TASK 3 : REFLECTION

First of all, I would like to thank God because we finally settled with a drama
performance for LGA 3043E successfully which we have to dramatize a short story for
audience. The title of the story that we chose for the play was The Enchanted Forest. The
story was mainly based on adaptation of few fairy tales such as Goldilocks and the Three
Bears, The Hare and The Tortoise and so on. At the same time, I would like to thank and
appreciate our respected lecturer, Madam Malathy Nadarajah who guided and helped us
throughout the play performance and for her knowledge sharing about how to do preparation
for the stage performance.
Before we stage our play, we had also undergone some processes in order to
perform the play successfully. At first, we had chose committee members before we
submitted the paperwork for play production. Once after a week, as a whole class we
suggested to select and adapt few fairytales to prepare the script before we stage the drama
because it is essential and vital for us to be fully prepared before performing our play. As a
first step of the preparation, we were divided into 4 groups to prepare the script in respective
groups as it encoded in the coursework. So, we prepared the scripts for each scene given by
the scriptwriters to avoid overlapping. Then, our respected lecturer, Madam Malathy and our
scriptwriters helped us by checking the errors made in the script without any hesitation. After
that, I myself as an in charge of costumes had a discussion with our course mates to decide
about the clothes for each character in the story. Along the play production, managing myself
as the side character named Papa Panda, monitoring the preparation of the costumes of
other characters was one of the strength that I see in myself. However, in that case my
partner helped me to follow up in monitoring and preparing the costumes. Moreover, to ease
our work we had also prepared the props in groups according to the scenes. As a whole, we
gained lots of experiences and knowledge from this drama performance. For example, I
learned on how to project the voice loudly so that the audience can hear clearly what the
performers are saying. Through this, I learned on how to apply this knowledge in classroom
so that a conducive learning environment can take place.
Besides all our strengths, I had found some weaknesses during the play production.
One of the weaknesses is the lighting and sound track element. Because of insufficient time
spent on rehearsal for the play production, we could not handle the lighting part very well
because in earlier we decided to make the place dark as it is easy to projects the lights on
the characters when they are casting. But finally we could not work out the plan as we
planned during the real play production. At the same time, we planned to use power point

slides as a backdrop but we could not project because of some technical problems. In that
case, we took the responsibility of this problem because we did not draw out back up plan
for the backdrop. As a suggestion, I would say that that we should prepare a backup plan for
backdrop in order to avoid such things happened during the play
Moreover, I am very satisfied with the process of staging our play production
successfully in front of the audience although we did not spent much time to do rehearsals
because of acceptable reason. Not only as individual, my course mates were also played
their role efficiently and perfectly according to the scenes which synchronised to each and
every lines in the script and overall they did their best for the maximum. I believe strongly
that our group had done the best, especially with our props and costumes. All of us are not
very creative enough to draw or to create the props, but we still had our efforts on findings
the real props and costumes. We tried to get it real by combining and mix and match it with
what we already have due to the budget limitation. Working with my course mates in order to
settle our drama was such a wonderful experience for me because I had witnessed how
supportive course mates that I have because they helped each other to play their role as
stated in the script. Then, the most important thing is that we have to have a very good
relationship and there should be no miscommunications, misunderstandings, and
cooperative in the group tasks.
In conclusion, as a future teacher I had learned many useful acting skills and how to
plan and prepare a play and also performing it on stage. At the same time, I learned on how
to make use and apply the knowledge and the experiences gained in the classroom so that
they would be able to create a conducive learning environment. We cannot no one can deny
the truth that this play production that we did for our Plays and Drama for primary ESL
classroom LGA 3043E gave us a valuable experiences that could be taken together to apply
among primary school kids.

Compile 6-8 selected or adapted drama (fairytales, fable) techniques or activities to be

The word drama produces dilemma among children where they lost their focus
during teaching, becoming nervous when perform and so on. To make pupils get engaged
and stay active through the ESL lessons, I should use drama activities which drew a clear
advantage of language learning among pupils. Based

on the articles found for drama

techniques I chose few activities which would be effective for teaching drama in classroom.
Based on the articles entitled Drama Techniques for English by Vani, the first activity
or the technique that I would use to teach drama is questioning in role or hot seating. This
activity helps to operate in a controlled manner and very useful for the teacher to expose the
drama in ESL classroom easily. This activity helps to impose comprehension and
interpretation of the characters within the time given but the weakness is this activity will
create a barrier for pupils to speak fluently and confidently.
According to Patterson in an article Reasons Why Puppets Will Change Your
Classroom, he explained that puppets change the entire classroom by creating more
possibilities for creativity and critical thinking. Children can use puppets to say or convey
something or to share it with each other. One of the strength of this activity is providing
pupils the opportunity to cultivate verbal expression and good dramatic expression. The
disadvantage of this activity is the pupils would not think much about how to convey the
message properly.
Then, the following article named Drama: Introduction and Menu, Barbara said that
mime is effective in teaching drama. Mime technique helps further development of oral
expression and self-esteem. For example, where teacher can give particular students have
to imitate the situation using any words or expressions. One of the advantages of this activity
is it helps to develop critical thinking skills among but the same time it might get pupils not
emphasized only language skills.
Moreover, in the same articles too she explained that masked drama is also an
effective of teaching drama. By preparing masks to pupils or engage them to do face masks
so that children will feel less inhibited to perform or react. For example, if the teacher wants
to teach about a drama to pupils based on animal means then the teacher can ask pupils to
design their own model of masks. But, by the side of disadvantage is pupils cannot remote
themselves and the audience could not witness the facial expression during performance.
In addition, the fifth activity fund from the article is role play. Role play is an activity
where students were given a particular role in a scripted play. The strength of this activity is

helps to improve language through communicating but the weakness is it does not allocate
proper time for preparation and encourages incorrect forms of language.
Last but not least, the last activity is readers theatre. Readers theatre is an effective
way to present literature in dramatic form. Through this activity, the strength is helps to build
oral fluency and strengthen reading skills among pupils but there is a weakness where some
pupils might have anxiety about performing because of poor communication skills.
As a conclusion, it can be said those activities that were mentioned above directly or
indirectly will help teachers to cultivate drama techniques and activities among them.

REFERENCES

Shelby, B. (2012). Drama: Introduction and Menu. Retrieved on 19th March 2016 from

http://www.kidactivities.net/category/literacy-drama-and-drama-games.aspx

Chauhan, V. Drama Techniques for Teaching English. Retrieved on 19th March from
http://iteslj.org/Techniques?Chauhan-Drama.html

Romano, L. (2012). 12 Fascinating Ways to Use Drama in the Curriculum. Retrieved on 20th
March 2016 from http://www.teachhub.com/12

Readers Theater: A Reason to read Aloud. Retrieved on 20th March 2016 from
http://www.educationworld.com/a-curr/profdev082.shtml

Patterson, S. (2015). Reasons Why Puppets will Change Your Classroom Forever.
Retrieved on 20th March 2016 from http://www.edutopia.org/blog/puppets.

PICTURES