My secon drama workshop that whet well.

Workshop Two – 28th Dec 2009

I led the second workshop for Resources for Autism at the building where I normally work. It was the same workshop on Pincchio. I was feeling much more relaxed than last time, as I knew more about what I was doing and I knew more about how the leaders wanted to day to run. The day was arranged so that the workshop fell in between other activities, which took the pressure from me. I led my workshop for and hour and a half, took a break for lunch and then a walk, followed by a return to my workshop for the final hour.

There were five high functioning autistic children in the workshop and I began with music and copying of movement, which worked well, as the children were very enthusiastic and making up their own movements. I did need to explain that if I felt the focus was being lost that I would signal by putting up my hand, meaning that we all stop and regroup. This was very useful to me during the workshop as the children responded well to this and it enabled me to manage the situation very well.

When I started talking about the characters in the story they knew already and they knew what these characters looked like and how they would move, as they had all seen the Disney version. Then I played more music and had them role-play the various characters around the space. This was a great success and the children and myself all became very excited. I then found myself talking too fast for them and so I had to curb my enthusiasm and calm the workshop down a bit, by putting my hand in the air and bring back the focus of the workshop.

I then went on to do the sign language activity. The children managed to pick this up really quickly and were so engaged with this. I felt so pleased for them that it made me quite emotional and my heart quickened. I know how difficult it is to engage autistic children for very long and the fact that they stayed with me all the time and really enjoyed themselves, made me very satisfied indeed.

Then I sat the children down and asked them to tell me what they knew of the story. They all reflected the Disney version so I stayed within those boundaries so as not to alienate the children. This was section of the workshop was most challenging as the children didn’t listen to each other very well and talked over each other. I had to use my focus signal several time to restore order and this worked very well. In the end I manage to achieve a little simply story of how the children saw the story of Pinocchio.

The second part of the workshop took place after the walk and involved the children dressing up as the characters they wanted to be. They were all so enthusiastic it was hard to maintain the focus but it still went very well and I managed to narrate the story and direct the children in the characters and produce the performance.