When the class became mice

Previously in Class 1
The children have been involved in a drama involving a Gruffalo and its baby in Howe Park Woods. Today's blog is about a one-off lesson whereby I attempted to use 'The Dramatic Imagination' to support their imagination and creative writing. It did not go too well.

Disclaimer: Despite reading about it and attempting to teach a lesson using the elements, I still don't feel like I really understand this at all: the below may be nonsense.

The Dramatic Imagination:
Here are my notes on 'The Dramatic Imagination' and how it could possibly be used (with the advice from another teacher on my course). There are six forms of the dramatic imagination: sound and silence, movement and stillness and darkness and light. I don't really understand it as yet, but I'm hoping it's a work in progress and will all become clear at some point:

The plan was that the children would step into role as the Mouse and explore the woods. The challenge would be to ensure they didn't decide they had met the fox/snake/owl/gruffalo; I wanted them just to focuss on strolling through the woods and what it was like there.

The lesson:

After the five minutes set aside to make mouse ears turned into 20, the children happily stepped into the deep dark woods. I read them the first line of the story: A mouse took a stroll through the deep dark woods. Despite a thorough discussion of the word 'stroll' several mice took off at full speed so we had to regroup and slow down. We went into the outdoor area which is paved and not especially wood-like. I chose this area over our forest school area as I really wanted the children to use their imagination instead of talking about what was literally there.

The mice strolled around the woods squeaking happily to themselves. I asked them to lie down in a clearing and look for the light: could they see any? If so, where was it? Some said there was no light, others said there was bright light, others said they could see sunset. I quickly realised I was going to have to model a lot of ideas so I agreed with them, saying useful things like 'Yes, I can see the sunlight glinting through the leaves.' 

We continued with our stroll and the mice found treestumps to sit on. I asked them to close their eyes and listen: was it silent? If not, what could they hear? Some said it was silent: others picked up on actual sounds around them. Again, I had to model quite a lot of this - can you hear other animals passing? Is there a breeze making a sound? From this the children began to get the hang of it a bit more. 

Their best ideas came when I asked them to spot anything moving around them: they saw branches swaying, clouds drifting across the sky, a squirrel running along a branch. By the end of the imaginary stroll we had cobbled together some good words and phrases. 

I didn't feel like this lesson went particularly well: I don't know whether I haven't understood how to use the elements of the dramatic imagination correctly, or whether it's just a case of the children being Year 1 and not having done this before. I suspect it's a combination of both. 

The children's writing wasn't too bad: there were some good phrases and they clearly enjoyed writing a diary in role as the mouse (enjoyment is something I rate at the top of the list of 'elements of a succesful writing lesson with children' so that's okay). However, I don't feel like it was as good as I expected it to be. Hmmmmmm.

Things to consider further:

• Show children a good example of using the dramatic imagination in writing and get them to pick out good language
• Find out more about using the elements of the dramatic imagination with the class
• Post on the forum about it
• Try this again with the last page of the book or to explore the Gruffalo's cave