Drama in education Coloring our lessons

The frontal teaching method is still quite common in the educational system. This teaching method in most cases ignores the students’ personal needs, interests, personalities and skills. In the 21st century it is essential to meet the individual needs of our students and teachers.There is a  need to use cooperative teaching techniques. Drama techniques are fundamental to the success of teaching, that is why we  foster a supportive classroom  atmosphere and find practical ways of  implementing interaction and cooperation in our classrooms.Our goal was to enhance the cooperative techniques by facilitating  the  methods of drama education in our organisation.

To achieve our goals we organized a group for teachers who were open and wanted  to try out and drama techniques  in the  classrooms. Despite the fact that we teach different subjects  we are looking for opportunities to integrate drama in our teaching and willing to experiment interdisciplinary areas to develop our students’ skills and competences.  If we do not separate the different subjects  it may help our students in deeper understanding and discover global knowledge.

By planning, participating and sharing the  project with the teaachers, our institution gained experience and resources that improved our teaching skills, collaboration techniques and integration of different fields.

The findings were  introduced  to our colleagues and we attempted to promot drama technics by inviting the interested colleagues  into our classrooms and shared the applicable outcomes. We managed to implement the method in our school  and used these methods in our curriculum and shared our lesson plans with our colleagues to improve our own and our school’s  teaching practice. We are open to find out the hindering obstacles and adapt the program according to our school’s needs and  specialties.

To accomplish our goals, it is essential to learn more about the different practices throughout the different countries of the European Union. We are convinced that cooperation with other countries  will improve the effectiveness of our project among our students and our colleagues.

This project  provides the opportunity to:

• decrease the students’ unsuccessfulness
• develop both teachers’ and  students’ cooperation and problem solving skills and improve their presentation skills
• adapt innovation in  our methods in order to prepare our students for  the challenges not just academically but for real  life: to prepare them for work, social life and  for their role in the community
• reduce the discrepancy between the students’ actual knowledge and abilities
• in our pedagogical methods we prefer student centered  methods
• provide safe and friendly learning environment based on human rights and values
• implement practices and experiences from other countries of the  European Union  and use their  knowledge in our everyday teaching practice.  Furthermore we plan to use the collected information outside of the classroom situations as well to develop our students interpersonal, linguistic  and social skills
• present the diversity of the European Union
• improve our language competences (English)

The  schedule of the project:

• 2015.06.01. preparation for the program, organize presentations, CVs upload them, preparatory course
• 2015. 08.17-26. Teacher Training Course on Drama in Education-Holistic Approach to Teaching with Drama Techniques in Lovran
• 2015.09.01-2015.11.01 Share our experience with our colleagues. Implement  it in our curriculums and find ways  to use it in different subjects
• 2015.11.01-2016.05.01 Prepare lesson plans and try them out in our own teaching practice
• 2016.01.05-2016.04.01  Workshops and teacher cooperation 

 Our school  provided a  nurturing environment where our multicultural experience encouraged the teachers’ professional development and  eventually the next generation will be more prepared for living as mature citizens of  the European Union. We have been promoted and are planning in the future the cooperation between different countries in the EU by using the ERASMUS+ KA2 project.

 

 

Taylor Ibolya