Never Underestimate the Value of the School Musical
“A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
We know that learning experiences involving active participation of mind, body and voice enhance the quality of learning.
If you were able to offer an educational hands-on learning experience that provided students with opportunities to develop the following skills across the curriculum, I am sure that you would rate it with importance.
Furthermore, it’s a platform for children to enact and react to real life human emotion in a fictitious setting. Not only do they learn the skills involved to make a great show but also the valuable experiences and skills that lead to opportunities as adults.
These essential life skills and key competencies can be learned from direct experiences within the school production. Yes, those talented in the performing arts get to showcase that talent, which is necessary and not to be undervalued, but it is not the only value that the school production provides.
Resilience
Being part of the cast and technical team requires patience, resilience and an understanding of what teamwork requires. Skill-building through practice and perseverance as well as encouraging and supporting others as they work through the same skills are all essential for being part of a team, a group, a family – even a society.
Cognitive Functions
Perception: Opportunities to analyse and form opinions, ideas and solutions
Mastery Through Memorisation: The skill of memorisation can serve students well in education and beyond.
Craftsmanship: Learning skills to the best of their ability for aspired outcomes.
Recognise Patterns: Identify predictable patterns from music and dance routines – these useful skills can be applied to many curriculum areas.
Visuospatial Skills: Visual perception of spatial relationships. Executive Functions: The skills that help you to get things done. Language Development: Through reading, learning and speaking patterns of speech.
Social Cognition
Observing, replicating and discussing human interactions within a story situation
Discovering what we learn about human interactions and how we can apply it to our own life situations.
Choosing and applying learned responses to real-life situations.
Opportunities to develop through interpersonal and multidisciplinary approaches.
Learning Through the School Musical
The school musical offers tangible experiences that give students life long memories and skills that extend well beyond the stage. Participation in the school musical provides golden opportunities to learn communication skills essential for interaction, for students to learn to express themselves, both verbally and non verbally. People need people. We need to be able to effectively communicate. The way we use pitch, pause and pace in our speech conveys meaning from words. Learning how to stand powerfully, how to use our bodies to convey a message or emotion. This is all POWERFUL stuff.
Satisfaction
The outcome of audience appreciation, of children knowing that their presence and input resulted in the clapping and cheering, leaving the performers and tech-team with the feeling of being part of something successful elevates a sense of self-worth.
Confidence
Confidence building through exposure to audiences, walking, dancing and acting across the stage, skill-building through practice and perseverance and then the reward of the appreciative audience at the end are all top-shelf golden learning experiences.
Cross-Curricular Experiences
Careful selection of a school musical that contains themes that can be studied across the curriculum extends the learning.
Budgets, Marketing and Graphics
The planning of the show budget slips directly into hands-on, real life mathematics. The experience of being involved in innovative advertising and marketing are also authentic, ‘real’ learning opportunities. Of course, the mathematical, reading, writing and art activities align with those subjects as well.
Social studies is a great place to unpack the social, historical, cultural and imaginative themes within the story. The Health Curriculum objectives of ‘Relationships’ and ‘Identity, Sensitivity and Respect,’ can also be drawn as an authentic source from the school production experience.
Our world is made up of interaction, encounters, interpretation, response, reflection, personal growth and creativity of thought.
Exposure to these experiences creates opportunities to:
• Improve: Students reflect and record their progress throughout the production period.
- Develop a personal sense of self.
- Develop healthy relationships and respect for others.
- Experience the joy of meaningful thought and ideas.
These skills can only be GOOD for the human race.
No wonder everyone remembers their school production!Interaction
Children learn how to interact within a large scale group through their participation in the school production. They learn how to collaborate and the power of that collaboration. With that, comes patience, practice, teamwork and responsibility
of personal contribution. Learning how their input creates something that is bigger than themselves is a crucial learning skill for participation in the world.
We all know that input equals output and this medium teaches it beautifully.
The school production should never be considered a stand alone activity. It is a goldmine of diverse and direct experiences to immerse across the curriculum for authentic and powerful learning.
There is so much research about this, yet the school production is often generally undervalued as an important part of the educational process.
Children learn to appreciate the value of others. The lighting, sound, costuming, sets, stage management – ALL working behind the scenes to make the actors look great. Teamwork is also another essential skill learned.
I have not even included the opportunities to showcase performing arts talents! Ironically, this seems to be the most common and often isolated reason for having a school musical. Never underestimate the power of a school production as a highly effective learning opportunity across many mediums.
