Lesson Reflection - Stage Combat

Lesson Reflection Stage Combat Secondary Theatre Grades 7-8

I feel my lesson was 100% on target for helping my students meet the objective of demonstrating safe stage combat.  Although direct instruction can be a less effective way to teach, in this lesson it was necessary to insure the safety of the students while we practiced the fight moves.  

Growth mindset is so important in theatre because so many students come into class with a fixed mindset! They already have ideas of how well they believe they can sing or dance or act. Additionally, assessments tend to be public, so when a student doesn't master a skill the class can see it. For this reason I believe it is my job as a theatre teacher to teach growth mindset regularly and help students apply it to every aspect of their lives. In my lesson on stage combat the growth mindset was reinforced by warmly encouraging all students to participate and giving positive feedback when a strike went particularly well. Also, asking students to help demonstrate new moves with the teacher validates the idea they can accomplish the objective. Lastly, not mastering a move only occurs when someone is injured. The first rule of stage combat is the keep the actors safe. This is always possible if students follow the rules of safety.

To be fair, stage combat is fun! My experience was that even if the students were unsure about their ability to do the strike well they were highly motivated to try. The summative assessment also created a desire in the students because it is strongly based in Self-Determination Theory. They had a high level of autonomy by choosing their partners and also creating the scene. Belonging was also a part of letting students choose their partners and then knowing they would get to show their scene to their peers. Competence was strong with the students mostly because they enjoyed the content so much. They really wanted to try a fight scene. The biggest part of the lesson that I would have liked to improve on was class management. I was constantly having to get their attention again after every strike attempt. Its nice that they were excited every time they executed a strike but I feel if I was able to find a way to motivate them to stay on task we could have had an even more successful lesson.

It is obvious to me that most of the students in this class are in Marcia's Identity Foreclosure stage of development. They are willing to commit to relevant roles but not quite in identity crisis. This lesson supports identity development by encouraging the students to try new things, even if it is something they did not know they wanted to try. This will help create confidence as they enter into Identity Moratorium.

The Learning Theory that I focused on for this lesson was Bloom's Taxonomy. The students demonstrated recall of information in a unique way. In a class discussion at the end of the assessment, many students reported that they had taught the steps of stage combat and certain strikes to family and friends and practiced choreographing fight scenes that they tricked family and friends with! They demonstrated understanding of the content during the mini formative assessments held after each strike was taught. They applied their knowledge when they choreographed their fight scenes. They analyzed the steps of their fight and the effectiveness of their scene during the personal formative assessment I as the teacher held with each group in preparation for the summative assessment. They evaluated their own scenes during rehearsal and also when they created a completely original scene using the information they learned in this lesson. I feel Bloom's Taxonomy was strongly supported in this lesson and was a valuable part of it.

I don't feel using another learning theory would have taken away from the lesson, however I like that Bloom's Taxonomy is so detailed. This lends to the ability to ensure the student's safety while learning stage combat. Fisher's Three Tiers could have applied but is more open in classroom application, which is also true of Bruner's Modes of Processing. This lesson is most successful with detailed learning theory steps because the lesson needs to be taught with detailed instruction.