Lesson 4 - Set Designers

October 12, 2018

This lesson did not go according to plan, but I was able to learn a lot from the experience. Before jumping into the lesson, I invited the students to shake out their limbs so they could move their bodies before sitting and listening to a story. I noticed that many of the students were reluctant to follow my instructions and it seemed that they were tired. 

To make a connection to set design, I decided to read a picture book to the class and discuss how setting played an important role in storytelling. I thought the book would help keep the students engaged, but it seemed to do the opposite. I realized that the storytelling was taking much longer than I anticipated, and I was quickly losing the focus of the students, so I skipped ahead in the books to only look at the pictures to determine setting.

Next, I asked the students of different settings in the community (stores, school, police station, hospital, etc). I wrote a few on the board and assigned each of them to different groups. I should not have done that. Almost none of the groups were happy with the set I assigned to them and ultimately most of them decided to design another one. I was attempting to add structure to the lesson so the students would not feel lost choosing a set. I realize now that I should have wrote a few on the board and then let the students CHOOSE which one they wanted to do, or even choose one that was not on the board as long as it was part of the community. I learned that there needs to be a balance between structure and choice. 

Once the students started building their model sets, they became more engaged and excited. I tried to integrate some Social Science into the lesson, so I went around and asked groups to describe ways in which people have modified the physical environment to build their community (Social Science Standard 3 Objective 1c). Unfortunately, we ran out of time before sufficient progress could be made on the sets. Thankfully, the teacher gave the students time the following week to work on their sets. This lesson was important because it discussed another type of designer, but also because it integrated community and sets which we will be using for the next lesson.

I wish that I had not used a picture book in this lesson. I think the idea was good, but in practice it did not assist in the learning. Books are great with process drama because the students are able to be more active and involved in the learning. In this setting, I should have used the book solely to look at pictures, or I should have used another pre-text to help the students understand sets. This would have cut down the time spent on lecturing and given more time to the actual set construction. Although I made mistakes and the lesson did not go as planned, I learned a lot and I think the students did too.