Body language, coordination, and improvisation

Hello! Welcome to a new entry!

 

Thanks once again, for taking the time to read my thoughts on a new topic. This time, I will describe all about our body language class, coordination, and improvisation.

In this class, we learned a lot of useful tips to improve our body language, we did many exercises, and I loved our very dynamic class.

 To start off, we made some space in the classroom and arranged ourselves into two rows, one in front of the other. Then we had to keep eye contact with the person in front of us, trying to be serious. I was in front of Dani, and it was difficult at the beginning but then I could focus better and made it to the end! This kind of exercise helps us be serious even when students might be telling jokes or laughing but we,  teachers, have to be focused on what we are doing and try to look professional and serious when needed. We also tried to keep eye contact with a peer as we walked around, this was harder than I thought! because everyone was walking around, and I was afraid of bumping into somebody as I walked. We also stared at an object in the classroom as we walked around. I think we never take the time to really focus on a single task, these exercises were good for that and fun.

Then, we practiced our facial expressions and body gestures, we tried to make the person in front of us laugh, which was a hard task for me. I didn´t know what to do, but it definitely was a piece of cake for Dani, who in less than 5 seconds had me laughing out loud hahaha. You´ll see it in the video!

Here I was unsuccessfully trying to make her laugh,

While in this one, she clearly made me laugh: 

 My moment came when we had to walk around the classroom pretending to be top models. I never felt more empowered and secure like this time haha, I sometimes felt a little shy though but this was great to practice. Being angry came like from my inside, and was very natural for me haha, and I heard Noé saying "I can’t!". It was really fun! I loved complimenting people, that is definitely a very expressive and kind gesture we all should practice often. 

Finally, we practiced improvisation by acting out a short movie scene, chosen by another group, we had little time to prepare and had to make props out of notebook pages and use personal stuff. We acted out a Shrek scene, the Pin Pon one, and it was really cool! All the groups were amazing and made us realize we are creative people, and that we can improvise quite well. These two things are vital in teaching because sometimes an activity cannot go as planned or we might make teaching aids with few materials.

Here are some shots of the different scenes!

Eli’s group was portraying also Shrek’s scene when Fiona and Shrek have a dinner with the queen an queen of Far Faraway.

This is our group in Pin Pon scene. 🦦

Besides, we practiced pantomime, we chose a background song and used it to make up kind of a story and played a role  along with it.

 

Our last activity was saying goodbye  imagining and expressing how a goodbye sounded like for each one of us. For example, for me a goodby was “I say goodbye and I imagine I am a rabbit jumping behind its carrot.” And I acted it out. ✨ 🥕 🐇 

So, my final thoughts are that we have to know how to take advantage of our gestures, coordination, and improvisation skills. Our body is one of the most valuable teaching aids we have. I once read that 7% of our message is delivered verbally through our voice. 38% of it is vocal (tone of voice, articulation, etc.) and 55% of our message is delivered through body language. (Signs and gestures)

That was it for today´s entry I hope you have enjoyed it as much as I did!

Bye-bye! See you next time!