Social Cognitivism

Social Cognitivism is something that is easily used in theatre.  How we behave in theatre or in our day to day life is picked up intentionally or not and may end up being used in a performance.  So how can we use those behaviors that we observe to our benefit?
One thing that Ms. Brugger, the teacher I am observing, does to teach this to her class is she modeled for them how she wants the class to give feedback on someone's performance.  She did it herself to begin with, giving sandwich style feedback (something good, something they can improve on, and then something good).  She then explained the benefits of giving feedback this way, that it allows students to feel confident in their work and also gives them something to be working on as they continue to fix their performance.  She then had the students try it as the following students got up gave their performance.  Calling on students to give feedback, in the style that she modeled.  She would then ask the student who got the feedback how that feedback made them feel.  The students gave a positive response and it made them feel more confident in their performance.  I also observed that the students that followed went into their performance with more confidence because they knew that overall they would be able to feel good about the work that they did.  It created a vicarious reinforcement that if they give a good performance, they will feel better about the feedback they receive.  
The above example goes hand in hand with this article, which if you scroll down to "the intervention" section you can start to read how social cognitivism and theatre go hand in hand.  It states "we can learn by observing others and by receiving feedback from others."  Theatre is one of those subjects that is very opinionated and in the real world, you really can get a role or job based off of your looks and abilities.  So through social cognitivism, we can observe what is appropriate behavior and receive that necessary feedback to excel in our position.

Information Processing

Processing information is a very important skill that teachers need to understand in order to have students understand the material they are taught to be remembered as time goes on.  I have seen a lot of different examples from my teacher that I have observed this semester to help get students focused on the material and remember it for the long haul.

One example that my teacher does is the raising her hand above her head and counting down from 5-0 to gain the students attention.  This increases students awareness of their surroundings and helps them know that they are losing focus and need to regroup their thoughts.  Also the teacher has laid out that if they are still being disruptive after she gets to 0, they have the chance to lose participation points, adding a level of fear that is controllable for both the teacher and the student.  This link is a great reference to see how this simple tool of counting down can help get students focused.
Ms. Brugger also allows her students to work together in pairs or groups often to help go over material that they learn.  This way the students are practicing both maintenance and elaborative rehearsal by repeating to each the material over and over again while also connecting material to other outlets.
With theatre, we draw from many real world experiences to give us motivation, meaning, influences, ect.  So naturally in the classroom, the lessons tend to get connected to real world material for the students to connect to.  Ms. Brugger always tried to connect her lessons to something happening in the world today so the students can understand how powerful the material we are learning is and so they can start to make their own connections and encode in their brains how what they are learning can be applied to something.  With monologues, referring it to a job interview, and being able to talk comfortably in front of someone or a group of people.  The skills needed to do both are the same and can easily be transferred from one to another.
Wait time is something that can be awkwardly important.  We don't like these awkward pauses in our discussion, but it gives students time to think for themselves and digest the information.  Ms. Brugger even told me in her comments on my lesson that I taught for her class that I needed to give more time to allow students to think and respond, as well more time for them to quiet down to listen.  She explained to me the importance of making sure everyone is on the same page and that while everyone may appear fine on the outside, in their heads they are all processing the information differently and needed different amounts of time to think.  It's better to wait longer and let everyone process than to only allow half the class to understand it.

Behaviorism

It's hard in a theatre classroom to really implement the behaviorism theory, not that it's impossible though.  The theatre I am observing this semester, Ms. Brugger, uses this theory in her film studies class.  While most of the class is a lot of watching movies to understand the different types of film and such, she uses the Premack Principle to have the students work on the packets that she gives out on varying subjects (usually about the era they are studying) and then as a reward, the students get to pick out of a list of movies that fit with the lesson which one they want to watch in class.  If the students are getting off topic or talking during their study time and their packets aren't getting completed, she implements the Response Cost and takes away their choice of working as a partnership on the packets, or simply chooses the movie they get to watch, rather than allow them to choose.

The students responded quite well to this particular example.  It motivated students to get their packet done efficiently because they got to control how the class went as they did their work.  They got to pick what they wanted to see and who they worked with and understood that failure to do that resulted in the loss of those privileges.   There were some students who simply didn't care or tried, and Ms. Brugger took that into her judgement of these rewards and punishments.  She work talk to those students to make sure they were both on the same page and she would try and find something that would motivate those students to do the work and not ruin the experience for the rest of the class.  (I am not aware of any of those deals that she has made with those students, but they do seem to work harder for a different goal.)

I love this article because it talks about how giving students choices truly helps empower them and feel like they are getting the most out of their education.  This works hand it hand with what Ms. Brugger is doing because she is giving the students the choice to pick the movie they enjoy.  If they enjoy it, they are more likely to watch it and get more out of it.  If they end up not liking the movie, they learned more about what they don't like in movie choices because they picked it!  Giving students choice is the best learning strategy and behaviorism plays a role in that choice.

Erikson/Marcia

Erik Erikson believed that everyone goes through a psychosoical crises, and that we go through several several times over again throughout our life.  Below is a picture of those different levels and the approximate age for each of those.  These ages do not define and solely claim that level, but that is typically the age we first experience it and when it is the strongest seen.

According to the chart, in high school, students would be facing the Identity v Role Confusion.  I would agree with this, but I think there is more to that.  Students when they first are in your class will deal with the trust v mistrust level.  Can they come to you and trust that you will help them?  That you know what you are teaching?  They deal with intimacy v isolation.  While it may not be on a marriage level, it can easily correlate with group work v individual assignment.  Are we as educators giving students the chance to work through group assignments, helping them develop that skill or are we keeping them to work by themselves and learning not to be open to others ideas?

I know that the teacher I am observing this semester is constantly putting students in groups to work together.  And not all of it is necessarily group work, but she is allowing the students to learn to work with different type of people and allowing them to communicate their thoughts so that they are more proficient in communicating.  I definitely want to be able to do that in my classroom and allow students to learn to express themselves in a group setting and how to appropriately do that.

I honestly think that you could eliminate the "approximate age" on the picture above and change it to "time in the classroom".  The beginning, first day, of class and different levels throughout until the last day of class.  Students will most likely experience some of all of these crisis'.

Now if we look at James Marcia's work, we can see a type of "commitment level" that students can experience in finding themselves.  Students will fluctuate through all of these, diffusion, foreclosure, moratorium, and achievement.  I think that more or less students will be somewhere between foreclosure and moratorium, or in other words, they are committed to an idea of themselves but haven't tried to explore it to they are actively exploring different options of themselves and what they like.

The following link will take you to an online book title Drama and Theatre with Children: International Perspectives.  This book is really cool because it talks about how children find themselves and what they perceive in this world and there is even a section about Erikson's theory and how we as theatre educators should not try and force a student to have an identity crisis to achieve a level of understanding, but that students should find a sense of themselves in order to portray any type of role.  It's a great read if you have the time!

Physical Development/Bronfenbrenner

High school is a challenging time for any student.  They have expectations to meet, friends to impress, their bodies are still changing from puberty.  It's a lot to take it!  Take into account that we as teachers are trying to add to their development and make them smarter and more educated students and you have a lot to think about for a student.  But I want to address in this post how their physical development affects their learning in the classroom.

Now, obviously, students in high school are still going through a stage of puberty.  Boys voices are still changing, body hair growing, big appetites, sexual urges.  Girls are dealing with periods, appetites, sexual urges, leveling off on their height.  That is a lot of change happening to them on a daily basis.  They are confused and very self-cautious.  Now we as educators can help students feel safe about their bodies in our classroom by helping provide physical activities throughout the lesson to help them be comfortable with their body and using it in multiple ways.

Educators need to be aware of the different influences affecting a student as well.  Their family, their religious beliefs, friends, ect.  Lets look at religious first.  If you look at Utah, the predominant religion is Mormonism, but not everyone follows that religion.  So we need to make sure our lessons are not geared toward everyone understanding a reference to a particular religion because not everyone will understand it, even if they grew up around that religion!  Parents will have expectations of their kids as well that we need to be cautious of.  If parents are expecting their kid to get an "A" in a class, helping provide the material and resources for the student to be successful to get that "A" is something that we can do.  Here is link that you can read that helps give some important information that teachers and parents can do to help work together to benefit the students learning.

Vygotsky

The cool thing about theatre is that we kind of always are incorporating Vygotsky and his theory.  In the sense that in order for one to become a better performer, they need to practice of course, but they need to push themselves just outside their comfort zone, or in this case, the Zone of Proximal Development.  The zone of proximal development, AKA the ZPD, is a range of tasks or objectives that one is ready to accomplish with help to get them to the next level of understanding.  Actors work with each other and with a director to get to that next level, as do teachers.

Fellow actors, students, directors, teachers.  All of these things could be known as people who are More Knowledgeable Others, or someone who has experience in a certain area of learning.  They can help guide one to becoming a better performer.  In high school, that typically will fall to the teacher, AKA me.  We help students to get to that next level of understanding in performance.

In theatre, one subject is easily connected to another part of theatre.  So internalization of material and knowledge is easily transferable between all of the theatre world.   No matter where you go, you can understand theatre, even if you don't know the language.  You can understand what they are wanting or what an actors objective is by understanding how facial expressions and body gestures work.  How the tone in one's voice portrays emotions.  We teach all of that in the classroom!

In this link, you will find a PDF that talks about the framework of theatre in school.  On page 9, you can find on the side that theatre's work from one class to the next is scaffolded, giving the students the education they need succeed as they progress in theatre and learn more in depth techniques, continuing outside of high school and to the college level and beyond.  We have scaffolding techniques for a specific unit but that unit in and of itself is its own scaffolding to understand the next unit.  That's what I love about theatre, and why I can't wait to teach it in the classroom!

Teachers behavior in the classroom should be driven to help students understand that what they bring to the classroom (their background, their experiences, their life) can help them understand the relevance of the topic for the day.  We as teachers need to be aware of our students backgrounds to an extent so that we can relate the material to them.  Helping them to internalize that something that they learned at home can apply to the work at hand in class.

Kohlberg

Kohlberg is a very interesting fellow.  He lives along the same line of Piaget but with a slightly different approach, looking more at the moral development of a student.  He breaks it down into three different levels, with two sub levels on each.  The first being preconventional, or before rules.  The two sub levels here are obedience vs punishment, good or bad action is determined by the physical consequence.  The other is personal reward, what do I get out of the situation.  The next stage is the conventional stage, AKA rules.  The sub levels here are good boy/nice girl, good means 'nice'.  The other is law and order, laws are absolute.  The authority must be respected.  The last stage is the postconventional, abstract rule breaking.  The sub levels here are social contract, what is good according to the society it is associated with.  A groups definition of good.  The other is universal ethical principle, what is right and wrong is individually decided and thought in the abstract.

Here is a youtube video that you can check out to double check your understanding of Kohlberg's stages that I briefly went over.

With this background of Kohlberg, I now take a look at the students that I observe each week.  I would say that most live in this preconventional-conventional stage.  Some touch in the postconventional, but for the most part the students are staying in those beginning stages with their moral development.  They are very concerned about what the results of a choice will do for them and there grade.  Another group of students are concerned about meeting the rules of the class exactly, even if the situation deems it to be changed.

For example, one week I was observing my teacher's theatre 3 class learn about viewpoints.  It was a hands on lesson and the students had to get up on the stage and move around to learn about the different viewpoints.  Some of the students showed a conventional moral development.  The teacher would tell the students that whenever they walked between two students, those students were a door that you had to move through in a fun and different way.  Some of the students took it very literal and every single "door" that they past through they jumped or dove or did something big and different because those were the rules and they needed to be met (law and order).  Other students however would only go through the motions.  Slightly raising an arm or not even doing anything but walk around the room.  The lacked to see any reward from this because there was no punishment for not doing the task.

Now with this type of activity, it is hard to be watching every student the entire time to make sure they are doing what is being asked, so helping the students develop that moral reasoning as the teacher is a bit harder.  However, rules could have been laid that allows the students to help motivate each other to participate, since they are all walking around each other.  But that can be tough because you don't want the students to be distracted looking for those not participating rather than fully engaging themselves.

Piaget

Piaget was a very brilliant man for coming up and discovering his understanding of cognitive development.  His theory breaks down the developing of cognitive thoughts and actions into four different stages, sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational.  These different stages evolved into the next one as one grows up and the brain develops.  With everyone's brains changing and growing differently, there are no set ages for these stages, but it is still important to look at this and recognize what a student is able to process and understand at different stages in their lives.

In my observations this semester, this is something that I didn't even know I was looking at with each lesson.  I first want to show this video that my education psychology showed us while she covered this lesson on Piaget.  It is evidence of one of the stages, concrete operational, that shows that a student can recognize that the water levels in each cup may vary, but the amount of water doesn't.  Here is that brief video to watch.

I like this video because it shows the student is thinking through what she is seeing and expanding upon that.  Now take that knowledge and expand it further to abstract thoughts and you are reaching the next level, formal operational, which is where we want our students to be.  We want students to start thinking outside of the box to understand a concept.

The teacher that I am observing is teaching film studies for one of her classes.  They tend to watch a lot of movies to understand the time period and study the evolution of movies.  She hands out an assignment of the students to fill out while they watch the movie, like most teachers tend to do so students don't sleep or goof off.  However, rather than it just be busy work, at the end of the assignment is a space for the students to ask follow up questions or concerns about the movie or the time period that they wish to learn more about.  Then she will pick some of the good questions and next class ask them to the class to discuss as a class.  I really like this because to me, I see it reaching that abstract thinking and helps the students, who don't see that part of history in person, they are able to take what they see, think about it from that time periods perspective, and then ask even more questions to try and answer more questions about that time.

With the students asking these harder questions, it creates disequilibrium, an unease about the subject because it is new and the student doesn't know how to fit this new information into their schema.  Schema describes a pattern of thought or behavior that organizes categories of information.  By then having a classroom discussion, the teacher helps the students to assimilate the new information and helps the students come up with ideas and connections to accommodate the information into their schema.  It really is fascinating.

If you are still struggling to understand what this final stage is talking about, the formal operational, here is a youtube video that I found to be very helpful!

M&M&M Analysis

            I have been observing my teacher for four weeks now and have already learned a great deal about teaching and the relationship between teacher and student.  Each student is different and learns differently and we need to prepare our lessons so that we can effectively teach our students and motivate them to keep learning in other classes.  Those skills that they learn transfer from one class to another and we need to be uniform as teachers so that we are giving the students the best opportunity they can get to achieve greatness.

            Many different needs that need to be met for student success.  One of those things is pertaining to metacognition.  Metacognition is the process of thinking about what you think.  Partnered with that is self-regulation, or reevaluating what you are learning and thinking through it, checking for self-understanding and clarity.  There are different steps with metacognition, declarative, procedural, and conditional.  Declarative is how you learn best, your strengths and weaknesses.  Procedural is strategies that you have at the ready to help you learn.  Conditional is skills you have that help you accomplish a task and help you accomplish it the best way possible.  Knowing these different approaches can help us understand how students can implement metacognition into their everyday use.  I want to plan lessons that create a safe environment for students to show their strengths and weaknesses and that they can feel like they can try new things and approaches based off of different conditions that they are faced with.  I want to push each of these different knowledges to increase metacognition.  Structure lessons and goals for the students to see how they plan, monitor, and then evaluate the results.  Have students plan out what they are going to do to accomplish their goal and then monitor how they are doing as the process is going on.  Do things need to change?  Are they getting the outcome they are expecting?  If things are going good, then they can evaluate the results and plan again for future success.

            We then need to look at a student’s mindset.  Are they a fixed mindset or a growth mindset?  Fixed mindset is the thought process that “something” is measurable, either they can or cannot do the task.  They believe that if they failed once, they will never be able to accomplish the goal and frankly won’t try again.  I plan to steer students toward a growth mindset.  Growth mindset is this incremental learning.  That knowledge can be learned and obtained through practice and believing in one’s potential to expand.  Growth mindsets use all the resources available for them.  I want my classrooms filled with resources for the students to use and that they can get help from one another and from me.  Having posters on the walls that explain information taught throughout the quarter/semester are great tools.  Students are constantly looking around the room and those little reminders help them to grow. 

            Motivation is crucial to student’s learning.  They need to be motivated to want to learn and grow.  But each student is motivated differently, so we need to make sure we are prepared with different approaches.  I personally love the Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.  This theory addresses that students need to have certain needs met in order to motivate them and have them in a place ready to learn.  They need to have their physical needs met and then need to feel safe.  Those are the two beginning levels of this pyramid and I completely agree with them.  I also plan to implement self-determination theory.  There are three levels to this theory, autonomy, relatedness, and competency.  All of these things boil down to fun and our brain craves to have fun.  Having something that we choose to do (autonomy), that we have this sense that we belong (relatedness), and to feel that we are effective in what we are doing (competence).  Making sure that students have options when it comes to assignments (unless they need to do a certain project to obtain a certain understanding), but making sure that they feel they can express their knowledge in a variety of ways.

Motivation

Motivation is a funny thing when you look at it.  Motivation is defined as the reason or reasons one has for acting or behaving in a particular way (Google definition).  So there are reasons that make us act or behave the way that we do.  When it comes to theatre, if you want to perform, you're going to have that motivation in you already to do a good job.  I have met many actors that aren't motivated to give a good performance.  Everyone wants to do well when they are put in front of other people.  So the question stands then, can theatre teachers really motivate their students if you need motivation to perform well already?

Obviously the answer is yes!  Theatre teachers are crucial to giving motivation to the students to perform their best.  For most students, middle/high school is their first taste of theatre and performing and they are easily scared of getting up in front of their friends and peers, in fear of looking foolish on stage.  So that's where us teachers come in and can help instill that confidence and motivation to try.

When we look at motivation, we look at both extrinsic and intrinsic motivators.  What are those you may ask?  Intrinsic is motivation that comes from the individual because they are wanting to expand their own knowledge or understanding for their benefit.  Extrinsic is motivation that comes from out outside source and the individual will get some type of reward for the action asked.

I have talked to my cooperating teacher and asked her what she feels is useful when it comes to motivating students.  She told me that since theatre can deal with a lot of emotions and that one's own personal life can become attached to a piece of work, that making sure the students feel safe and their needs are met is a big factor.  This is connected to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs theory, which states that we each have these specific or "deficiency" needs that must be met in order to allow growth to happen.  We need to make sure that our physiological needs are met first, and then that we are safe where we are.  Those are the beginning blocks for this theory and they grow but I want to focus on these two facts.

Making sure that a student is physically stable to perform the scene or task at hand is important because acting takes so much energy and requires a lot of energy.  Students need to make sure that they are taking care of themselves physically in order to grow.  Then they need to feel safe.  Our classrooms need to foster an atmosphere of safety and that no mistakes can be make in order for students to perform well.  If a student is physically well and feels safe in their environment, motivation grows and they are willing to try something they wouldn't normally feel like doing.

Another motivation factor my teacher suggested is helping students understand why these acting techniques are important and relevant to life, even outside of the auditorium.  This is the theory of self-determination.  The students find their own determination/motivation to learn the subject matter.  If we help the students see how what they are being taught applies to their life and how they can use this in different areas of their life then the obvious one they are being taught, they are motivated to understand the topic better and try it out to see how it affects them in their life.  This can be an example of intrinsic motivation because the student is wanting to expand their knowledge to expand a part of their life.

There is an article about a study that talks about what motivates people to go to a theatre and see a play/musical.  I love this article because it shows different reasons that motivate people to go to the theatre and I would want to share this with my future students so they understand the importance of what they do.  Give them motivation to perform and connect to the piece because what they perform can motivate another person to do something important.  You never know who you can impact or motivate in a performance unless you are motivated yourself to give something worth seeing.

Motivation is something that is very big in theatre because every character that we perform has some motivation in the scene.  The thing that they are wanting from another character.  We need to treat that motivation in a play as the real thing and apply it to the teacher/student relationship.  We need to have motivation to get something out of a student and they have to be motivated to get something out of us teachers.  It's a two way street that we walk and we need to be able to motivate one another to be better.

Growth Mindset

Growth mindset is something that we really need to consider when it comes to teaching Theatre because I feel that students can have this mentality that they either can act good or they can't.  They do it for fun, but they either believe they can't do what is expected of them or they don't have the confidence to try and push themselves.  Each student and human being has it inside of them to perform and we need to help our students improve that growth mindset that things are not set in stone ever.

Observing the teacher that I am following for this semester is a real eye opener in what us as theatre teachers can really do for our students and what works and doesn't.  I observed one class where she was teaching the students about viewpoints and how to connect to everyone in the room to achieve an end goal.  The class was on stage moving around at a fairly fast pace and were told that they needed to feel the room and that collectively they needed to all stop at the same time without any type of signal or noise to stop them.  They just had to suddenly stop.  As you can probably see, this caused a lot of frustration with students that it is not possible to all stop without some type of signal.  So they would try and kept failing.  Students believed that it was not possible and started to try and force the stop.  Only that that caused more problems.  The students were forced to expand past their mindset that it was not possible and tried to feel the room as instructed.  Though it wasn't perfect, as everyone started to really try and feel the room, you could start to feel the room more and about 95% of the students actually stopped on their own.  It was really amazing to watch this happen in a high school setting because it showed a lot of maturity and patience for this kids.  It also helped them get past this mentality that they either could or could not do it (fixed mindset) and forced them to try a new approach and reached an even better outcome than expected.

I really like this process of growth mindset and that we have options as teachers to help students grow and expand that part of their brain.  It is so crucial to have this mindset because it creates a place for students to try new things and feel that they can accomplish stuff they wouldn't normally do.  I learned a lot for myself from the assessment and I didn't even do it!  Students learn best when they can get past their own expectations of themselves and continue to grow past what they believe they are worthy and capable of.

Here is a link to a PDF of the The Viewpoints Book by Anne Bogart & Tina Landau that explains a lot of different viewpoints to do and includes the viewpoint that I observed (PDF page 20, Page number 27, Exercise 6 title twelve/six/four)

Metacognition

What is Metacognition?  According to the dictionary, it is "awareness and understanding of one's own thought process".  That is fascinating to me that we have a process going on in our brain that we not only understanding what we are thinking about but also that we are aware of what we are thinking!  It is such a powerful tool that, if used correctly, could completely change how us as human beings learn and process information.  So how can this knowledge help us in our middle and high school settings for our students?

I am currently observing my old high school theatre teacher, Ms. Brügger, and it is amazing to go back to where it all started and with my new found and ever growing knowledge of education and the education process, watching Ms. Brügger work with her classes now, I see a lot of the things that we are learning now in my classes.  One of the great things I've already seen in the one class that I have observed so far is how she apply's the principles of metacognition into her lessons, and how easy it seems to fit.

Theatre in general is lot of getting up and physically working things through, performing to show that you understand the things that are taught, and that practice makes permanent.  Theatre is active, but there are some more "quiet" things to learn, like theatre history, playwrights (Shakespeare is what most people think of), set design.  Some schools even have theatre teachers teach film studies (like at the school I'm observing).  So there are a lot of different opportunities for students to develop metacognitive and self-regulating skills.  Here is a link to a website that shows some of the benefits of performing.  All of the categories hit on the head how theatre is integrating metacognition and self-regulation.

Ms. Brügger lays out her lessons for the class to understand and explains what is expected of them.  Currently her Theatre 3 and 4 classes are preparing to compete at a theatre regional competition.  So she has asked her classes what each student feels they are strong in and what they could improve on for performances, whether that is more musical, comedy, or drama.  Then she helps assign the different categories to help students grow the most.  Since this is a competition, she has typically given students a category that they feel they are stronger in, and they helping find a scene that will further push those skills.  If it is a musical piece, finding a piece that helps the student find more emotion and context in the song.  Comedies that will help the student learn to land in the rhythm of the comedy rather than force a joke to make the audience laugh.  If you do the scene to the truth of it, it will provide the laughs.

Once these scenes have been picked, the next step Ms. Brügger is asking the students to write out for themselves what they want to accomplish with the scene they have picked.  Do they want to work on their performance and deliverance of the piece?  Do they want to improve their ability to work with a scene partner, or vice versa, improve their ability to do a solo scene and give all the necessary information for the audience to believe and understand what is happening?  As they rehearse in class, she helps to follow up with them about how they feel the scene is going and if they are focusing on what they want to learn from the scene.

Within the next few weeks, the students will perform their scenes/songs for their peers and Ms. Brügger.  Ms. Brügger then explained to me that she will have the student tell the class how they felt it went and what they noticed they could work on and change for the next preview leading up to region.  Afterwards the class will give feedback as well as her and the student will take notes and determine for themselves what they feel works and doesn't.

This last step is big because it touches on that self-regulating process.  Which is the steps one takes to make sure they are learning and understanding material or task. The process usually goes Analyze, Plan, Enact, Monitor, Evaluate.  Once one has enacted a plan and they monitor the results, if the results are not as desired, they go back to the planning phase and enact a new plan.  With performing for the class, they are taking the task they have been given (their scene) and using the skills they have been taught, perform it to the best of their abilities for the class and then they monitor the outcome and decide what needs to be fixed (if at all) as well as hear from good feedback from an outside observer.

Metacognition is a big deal to show that one is not just repeating another person's words, but actually thinking about what they are doing and going to do and what they have learned.  Preparing for region in this matter helps the student know what they have learned to this point and what they can continue to learn.  I love seeing the things that I have learned in my college classes being applied in the field.  Makes me excited to be able to put these skills in my own lessons and help my future students grow.