Welcome back to my blog!

In today’s entry we are going to talk about body language, coordination, and improvisation. To be honest with you, I knew that body language and coordination were essential for teachers, since they help to facilitate effective communication and engagement, however, I never thought or saw “improvisation” as an important topic for teacher’s development and their communication with the students, but in these sessions I found out that improvisation is vital for them.

We started one of the sessions by dividing the class in groups and we did a set of different activities in order to challenge our body language, coordination and improvisation. There was one activity in which we had to try to make one of our classmates laugh, activity in which I did not have any success because I could not make my friend Giselle laugh; I knew that was going to happen, though. We also did an activity in which we had to look to a classmate straight in the eye and try to keep a serious face, activity that of course I failed as well.

In the other session we also divided ourselves in groups, here is a pic:

We had to do “improvisation”. Teacher Orlando asked us to think about a scene from a movie or a TV show and then think about a song that was mostly instrumental. We had to present our scene to other group and then they had to present it in front of the class improvising with whatever they have handy, I felt like I was in an acting class. I choose a scene from a movie that is called ¨Scary Movie” because: 1) I love Regina Hall and her work 2) I thought that it was very funny and also easy to improvise with that scene. I had to switch scenes with Maru’s group and this is a picture (I could not get the video) of they improvising the scene:

And now it’s time to talk about the cringiest moment in my almost five years in the university. We had to do our improvisation with one scene from a movie that is called “Toy Story”, and at the beginning we were worried because we thought that we were not going to be able to do the improvisation, however it turned out “pretty well” according to some of my classmates. Here is our improvisation:

Then we had Fernando’s group and they did their improvisation of a scene from what I consider, one of the best movies in history, that's right, I'm talking about Shrek. Here is how they improvised the scene:

Sorry, I moved the camera too much.

That’s all I could get because I had to leave the class and print some documents (Yes, it was not a lie and I asked teacher Orlando for permission before leaving so you better keep your mouth shut). - I had to clarify this because some of my classmates said that I was lying. 

In short, improvisation is fundamental for teachers because it helps them to stay somehow flexible, to keep their students engaged, and be creative, which will lead them to provide meaningful and impactful learning experiences for their students. Also, body language and coordination are key factors because they improve communication, engagement, and the learning environment in the classroom.

This was my summary about body language, coordination, and improvisation, I hope you liked it.

See you in my next entry!