Poetry is not everyone's favourite subject. In fact, I would argue that there are many students, and even adults out there, that really really dislike poetry. Poetry is definitely something that is not easy to teach. How do we get students to discuss the thoughts and feelings evoked by a certain poem? That's where drama comes in.

For our drama presentation we combined literacy and drama in the form of poetry and tableaux. We were able to take an inaccessible part of literacy; poems and poetry, and use a very accessible (anyone can do it!) form of drama; tableaux, and combine the two.

The presentation itself could not have gone any better! I believe that the poem was very powerful and because we were studying it in drama, the thoughts and feelings in the poem were really brought out. Our warmup activity of Statues tied in very nicely with our theme of Tableaux. Overall we were extremely satisfied with the presentation. But it's one thing to present your lesson plan to a group of fellow teachers, without the behaviour issues, classroom management, and differentiation to worry about. How well would our lesson hold up in an actual classroom with actual students?

I had the pleasure of being able to teach this lesson twice! Once with my fellow teacher candidates, and once with my grade 5 class.

Although this lesson had been created and intended for an intermediate drama class, it actually worked quite well with my grade 5s. They did however need some extra prompting on the themes within the poem and some overall class discussion before working in groups. They were still very receptive to this poem and the themes within it and worked very hard at creating their tableaux. We were unable to successfully do the tableaux with transition so we opted for simply tableaux 1, rest, tableaux 2, rest. I also chose to remove the writing in role aspect of the lesson because my class struggles greatly with their writing and I did not want that to interfere with the dramatic development. We instead offered words of support and understanding as a class discussion.

I believe that this poem can be accessible and relatable for anyone at any age which is something my grade 5s and I discussed. They agreed that anybody, at any age, in any situation might have days where they feel peer pressure or where they feel they need to put on a mask. My class was a little on the crazy side most days and I worried about this lesson becoming an opportunity for silliness but they surprised me and really showed me how mature they can be!

I've attached a copy of our presentation slideshow below for your reference: