Young Dramaticians

So what's the whole point of this?  What do we even want the kids to learn?  And most importantly, how in the world are the students supposed to learn it through drama? ........  Good questions.  And ones that I hear a lot as a drama instructor. I like to relate it to cookies.  Like any teacher there is an objective to a lesson.  The students should be able to do this ________.  Insert any skill, piece of knowledge or whatever you like.  That's your cookie at the end of the lesson, the light at the end of the tunnel.  But to get to it, an instructor has to leave behind crumbs for the children to follow so we can get to the cookie together.  In drama, the cookies look like storytelling through movement, characterization, collaboration, or even integration of other subjects such as literacy and comprehension skills for language arts or observation and data collection for science.  We use drama as the form that we gain those skills t...

My name is Daniel Barton and for my first post, I thought that I'd start out by describing the program, a little bit about myself and my focus, and how I prep for my lessons.  Arts Bridge is a program designed by collaboration between the Arts departments and the School of Education here at BYU aimed at providing elementary classroom teachers with a specialist who teaches the students both in the art subject and using the subject in integration of other subjects.  The classroom teacher gets training on how to use the respective art medium as a classroom tool and the specialist gets experience teaching in the classroom. I first was introduced to theatre in high school.  I was a technician, designer, and stage manager for many productions at my high school and in my community arts program.  After a semester at BYU and serving a mission, I fell in love with teaching and knew that I wanted to combine my two passions.  I currently am a senior in the Theatre Educ...