Week 6: Visual Arts Lecture "An Introduction to Puppetry"

Week 6: Introduction to Puppetry

What  a fantastic, inspiring lecture we had this week by a well known Puppeteer and primary teacher Kay Yasugi, who graduated from Sydney University specialising in Primary Education and puppets. Kay’s definition of puppetry is “the art of bringing inanimate objects to life", she demonstrated her insightful definition through her very own wonderful demonstrations of how to manipulate a puppet’s movement and bring the puppet’s trait and persona to life using a range of voices. One of my main highlights to Kay’s lecture was the significance of purpose when making considerations on any puppet. Kay introduced Rocky the Racoon (see below), Bina the Butterfly, a puppet she uses specifically for writing activities – this effective for when teaching children with English as second language as encourages students to write and achieve their skills and outcomes in writing. When Kate Introduced Rocky her purpose was so effective as she made his movements quite small and calm which engaged and grabbed the audience’s attention. The following pictures introduce a variety of puppets that Kay bought to life using such inspiring voice, character, and personality.

 Kay believes "puppets are important for students as it its engaging in getting people's attention- it’s good for multiple intelligences, good for visual learners, good for communication and good for shy students, puppets were students are behind the screen are good for students, it’s good for confident/ extroverted students and good for all ages and abilities"

This is Rocky the Racoon, whose purpose is to capture the student’s attention and calm them, bringing the whole classroom together.

The following  video shows Kay’s use of puppets, where she uses a range of voices to portray the personality and character of the puppet to the audience.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6m5YUERRiTM&feature=youtu.be

Overall, Kay’s lecture has allowed me to reflect on ways I could utilise puppets in my own classroom, which lead to a idea of not only incorporating in my classroom but also using a variety of puppets which might be useful when teaching a multilingual classroom. The following video shows Kay Yusagi and Kate Roberts who teaches at the University of Sydney, a unit called teaching multilingual classrooms where she shares her ideas on how puppets can be used for a variety of purposes. This also allows for cross-curriculum ideas demonstrating the integration of the arts in the curriculum.

http://youtu.be/Xrh3ZtGdRBQ