SIS Regensburg
Grow Beyond Your Limits! Nicolle Regitz, Principal
Performing arts (PA) is the art of being able to bring the audience to feel a character’s happiness or pain. The actors have to be able to express the emotions in a clear manner, with well pronounced words and intonation. At the SIS Regensburg all primary grades and part of secondary take weekly lessons of performing arts, where teachers take time to practise active role plays, play with words in poetry and tongue twisters thereby developing a deeper understanding of their own feelings. Performing arts consists of circus, dance and theatre. In school, the subject is designed in such a way as to raise students’ learning motivation and to teach learning competencies. In other words, PA has to be fun for the students and encourage them to grow beyond their limits. The background of PA as a school subject is the connection of thinking, movement and emotions which has often been researched. The results indicate that mental processes are significantly initiated and supported through movement and emotions. Movement increases the growth of neurons and supports the formation of manifold links of new neurons. Numerous studies state that artistic activity, above all performing arts such as circus, theatre play or dance, considerably increase performance in maths and languages. Performance on Stage Strengthens Self-Esteem In primary school, under the leadership of their performing arts teacher, students have gotten to know each other better through movement games and dances in the beginning of the school year. They tested and tried a variety of roles in small skits until they were introduced to the film “The Polar Express”. They rehearsed songs and dances to it in their separate PA lessons, or practised part of the story, until the story was complete and final details could be planned. Then students engaged in deciding their costumes and decorations. During the whole preparation process, the students had to learn to control their breathing, project their voices, use intonation and improve their pronunciation in a language that often is not a second, but a third or fourth learned. It strengthened their self-esteem in addition to giving the school community a wonderful presentation at the Winter Party.
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