type of animal the partner was

2.) What it's name was

3.) One trick to show the class

Then we reassembled ourselves on the reading carpet and had each partner come up on "the stage" and introduce their pet and show the trick to the class. It was a hoot!

It was a really fun and smooth first day, and I am looking forward to the next time I'm in the class!