Wait and See

Earlier this year I was invited to work with the actors and staff who deliver the schools’ programme at the delightful Ragged School Museum in Bethnal Green. The museum has an authentic Victorian classroom where the children experience a lesson with an actor playing the role of a rather severe Victorian teacher and schools absolutely love it.

What we worked on during the time I was there was how to adapt the session to special needs and how to engage SEN students in the artifacts. Often students with learning difficulties need more time to feel comfortable enough to take advantage of opportunities – particularly when on a visit with a finite amount of time before leaving to go back to school. Time constraints are often evident in school or at home too. Knowing that our session has to end in a few minutes because of break time or lunch or whatever else is on the time table can make us, the facilitators, want the students to get on with it – we can be in “hurry up” mode and this can work against what we want to achieve – i.e. give our students a good experience.

There are time constraints at The Ragged School sessions too – the students have to catch the bus back to school. Paradoxically in order to allow students to engage with a drama, or in this case the museum artifacts, at their own pace we first need to remove our desire for them to engage with them. If we are really keen for students to take advantage of the opportunities we place before them we can seem needy which has the opposite effect. If we place the opportunity in front of them and then relax as to what engagement takes place amazing things can happen.

What we did at the Ragged School was to spread the artifacts around the room – cooking utensils in one place, a dolly tub, washboard and other washing materials in another and so on. The actor then took her place in the washing corner rubbing clothes on the washboard, focusing on her own task and taking no interest in the students – she was not trying to get them to take notice, she was just getting on with her job. The students were then invited to sit on the floor or wander round the exhibits as and when they chose. It was ok for them to sit and not engage and what usually happens is that when they are comfortable in their surroundings they go and look at whatever captures their interest or they go and speak to the washer woman about what she is doing.

Sometimes if we put a stimulus in front of students and then just wait and see what happens they take much more interest than when we encourage them to take part. This is one of the strategies we explore during our Drama Trainings. We have two drama courses coming up.
Drama for SEN on 2 November
Drama for Challenging Behaviours on 3 November

As a bonus for Bites Reader we are giving anyone who books one of these training courses a free copy of our teacher pack “Jingwei, The Pirate and The Treasure” which contains 6 detailed lesson plans for a drama project. Simply quote “BITES SEPTEMBER” when you book and we will send you out your F*REE copy.

Click Here now for how you book.