Stormy Knaak

Gettysburg ArtsBridge reflection

Day 1

3/14/17

Strengths of lesson/facilitation:

Students were really responsive to the sections of the lesson plan that were movement

based, which reinforces my idea that drama integration is successful across the curriculum.

Students thrive on movement, so getting a chance to break up the monotony of their daily lessons

to get up and add dance moves to the Gettysburg Address stands out and makes the lesson

different than others.

Improvements that can be made in lesson/facilitation:

The first half of the lesson was very lecture based, and, seeing as how a strength of the

lesson is that students love the movement based sections of the lesson, day one would overall be

much stronger if a lot of the Jesse monologue was cut out or done in a different activity that is

not lecture-based.

Having the facilitator play with Jesse in a I dont get this, will you help me? way makes

the students think you are not a strong facilitator, so this could definitely be improved on. One of

the students even commented How did you become a teacher? That is always something to

avoid, teachers need to have an assertive tone of voice.

Day 2

3/16/17

Strengths of lesson/facilitation:

Chiefs messenger is a much stronger teacher in role character than Jesse! Students

responded well to the role, and the discussion on suspension of disbelief was overall successful

since students did not point out that the Chiefs messenger was just Ms. K from day one!

Students enjoyed creating their own characters using the Circle of Life.

Improvements in lesson/facilitation:

ALWAYS COLLABORATE! Ms. E and I had very different ideas of how we were going

to facilitate certain activities, which only served to confuse the students and detract from our

lesson overall to have us going against each other. This calls for more planning and prep time.
Day 3

3/23/17

Strengths in lesson/facilitation:

Students feel strongly about the process drama and were able to properly draw on their

experience on the Island of Harmony for discussion points about the Civil War. Students were

able to draw their own connections before the process drama was even completed to the Civil

War.

Improvements in lesson/facilitation:

Chiefs messenger is written into the lesson plan as leaving and changing into facilitator 1

at the same time as facilitator 2 needs to be leaving to change into Jessestudents should not be

left alone during that time and it makes transitioning messy.