Week 7: Visual Arts Workshop "Making our Puppets"

Making our Puppets!

This week we began our visual arts component of the unit where we began making our puppets. As a group, we discussed and thought about our scene, our feelings of our characters, their traits and persona, as well as how we wanted to make our characters. As far as it goes, we have watched several puppet shows but we have never made puppets before. Fortunately, with the help of group work and decision-making, we were able to collaborate using our ideas effectively as a group, which was helpful throughout our making of the puppets. Collaborative learning activities engage peers in subject-specific discussion, promote cooperation and support, develop teamwork and communication skills, assimilate multiple view to deepen knowledge and promote critical thinking, foster individual accountability, structure out-of-class learning and mitigate learner isolation (Collaborative learning, 2013).

Coming from a student’s perspective this was a great first and hands on experience to learn about the making of puppets, and demonstrate our ideas into practice which to me could be easily utlilised in any classroom setting. For the making of our puppets I used a range of different materials such as toilet rolls, shredded paper, cotton string, satin, cotton material, and thick black fabric for the stepmother’s dress which we thought conveyed her character effectively. With the help of our collaborative skills, I felt like it helped us to gain an idea in thinking strategically on what materials were needed and how they could be used to convey meaning of our character to the intended audience of our film. In taking part in such a wonderful, inspiring, engaging experience allowed me to understand how the use of puppets is so crucial, effective, and beneficial to utilise in a classroom. This lead to my perception where students not only learn by looking at puppets and making them but also become creative learners by developing their creativity and imagination in the process of making puppets. Not only it is an experience of creativity and imagination but it also leads to student’s ability to collaborate effectively with their peers during the process of puppet making.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reference:
Collaborative learning. (2013). Retrieved 25th April 2013, from http://otl.curtin.edu.au/learning_teaching/philosophy_teaching/student_centred/collaborative.cfm

 

 

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

Week 5: Drama Workshop 3 "Bringing Puppets to Life"

 

Week 5: Drama Workshop 3 – 11/4/13

                                   

                                         OH! I WISH I CAN GO TO THE BALL!!  

 In this week’s workshop, we thought about how we will bring our critical moment to life with our handmade puppets and improvised script. My group and I considered how the quality of our voices changes depending on the emotion being conveyed by our chosen characters. We also considered how the personality of the character changes according to the many different scenes from our critical moment. During this workshop, we were given the opportunity to create our puppets using the materials: newspapers, net, balloons, textas, and rubber bands. Before we began making our puppets we wrote up a short script to use when performing our Scene. I created and improvised on being the evil, viscous stepmother where I used a newspaper and made a twist in the middle and drew her eyes with a angry face using a black texta, I brought it to life with a certain character depicting the evil stepmother.

                                                                                     
Unfortunately, my improvised puppet wasn’t complete and made to perfection. However, this insightful experience made me realise that puppetry is not just about the purpose and making, it encounters many detailed aspects on: who is the character? Choice of setting? What viewpoint is the puppet looking? What messages are being conveyed to the audience and what are the emotions of the audience? What is being portrayed to the audience?

Overall, It felt like the puppets came to life and that the puppets were in role and focus intent. It was a new experience to take aboard for my future teaching as it made me realise that when using puppets to perform you are performing in a dramatic role. "Part of the never-ending appeal of puppetry lies in the fact that the puppet is the focus of attention, and so the puppeteer feels safe." (Ewing & Simons, 2010, p.53). What really amazed was the amount of critical thinking and decision-making surprised me, which made me consider good aspects add  into my teaching. This has opened several opportunities to incorporate puppets into my teaching.

http://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=z08titE6s1A&feature=youtube – This video shows our scene focusing on our critical moment of the fairy tale ‘Cinderella’.

 

 

Ewing, R. & Simons, J. (2010). Beyond the script: Drama in the classroom take 2. Newtown, NSW: Primary English Teaching Association

 This is the script that my Group and I came up with when performing our  critical moment scene of Cinderella.