REFLECTION

NAME : ZAHIRAH BINTI DZANIMI

MATRIC NUM : (0610/1869)
I/C : 920523-09-5072
TITLE : LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD THE MUSICAL

For LGA 3104 Plays and Drama For Young Learners, we were asked to stage
a play that is suitable for an ESL primary classroom. We were divided into four
groups meaning that there will have four different plays in our class. My group mates
are Nabilah, Athirah, Afifi, Faqih and Zaki. At the beginning, we started to do some
readings to decide the most suitable play to be staged during our drama day. I
looked up for some stories through the Internet and story books. From my
understanding, plays and drama is concerned with both the product (the
performance) and the process of language learning. Dramatizing, as Phillips (2000)
suggests, is perhaps a better word for this than drama. Dramatizing means that the
children become actively involved in a text. This personalization makes language
more meaningful and memorable than drilling or mechanical repetition. Other than
that, drama helps children to activate language and have fun. Using drama activities
has clear advantages for language learning. Drama is the most natural of the arts,
being based on one of the most fundamental of the human and animal faculties, the
faculty of imitation. It is through imitation that animals learn to fight, climb, hunt; it is
through imitation that human children learn to talk and to perform a great number of
complicated human functions. (Wilson, 1961:57).
Finally, we have decided to perform a play entitled Little Red Riding Hood for
our dramatization. We divided the characters based on our personal interests. As for
me, I chose to play a character of Mr. Wolf, the one with wicked and bad attitudes. I
chose this character because I really like to play a bad side of character, as I know I
can help to show people what are the things that we should not do in our lives.
Besides that, I think that this character will help me to interact intimately with the
pupils as well as to attract their attentions. Indirectly, they will focus to our drama.
The other characters in this drama are Little Red Riding Hood, Mother,
Grandmother, Mr. Woodsman and Mr. Musician. At the point after we completed with
dividing the characters, we move on with adapting the script. The script editing was
done by Nabilah and me. We adapted the language of the script to make sure that
we will be able to grasp the pupils attention by increasing their understanding.
Adapting the script is one of the important parts in staging play and dramas because
in the classroom, we often expose children to small bits of language, such as
individual words, rather than whole phrases or chunks. When speaking, children
are not often asked to combine the different structures they are learning. Thus,
drama is an ideal way to encourage children to guess the meaning of unknown
language in a context, which often makes meaning clear. Similarly, children will need
to use a mixture of language structures and functions if they are to communicate
successfully.
After that, we searched for the suitable costumes for our respective
characters. Costumes and makeup serve an important purpose for actors, too.
Though the primary work that actors do in creating their characters is done during
the weeks of rehearsal and individual practice leading up to a show, seeing
themselves transformed visually into a character is often a powerful source of
inspiration. As we were working in a team, we divided the tasks among six of us.
Every person is responsible for his/her costumes. But somehow, we will help those
men in sewing the clothes and etc. For me, I am a bit lucky because I managed to
find a wolfs costume from the bundle shop nearby. The cost is not a big deal as long
as I can show the best part of us. For the other characters, we designed the
costumes and they were all great! Besides preparing for the costumes, we also
discussed for the props that are needed for our dramatization. We came out with a
list of things that are needed and we collected some money among six of us for
buying some materials for the props. The props included a door that is made from
stereo foam, a cupboard that is made from recycle box and many more. During this
stage, we did not encounter any big problem because of team work and cooperation
is very great indeed. At the same time, some of our friends came to help us with the
making of the props. Thank you to them.

I started to memorise the script and practice my gestures, expressions,
intonations, voice projection and all the elements related to the staging of plays and
drama. This is because I will have to perform well to attract the pupils attention. We
are all familiar with the expression: Body Language. We can express ourselves
with our bodies, our hands, faces, position, and movements of our hands, often more
loudly than our words. I also watched the video of the the story Little Red Riding
Hood so that I can do some observations to use the useful gestures and expression
of my character. I found out that it is not so easy for a character to portray an
expression that will give some great effects to the audiences. However, I believe that
practices make perfect. When using drama, I put my aims more than linguistic. I tried
to use the topics from other subjects. Important messages can be conveyed and
explored through sketches and role plays. After several individual practices, we
move on to the most important part in preparing a dramatization, group practice. We
did a lot of practices and one of our group mate worked as director for our group. He
will make sure that we followed the correct script and we are able to perform the
drama with a perfect combination of elements of staging a play.
On 13 March 2014, we finally came to our Dramatization Day at Sekolah
Kebangsaan Jejawi. My group was the first group that presented our play. Early in
the morning, we put on our make up and costumes, getting ready for our
performance. Even though I was very nervous and my heart was nearly burst of
afraid, my personal thought said that we have done an amazing performance on that
day. The pupils were able to give their respond when we were interacting with them.
This showed that we managed to make they understand with our language level. It
was a good feeling though. Thus, I would like to highlight several strengths in our
performing. The first one is our language level is suitable to the primary ESL
classroom. This can be seen when they were eager to answer the questions from
our group. They were also sometimes laughed and giggled when it came to a
humour parts. Secondly, I am able to accentuate my character as a wicked wolf. I
was very satisfied with my performance. Our team works were undoubtedly the best!
However, there are some weaknesses in our planning and staging for the
dramatization. The first one is about the costumes. I suggest that we can make some
betterment for the costumes. This is because the other groups were able to come
out with variety of costumes that showed their characteristics very well. Other than
that, we should put our attention to the aim of staging the play. One of the aims is to
provide the pupils with good moral values that they can use in their daily lives. Sadly,
my group and I were totally forget about the moral values parts. We should
emphasises the moral values at the end of our drama. In short, there are still a lot of
improvements that can be done to our drama.
In term of personal and professional growth, implementing a story-based
approach requires a great deal of energy, creativity and excellent classroom
management skills and flexibility from teachers. After staging the play, I find out that
putting oneself "in the other person's shoes helps to develop empathy. Acting out a
different set of life circumstances can lead to an understanding that there is another
point of view that may have validity. For many of us, learning to be comfortable
speaking or performing in front of an audience is a trial. Starting early with informal
drama play in the classroom setting can help to ease children into oral presentation.
As students become accustomed to performing, they can be encouraged to
memorize scripts, express a range of emotions through voice, facial expressions,
and body language and even develop their own characters.
As a conclusion, plays and drama is one of the teaching methods that we
should use in teaching primary ESL young learners. The use of drama activities has
a definite place in the Young English Learners classroom. Such activities provide
meaningful and enjoyable language practice, and they encourage learners to explore
the wonderful world of the English language through drama. Drama activities also
develop students intelligence by stimulating their imagination and creativity. The
more drama the children do, the better language learners they will become. One
thing to remember that if you are having fun, your students will have fun! Using
different visuals, voices, and movement to animate the characters help students stay
interested and really helps aid in comprehension of the language. The inclusion of
drama material and strategy in English learning can bring the children into learning
by active involvement. It is called active involvement because the children directly
practice their English through the dialogue that building the play. Drama certainly
presents us with a wide range of situations and predicaments to stimulate some kind
of emotional response which enable us to build up the students interest and
performance in English language. Lastly, thank you to all classmates for all your
helps.
GROUP 1 : THE LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD
From left :
Mr. Woodsman, Mr. Musician, Mother, Mr. Wolf, Little Riding Hood and
Grandmother.