Overview
This badge was made to recognise the steps Cai is taking in pretend play, imagining and acting in roles and situations, engaging other children in pretend play and performing for an audience.
Tools that have been really useful in engaging Cai in pretend play and acting are the board game Whatever Next?, which encourages him to take on roles, play "shops" at playgrounds, board games set around pretend situations such as Bus Stop and Pop to the Shops, and a roleplay restaurant set. However, Cai often initiates pretend play in a range of situations, which helps him explore his learning and understanding in other areas--for example, pretending to be fish searching for rubbish in the ocean and bringing it to be disposed of before it can cause too much pollution and harm other sea life.
He also enjoys acting out narratives with toys, either unprompted or with tools such as Tell a Tale story dice and puppets.
He has engaged in group pretend play as well, including teaching a younger boy and a toddler the scenarios and collaborating with those children and a female friend in complex pretend scenarios.
Finally, he has learned, performed and improvised songs, replacing words and concepts and showing an understanding of rhyme and rhythm patterns.
At this age, I'm more interested in promoting improvisation and exploring different points of view than any attempt at learning set scripts.
Learning Goals
- Increasing empathy
- Promoting creative and imaginative skills
- Improving communication skills and presenting to audiences
- Creating logical narrative
- Social skills: collaboration with other children
Australian Curriculum Links
Arts (Drama)
Explore role and dramatic action in dramatic play, improvisation and process drama:- taking part in purposeful dramatic play focusing on experiencing the roles and situations they create
- taking turns in offering and accepting ideas, and staying in role in short improvisations
- exploring possibilities for role and situation when participating in teacher-led process drama and roleplay
- Use voice, facial expression, movement and space to imagine and establish role and situation
- Present drama that communicates ideas to an audience
English
- Innovate on familiar texts through play
- Listen to, recite and perform poems, chants, rhymes and songs, imitating and inventing sound patterns including alliteration and rhyme
- Recreate texts imaginatively using performance
Personal and Social Capability: Social Management
- communicate effectively
- work collaboratively
- make decisions
- negotiate and resolve conflict
