The Arctic Trails Have Their Secret Tales

Using stories to teach is one of my favourite techniques, regardless of the subject. This week in drama we explored a story called 'The Cremation of Sam Mcgee' through a variety of drama strategies.

Before even reading the story or knowing the title we were introduced to a chant: 'The Arctic trails have their secret tales'. We practiced a few times and without even realizing it, were introduced to an amazing classroom management technique. Whenever our instructor began the chant we would join her and when the chant was finished we would remain quiet, a very effective and creative way of getting your students attention.

After learning the chant we moved onto an activity called 'Fill in the Gap'. Once again, we began the activity without reading the story, only knowing the chant and thinking about the secret tails that could exist in the arctic. Here is how the activity is executed:
Students are placed in small groups (lets say groups of 4) and letter themselves off (A-D). The person labelled A creates a wide pose with their body. When they are called upon, B assesses the stance and creates a pose with their own body that fills in the gaps of the pose created by person A. Person C does the same thing as Person B but they asses the joint shape that has been created and finally person D does the same. Once all four people are a part of the shape, Person A may be called to slowly remove and reposition themselves, and so on.
In our class each group performed individually while the remaining groups watched. As we were performing you could hear people interpreting the shapes we were creating (eg. it looks like a horse, etc.) This activity has endless extension possibilities. For example, combining the chant and the poses, students could be asked to write their own tale about the arctic.

The extension we were asked to complete was called 'story telling', another drama strategy. For this activity we remained in the same groups. We were to decide on characters for ourselves and imagine something had happened to us in the Arctic. We were then asked to tell that story by using both words and sounds (creating a soundscape) around a class 'campfire'. The campfire then created a great atmosphere for us to listen to our instructor read the storybook.

Although the two activities explained above were not directly related to the story, they were inspired by it. This is a great example of how to create an entire cross-curricular unit (in this situation, likely with language arts) around one story. Every activity did not have to relate to the tale in the story book but instead can be inspired by the setting, small anecdotes or themes!

Scroll down to listen to Johnny Cash's reading of 'The Cremation of Sam Mcgee'