Reflection

Nur Atikah Binti Zolkifli

First and foremost I would like to praise God for his blessing in granting me

the chance to complete this entire course. It has been a privilege to study under Dr.

Quah Seok Hoon for her experience and expertise on the subject is unquestionable.

I have had the chance to gain new knowledge and undergo new experiences. Under

her wing, I am now a step closer to becoming a highly knowledgeable teacher with

the skills of a children’s performer in my heart.

Throughout the whole course I am introduced to the arts of plays and dramas

for children which honestly are something more complex than I had anticipated.

Performing the play is one thing and preparing the play is something completely

different. If one thing is clear to me after undergoing this course is that producing a

play which is suitable for children is no child’s play. There are many factors that must

be taken into account. A children’s play is simple, interactive, fun and meaningful.

Being a future teacher, these are the goals that I must strive to achieve when

teaching plays and dramas to my students.

Doing the coursework for this paper, there were many stages in which we had

to undergo. First was script writing or adapting where we had to either come out with

our own original play script or adapt an available script so that it will suit our

performance later. I decided to adapt a script; a play entitled “An Apple Pie” which

after I adapted it became “The Durian Crepe”. However, the adapting process was

not merely changing the title of the play; I had to also adapt the play which revolves

around a western culture to suit our Malaysian Culture. Not only that, I had to

compress the whole storyline to make sure that it was not long. The language level

had to be adapted too. The original script uses a higher level English which in my

opinion was not suitable for the usage of children.

After finishing this, we were grouped into three different groups. I was

grouped with Nurilani, Aizil Hasyimi, Nur Amira, Intan fazyana, Hanisah, Nor Hani

and Hamirul Haizad. Then, the eight of us had to present our scripts and select the

most suitable play to be used for our stage performance. It was quite a painstaking

process as all of our scripts had their own merits and weaknesses. It was difficult for

us to make a decision. After much deliberation, we agreed on using Aizil’s play script

which was entitled “The Tale of Rabbit and His Tail”. It was by far the most suitable

script for the type of performance that we were planning to do. It was simple, easy to

understand and was appealing to the children’s interest.

Then came the phase we had to prepare our production. However, before we

even started planning, our beloved lecturer, Dr. Quah had planned a little trip which

eventually helped us in the planning of our stage performance. It was a trip to

Penang Performing Arts Centre (PENANGPAC). It was a trip to remember indeed.

We had the chance to watch a professional children’s play from the UK. It was a play

called “The Snail and The Whale” which for me was certainly an eye opener. I was

able to witness what a children’s play was all about. It was colourful, fun, interactive

and many more. I had all the characteristics which were very much appealing to the

children (and the adults too I might add). I enjoyed it very much. It impacted our

planning substantially.

After we had seen the play, our understanding of what our performance

should be like was much better. We started our production by adapting the script so

that it would suit the number of our group members. We add a few thing her and

there to make it more enjoyable. On the major additions was our interactive part with

the children. This we obtain from the play that we had seen. After we had completed

the script, we moved on to the settings, props and our costumes. We made all of

them by hand as it saves cost. The whole process of preparing for the performance

was fun and had developed a good team spirit in the process.

When the big day arrived, we were all very nervous but we believed in

ourselves and in each other. We had had enough practice and we were confident of

our performance. The play went great. We enjoyed ourselves. However, I personally

feel that I could have done a better job. I wish I had been more expressive in saying

my lines and more animated in my movements. The response from the audience

was not that great also as they very young children and did not really know how to

react to our performance but we tried our best to bring them into the play.

The whole process had been a wonderful experience for me. I would certainly

do it again. I believe that using plays and dramas in teaching is a great way to teach

the language. It helps children to use the language in a friendly environment.

Children would be thrill to be in the story rather than just listening to it. Plus, the

teacher would also enjoy teaching the children using plays as gives us room to be

someone other than the teacher and to bond with the students.