Robs ramblings on speaking and listening

1) 5 things I will try to remember in the classroom from these sessions
A) How annoying difficult and frustrating it can be if interrupted whilst trying to read and/or offer an opinion. Giving the children some level of task like the Alice in wonderland task to focus them when reading out load and avoid interruptions.
b) Try to get everybody involved in every task, high tide low tide was good for this as we were too concerned with our own moves and interpretations to worry about looking like a fool, once had stopped smiling at Fiona’s misunderstanding of the tides that is.
c) That all group members have different skills and ideas to bring to the group so allow all students to express themselves, as seen in the WW1 picture scenario
d) The importance of working within different groups to expose them to different opinions and approaches
e) To trust (like in the robot game) and be comfortable within the class

2) How I felt myself doing the speaking and listening
It’s surprising with my penchant for the odd joke or comment here and there and recent hogging of the microphone at karaoke I was not as confident as you might expect heading into an exercise like this, so I’ll admit that I was a little apprehensive about the first few tasks, fortunately as sir said he had waited until a little further into the course so that we knew each other a bit better which definitely meant I was able to relax more, though I have to admit I also am not yet fully settled into this course and working structure (uni was mostly research, lecture and private study based and a long time ago)though being out of my comfort zone is definitely a good thing as long as I avoid that danger zone (kay, 2008).
These are the days in uni that I enjoy the most, learning about language and literature are great but these interludes from the more expected study types often help me to understand and ascertain a better concept of the role of teacher and they are fun too!
I find I am confident to talk and speak under two main sets of circumstances, either one is fine and both together is perfect, either when I am satisfied in my knowledge of the subject I am speaking of and secondly when I am comfortable with the people I am amongst (not feeling judged or in fear of saying anything deemed to be stupid).
The activities slowly upped the ante in terms of participation and inclusion up until ‘what are you doing?’ rather than jumping in at this point which I’d guess would have been a little much for some of us to start with, it was a nice build up of confidence within the group to this point.
Alice in wonderland showed that people learn in different ways and there were differing opinions on which methods were most effective and/or enjoyable, I was drawing throughout and enjoyed it and also found I had a fairly good idea of the story (though how much I can remember 2 days later is largely based on my memory of the film) I could see how an effectively skim read/listen of the text to answer questions would leave you unfocussed once all are answered and also would lead to missing any key points that weren’t relevant to the answers.
It was clear that each activity played on a different level and style of listening and inclusion, with the need to express verbally also being apparent, the robot game showed us trust and listening skills by taking away our use of sight and making reliance on our partners and on our listening skills over the din of the other teams. High tide/low tide helped us to loosen in preparation for what are you doing? Which once having performed was a little bit of a relief and also confidence building. Finally activities like the auction and the street party gave us refined roles, one set decided by ourselves and the other chosen not knowing what was to be done, this gave us purpose within the exercise and a way to focus on the tasks with a limited time span.
I guess what I’m saying in a rambling way was I enjoyed the session and can see how most of the activities could be useful.

3) What it taught me about others/about group dynamics etc
Our group dynamic as a whole works well, this was reflected in the easiness in which most tasks were not so much performed as accepted, our dramatists aside there were definitely a few worried faces once the realisation hit that the session was drama based. At this stage in knowing each other we are pretty comfortable speaking and to an extent performing in front of one another, which is good.
It’s also clear that there are different kinds of learners within our group which aids the dynamic, where Fiona and I enjoyed and found the drawing task for Alice in wonderland to be useful others found the freedom of writing anything they felt relevant to be more useful. Each task again was intended to develop different parts of a group dynamic especially in mixing up groups of people to be able to work with other members of the group and to build trust and confidence as it’s difficult to fell self conscious when the whole group are pretending to be a crab or lobster.
4)
b) I felt that we hit the framework in the following ways; listen with sustained concentration was well reflected in the Alice in Wonderland activity for those of us with a written or drawn task those with the memory or thought task found it to be difficult to concentrate. The same task was also a useful example of making notes in one form or another for a sustained period of time.
The street party WW1 activity gave the opportunity for the groups to take turns to speak and listen to other people’s suggestions, the interaction necessitated discussion and a mingling of ideas listening to others and allowing people to speak.
With the high tide, low tide activity needed us to accurately follow instructions, this was also true the robots activity as without following the instructions accurately we would not have been able to complete the task.
All the tasks had some part in achieving the ability to improvise using a range of drama strategies, especially What are you doing? and the £50 persuasion task improvising to manage to get the real reason, and in a completely different way the WW1 task required another type of improvisation to complete conversations about feelings and emotions of the period.

c) hmmm still kinda thinkin about this one.......................

Beat me by one minute! Although you have clearly tried to blag your way out of 4.c) so i´m pretty sure I win!