Communicate! Collaborate! Create! Mime!

The NCSCoS Speaking and Listening thread requires students to collaborate with partners and small groups. How do we teach the skills involved in communication, speaking and listening, collaboration, giving and taking, leading and following, seeing and responding? Through Mime!

In this residency, (either in class or online) students learn to move safely and responsibly in the classroom or at home. They learn mime and use mime exercises that activate the body and the imagination. They take part in activities that teach communication skills, like focusing on a partner, leading, following, and accepting ideas. They engage in collaborative discussions to make mini-performances that incorporate the mime they are learning, and perform them in class or online. While they are improving their mime skills, they also are learning skills in small-group discussion, problem-solving, decision-making, and creative thinking. The residency builds 21st century skills (collaboration, creative thinking, communication, critical thinking); involves visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learning pathways; engages multiple intelligences (bodily-spatial, verbal-linguistic, interpersonal, intrapersonal), and climbs to the top of Bloom’s Taxonomy.