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In our first week of drama, we first established our prior knowledge in the arts as well as how teaching drama within primary schools can benefit students. Drama can help students develop empathy by looking at situations from different perspectives from different characters. This allows students to garner a bigger understanding of how people’s lives can be different from their own. Drama also allows students to gain confidence within themselves by making them push themselves out of their comfort zone in a safe environment, where they can grow and develop skills like public speaking, which a lot of people are afraid of (Lopes, 2022). On top of that, drama can also promote and develop collaborative skills, verbal and non-verbal communication, critical thinking, concentration and creativity. It can also create positive thinking and create friendships (Faust, n.d.).

My personal experience with drama started when I was around ten when I watched my older brother perform in his high school performances of Alice in Wonderland and The Snow Queen. This started the inevitable tumble into being interested in drama. I developed a love for performing and had participated in many school performances, especially in year twelve. Personally, drama helped me develop confidence within myself as well as the ability to think outside of the box. My personal favourite type of plays were those that delved into deeper topics for instance a play called “Waiting for Godot” by Samuel Beckett, where the characters are stuck in a cycle of existentialism, waiting for somebody who might not have even existed and whom never even arrives by the end as well as a play called “Ruby Moon” by Matt Cameron, which focuses on a grieving couple searching for clues about their missing child. Both plays allow for multiple interpretations and deeper and more critical thinking.

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In week two of the drama module, we delved deeper into drama skills and how to efficiently use them within a primary school setting. Week two focused on improvisation, mime, puppetry and dynamic vocals.

Improvisation is being able to act on the spot without the use of a script. Improvisation can really allow students to think on the fly and draw on personal experiences. Students can express themselves creatively and can get them to use their critical thinking skills.

We also focused on mime. Mime uses exaggerated movements to create a scene and portray characters, objects or things, most commonly a character using an object or doing an action i.e., walking down the stairs (City of Tampa, 2021). Mimes are known for their make-up too, which is usually an exaggerated emotion they want to portray with their character as mimes do not speak. Miming is great as it allows students to come up with ways to portray something without being able to speak. A task we did in class was the mirror task where we as students had to mimic each other’s movements as if we were mirrored. Students can do activities such as ‘Night Watchman’ where one student plays a museum night guard and is doing rounds in the museum, but what he doesn’t know is that something strange is going on. Other students will play the exhibits and can use mimicry to create a funny scenario, posing in funny ways and thinking creatively (Farmer, 2025). There are also plenty of other games on this website that students can play and explore mimicry further.

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In week three of the drama module, we focused on storytelling, voice and process drama. Storytelling is an integral part of drama; it is the main part of acting. The goal is to portray a story, whether it’s simple or more complex and dynamic. Voice is also integral for drama; it allows one to portray a feeling or vibe for a performance. A loud voice can show a character is intimidating or angry and a soft voice can do the opposite. Voice is also an integral part of teaching. A teacher uses their voice everyday in the classroom, one would have to raise their voice to get students’ attention, etc.

We also focused on process drama. Process drama is a method of teaching and learning drama where both the students and teacher are working in and out of roles (Australian Curriculum, 2017). The task we did in class for this was ‘Teacher in Role’. The tutor was the teacher in role, and she led the way through the world and story and us as students followed her lead. In this task we were in a fantasy world exploring and looking for treasure. I believe that this task would be a good task to do within a classroom and would be a game that I would personally do within my classroom. The task was fun and allowed all students to get involved and break out of their comfort zone and have fun. Students can follow the lead of their teacher or break out and make their character their own. It would be a great way to wrap up a narrative text task with a classroom, especially with younger students.

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Australian Curriculum. (2017). Glossary. Australiancurriculum.edu.au. https://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/f-10-curriculum/the-arts/Glossary/?term=process+drama

City of Tampa. (2021). Creative Arts Theatre - Lets play - Mime Basics. Youtu.be. https://youtu.be/eW1TnDEDBHI?si=SZZRtKUWXWdr9dt-

Drama - Learning in Drama - Victorian Curriculum. (2015). Victoriancurriculum.vcaa.vic.edu.au. https://victoriancurriculum.vcaa.vic.edu.au/the-arts/drama/introduction/learning-in-drama

Ewing, R., Simons, J., Hertzberg, M., Campbell, V., & Primary English Teaching Association (Australia. (2016). Beyond the script 3 : drama in the English and literacy classroom. Primary English Teaching Association Australia (Petaa.

Farmer, D. (2025). Mime and Movement Archives. Drama Resource. https://dramaresource.com/category/drama-games/mime-and-movement/

Faust. (n.d.). Faust International. Www.faustworld.com. https://www.faustworld.com/the-benefits-of-drama-for-children.asp

Lopes, N. (2022, December 18). Teaching Drama in Primary School. CPL. https://cpl.nswtf.org.au/journal/semester-2-2022/teaching-drama-in-primary-school/

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In the first week of the media component, we again focused on how media can be effectively used in a classroom setting. We did this by watching a 30-minute documentary about a school in Aurukun, a small town in rural Australia. In this documentary they address a lot of academic concerns that they had, especially since students in Aurukun didn’t attend school regularly if it all. The documentary highlighted ways that media can be used to encourage learning but also create a fun and interesting way to have students learn the content without being bored and disinterested. In the documentary it showed a variety of ways that the students used media to learn, which included making a movie about their town, writing a song, etc. The approach was used to encourage student engagement by catering more to what the students would find interesting, but also making sure students are engaging with their learning (Vadiveloo, 2008).

I feel this approach was effective as Vadiveloo focused on what is important to the students rather than general curriculum. He appealed to the culture of the students and allowed them to share their culture with him and centered their learning around their culture. He also incorporated the parents and caretakers into their learning, by making home visits and explaining what he was doing and what he hoped to achieve with the students (Vadiveloo, 2008).

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In the second week of our media module, we focused on making stop motion. Stop motion is the process of creating an animation by capturing a variety of drawings or objects moving one by one, frame by frame (ACMI, n.d.). Some well-known examples of stop motion are movies like ‘Coraline’, ‘Fantastic Mr. Fox’ and many works by Tim Burton. These movies often use materials like clay, steel wiring and many traditional 3D art forms to create the characters, settings and backgrounds. We learned during this week how long stop motion can take and how much fun it is. In class we separated into pairs to create a short stop motion video, using only foil, sticky tape and Playdough. This was incredibly fun and can easily be used within a primary school classroom as the materials are cheap and you can use an iPad to capture the photos. We used an app called Stop Motion Studio where it easily laid out what to do and allowed us to add music if we had wanted as well as a variety of things. This would be easily accessible within a classroom as most schools either have students buy iPad or provide enough for in-class use where students can use them to create a stop motion short. Stop motion can be great for kids to think creatively, but also to help develop story ideas such as narrative writing for an English class. It can reiterate the importance of story structure by actively having students identify the beginning, middle and end and creating those scenes from point a to point b (Victoria, 2020). Stop motion is also a good way to make a lesson still full of learning but also fun.

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In our third week of Media, we split off into home groups and then used a learning technique called numbered heads to split off into focus groups and watch BTN clips about sharks. In these focus groups we were to create a lesson to present back to our home groups that would work for a year-six classroom. Each group’s clips focused on a slightly different topic to teach from their clip, one was a narrative of a news story, another was ways to keep viewers engaged and the third was ways media can persuade you to feel a certain way. I was in the third group who focused on media persuasion. First, we watched a clip about whether sharks should be culled. Then, as a whole group decided whether we wanted to agree or disagree that sharks should be culled. We chose to disagree that sharks should be culled and then we highlighted what media techniques were used to help persuade us to feel that way.

I believe having us pre-service teachers give a lesson like that really highlighted many things about, a. teaching media and b. how to present a lesson like that appropriately to year-six aged students. It is integral to teach students about media literacy and about how to fact check the news so that they can distinctly tell fake news apart from real news and to be able to identify sensationalism (Media Literacy Lessons a Must for Schools, 2020).

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ACMI. (n.d.). Online learning | Make a stop motion animation. Www.acmi.net.au. https://www.acmi.net.au/education/school-program-and-resources/make-stop-motion-animation/

Media Literacy Lessons a Must for Schools. (2020). Westernsydney.edu.au. https://www.westernsydney.edu.au/ics/news/news_archive/2020/media_literacy_lessons_a_must_for_schools

Vadiveloo, D. (2008). Tales From the Cape.

Victoria. (2020, October 5). Easy and Creative Stop-Motion Animation Project for Kids. Learning by Inquiry. https://www.learningbyinquiry.com/easy-and-creative-stop-motion-animation-project-for-kids/

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In our first week of dance, we talked about how dance is used in a school curriculum.

Firstly, we learned that there were two kinds of movement, locomotor and non-locomotor movement. Locomotor movement is having your body be moving around such as walking, running and skipping. In dance that translates to dance that has the dancer moving from one spot to another during a dance. Non-locomotor movements are standing in one spot and moving one’s upper body. In dance this translates to upper body dance movements that have the dancer remaining in the original spot (What Are Non-Locomotor Skills? - Definition & Characteristics - Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com, 2020).

My experiences with dance start at an early age of 7, playing games like ‘Just Dance’ and attending dance classes at a dance studio. My interests lay within hip-hop and musical theatre because I much preferred singing over dancing. I tried jazz and tap, but found they weren’t for me. In school I also attended Zumba classes after school on Mondays. Zumba is a cardio and rhythmic exercise class that combines exercise with Latin-inspired dance. I had a lot of fun with it as it bought exercise in with dance and the music was always very upbeat.

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In our second week of dance, we extended our knowledge of dance. We used rhythm clapping to choreograph a simple dance routine. Each movement, e.g., clapping, snapping, tapping our legs, etc., had to be different. To add further difficulty each time there was a clap it had to be a different variant of the same dance move. This activity proved to be rather difficult as you had to consider base moves that could be done in a variety of ways. By the end of the activity every group had a small, choreographed piece that we all performed.

This activity could be great to use with a class as it fosters creativity, rhythm and deeper thought. You could implement it more simply for younger students, but the core activity would remain the same. It promotes collaboration and can make a lesson fun. It allows students to again move out of their comfort zone and perhaps create new fun memories. Dancing also allows students to self-regulate and express themselves in an unconventional way as there are many forms of dance, and a lot of it being interpretive (State Library of Queensland, 2023).  Dance can also develop a student’s social and emotional development as well as their physical development. It helps develop their motor skills and even fine motor skills depending on the type of movement (Northern Ballet, 2023).

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Week three of the dance module focused on simple choreography.  So, what is choreography? Choreography is the art of organizing movement into order and patterns to create a cohesive set of movements (Mackrell, 2020). Having students create their own choreography can help students with decision making as well as muscle memory and motor skills. It can also make students find another way to portray a story with their bodies as they must express emotions as well as portray a character. It also encourages students to think outside of the box (7 Best Questions about Choreography in Primary School |, 2023).

Dance can also improve a student’s confidence and being able to incorporate it into a normal day can improve cognition and confidence as well as allow for self-expression (Performing Primary School Dance: Pluses & Pitfalls |, 2022).

The task that we did in class was we created choreography to go with our birthdays and teach it to another classmate and vice-versa, combining them into a singular choreographed dance. This would be a good task to do in a classroom because it encourages collaboration and creative thinking, but as stated above, it also gives students the space and opportunity to be more expressive and confident with themselves. It also allows them to perhaps work with somebody they haven’t worked with before, therefore giving them a chance to work with their peers socially.

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7 Best questions about choreography in Primary school |. (2023, July 28). | Creative Dance Teaching Ideas and Resources. https://danceteachingideas.com/7-best-questions-about-choreography-in-primary-school/

Mackrell, J. R. (2020). Dance - Choreography | Britannica. In Encyclopædia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/art/dance/Choreography

Northern Ballet. (2023, October 5). 5 benefits of dance for early years development | Northern Ballet. Northernballet.com. https://northernballet.com/news/2023/10/5-benefits-of-dance-for-early-years-development

Performing Primary School Dance: Pluses & Pitfalls |. (2022, September 6). | Creative Dance Teaching Ideas and Resources. https://danceteachingideas.com/performing-primary-school-dance-pluses-pitfalls/

State Library of Queensland. (2023, April 20). Benefits of dance for early literacy and development. First 5 Forever | State Library of Queensland. https://www.slq.qld.gov.au/first5forever/blog/benefits-dance-early-literacy-and-development

What Are Non-locomotor Skills? - Definition & Characteristics - Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com. (2020). Study.com. https://study.com/academy/lesson/what-are-non-locomotor-skills-definition-characteristics.html