Great Activity

Today we took a break from the PSA Project. It was cute because one girl was so excited to get to work on the PSA, she asked if we could skip our routines and just get going. She didn't want to play a game or anything! I told her that I owed another student a new game, so introduced two new games to the class. It was a wonderful day.
Of the two games we played, the one they enjoyed the most was "Artist, Model, Clay." You may be familiar with it. Three students stand in a single file line all facing the same direction. Then have one of the kids at an end turn around. Now you have one kid facing two - all in a line. The one facing the two is the artist. The student closest to her is the clay, followed by the model. The model strikes a pose and the clay is not allowed to turn around and look at it. The artist then has to "mold" the clay without talking, touching, or demonstrating. My students, who are well-behaved, all called out, "What?! That's impossible." I told them to watch and did a demonstration with two girls. They faced me and I was the artist. The model struck a pose, the class laughed, so the clay turned around to see it. I reminded her she can't do that. So, the model struck a second pose and this time, the clay stayed facing me. I put my hands near her arm and kind of wiggled my fingers over the part of the body I wanted her to move - molding her like clay without touching, talking, or demonstrating. The class all gasped at how she immediately moved her arm the way I suggested. It was beautiful. It took maybe two minutes, and my clay looked just like my model. Then I had the clay turn (keeping her pose best she could) to see what the model was doing.
This game was so fun, they wanted to play it again even though school was almost over. I told them to just rotate through parts without me keeping track of time - I'm always trying to think of ways that will give them some ownership of the class. All groups but one just continued on through a second rotation without me having to ask. It's important that students know they need to choose poses they can comfortably hold for a few minutes. The kids then told me the exercise worked on team building, focus, precision, non-verbal communication, trust, and a few more I've forgotten now. I was so impressed with their work today.
If you teach drama, or just want to get kids working well together, I highly recommend this activity. It can take as much or as little time as you want. The students want to play again with new groups to see how it will be with different people. Next time, we are going to add the challenge of incorporating facial expressions.