Ringkasan Materi Mata Kuliah Micro Teaching
HOW TO APPROACH SPEAKING AND LISTENING THROUGH DRAMA
Name : Silfi Novira
Kelas : TBI 6.C
NIM : 171230101
1.
HOW TO BEGIN WITH TEACHER IN ROLE
Why use teacher in role?
One of the best ways to do that in drama work is to be inside the
drama. Therefore, at the centre of the dramas that we include in this
book, is the key teaching technique that is used, namely teacher in
role . Many times we have watched trainee teachers with a class of
children struggling to get attention when giving instructions in traditional
teacher mode. Yet, as soon as they move into role, they obtain
that attention more effectively.
For example, a trainee was talking out of role to a class to explain that they were about to meet a girl who was having trouble with her father and needed their help . She picked up a ribbon with a ring threaded on it and put it round her neck as the role signifier. The trainee was not doing anything different apart from using role and committing to it very strongly. The trainee was using the simplest form of TiR, hot-seating the role, where the class meets the role sitting in front of them and can ask questions.
You are not effective as a teacher if you do not at some point engage fully with the drama yourself by using TiR. Remaining as teacher, intervening as teacher, side-coaching, structuring the drama from the outside, and/or sending the class off in groups to create their own drama must at best restrict and at worst negate any opportunity for the teacher to teach effectively. It is far more effective for the teacher to engage with the drama form as artist and be part of the creative act. It is very useful in a Literacy lesson for the teacher to use roles from the text.
The very fact that you take on a key role can provide important ways of defining and exploring the text. Let us look more closely at the Hermia role.
This extreme social expectation and law makes the fiction like their reality but also different from it, something that helps drama create a useful distance, which helps the class reflect on their own beliefs and look at the drama world in a more balanced and thoughtful way. All of this introduces an interesting set of issues which children at this age are beginning to experience and understand about their relationship with parents and about their relationship with the opposite sex. Even if the main aim of the work is not a study of the Shakespeare play, the role can be used to open up very important areas for personal and social education that the children can identify with.
Teacher as storyteller
The teacher as a storyteller is something all primary school teachers will recognise. The pupil’s role will be dominated by listening and this will be interlaced with questioning, responding and interpreting the meaning and sense of the fiction. The teacher’s role will be to communicate the text in a lively and interesting manner, holding their attention and engaging their imagination. In making judgements about the quality of this method of teaching, the critical questions will be around whether the content of the story interests the class and holds their attention, whether the delivery of the teacher, i.
The connection between the teacher as storyteller and the teacher using drama, lies in the fact that they both use the generation of imagined realities in order to teach. The relationship between story and drama in education is a complex and dynamic one. A class can take part in a drama where all of them know the story, where none of them knows the story, or a mixture of both. As long as some fundamental planning strategies are observed, knowledge of the story is not a barrier to participation.
The use of drama strategies to explore events and their consequences, to look at alternatives and test them. 3 If narrative consists of roles, fictional contexts, the use of symbols and events then the teacher needs to hold some of those elements true and consistent with the story so far. Let us illustrate these ideas with an example from ‘The Pied Piper’ drama . The Mayor has got the Pied Piper to clear the town of the rats but has broken his promise of payment and in revenge the children have been led up the mountain.
You put the pupils in role as the townspeople making their way up the mountain when they meet TiR as a child coming in the opposite direction. Ask the pupils what would they like to ask the boy. They certainly will ask him why he is coming down the mountain and what has happened to the other children.
Preparation for the role
In preparing to be this kind of storyteller the teacher must have made particular decisions about this child. Begin by asking the class out of role what they want to ask the child and the order of those questions. This not only provides the teacher with some security in knowing what is going to be asked, at least initially, but also allows some minutes to refine the planning, so that the teacher can be specific in answering their questions. The questions will, to a certain extent, be predictable because they are largely generated by the circumstances of the drama so far and the role the class has taken, which will be that of anxious parents.
Before the drama session, decide what attitude you are going to take when questioned by the class.
It’s just not fair!
They are questioning from within the story, as if they were there. Next we consider this key skill of moving in and out of role.
Moving in and out of role – managing the drama and reflecting on it
We are describing using role as ‘teaching from within’ because the teacher enters the drama world, but it is very important to step out of the fiction often and not let it run away with itself. When using TiR, the teacher is operating as a manager as well as participant and must spend as much time stopping the drama and moving out of role to reflect on what is happening and give the pupils a chance to think through what they know and what they want to do. This OoR working is as important as the role itself. Let us look at an example to see how you as the teacher have the opportunity to negotiate how the role behaves with the class.
This also shows a step from hot-seating to role-playing as a demonstration with a small group. As with all of this section of the book, we are using an example from drama based upon ‘The Pied Piper’ . You set up going into role with one of the groups that you know will handle the situation well. The whole class is involved in defining the role and can use their imaginations, their ‘drama eyes’, to help create the appropriate appearance/behaviour and their own understanding.
This is in contrast to an actor who has to use acting skills to create the role in its entirety for an audience. We are making a distinction between role behaviour and acting. Both depend on appropriate signing, but whereas the actor must give the non-participant audience the bulk of the signing, a teacher using role can get away with a committed minimum. When you have discussed enough you can move back into role and take their stories about the problems the rats are causing.
Give the groups time to prepare their evidence before you go into role to receive the input.
For another example of using OoR to help establish a role see ‘The
The person playing the role can then simply walk forward adopting a serious tone, holding the blanket, without having to pretend any of those outward signs an actor would have to portray if it were a play being performed to an audience. When the drama is stopped they can describe, recap, interpret, think through, consider next moves and understand what is the significance of their work. It is very important to get the participants to look at and interpret what is going on, frequently by stepping out of the drama. Depth in drama depends on the very clear and regular use of OoR negotiation so that the awareness of the co-existence of two worlds is effective at all times.
Children commit to the fictional world of the drama but need always to be aware that it is fiction and to step outside it often to look at what they are doing. Contrary to some opinions, depth is not dependent upon maintaining the fiction all of the time, nor does it depend upon the children losing themselves in the drama. In fact, if the latter takes over, children will get an experience but not understanding. In effective drama, children can actually feel the ‘as if’ world as real at certain points.
The teacher must make sure that if the drama does engage in that way, the pupils know it is a fiction at all times, especially by stopping and coming out of role frequently. The relationship developed by the teacher with the class is dependent on the movement between these two worlds.
For example, a trainee was talking out of role to a class to explain that they were about to meet a girl who was having trouble with her father and needed their help . She picked up a ribbon with a ring threaded on it and put it round her neck as the role signifier. The trainee was not doing anything different apart from using role and committing to it very strongly. The trainee was using the simplest form of TiR, hot-seating the role, where the class meets the role sitting in front of them and can ask questions.
You are not effective as a teacher if you do not at some point engage fully with the drama yourself by using TiR. Remaining as teacher, intervening as teacher, side-coaching, structuring the drama from the outside, and/or sending the class off in groups to create their own drama must at best restrict and at worst negate any opportunity for the teacher to teach effectively. It is far more effective for the teacher to engage with the drama form as artist and be part of the creative act. It is very useful in a Literacy lesson for the teacher to use roles from the text.
The very fact that you take on a key role can provide important ways of defining and exploring the text. Let us look more closely at the Hermia role.
This extreme social expectation and law makes the fiction like their reality but also different from it, something that helps drama create a useful distance, which helps the class reflect on their own beliefs and look at the drama world in a more balanced and thoughtful way. All of this introduces an interesting set of issues which children at this age are beginning to experience and understand about their relationship with parents and about their relationship with the opposite sex. Even if the main aim of the work is not a study of the Shakespeare play, the role can be used to open up very important areas for personal and social education that the children can identify with.
Teacher as storyteller
The teacher as a storyteller is something all primary school teachers will recognise. The pupil’s role will be dominated by listening and this will be interlaced with questioning, responding and interpreting the meaning and sense of the fiction. The teacher’s role will be to communicate the text in a lively and interesting manner, holding their attention and engaging their imagination. In making judgements about the quality of this method of teaching, the critical questions will be around whether the content of the story interests the class and holds their attention, whether the delivery of the teacher, i.
The connection between the teacher as storyteller and the teacher using drama, lies in the fact that they both use the generation of imagined realities in order to teach. The relationship between story and drama in education is a complex and dynamic one. A class can take part in a drama where all of them know the story, where none of them knows the story, or a mixture of both. As long as some fundamental planning strategies are observed, knowledge of the story is not a barrier to participation.
The use of drama strategies to explore events and their consequences, to look at alternatives and test them. 3 If narrative consists of roles, fictional contexts, the use of symbols and events then the teacher needs to hold some of those elements true and consistent with the story so far. Let us illustrate these ideas with an example from ‘The Pied Piper’ drama . The Mayor has got the Pied Piper to clear the town of the rats but has broken his promise of payment and in revenge the children have been led up the mountain.
You put the pupils in role as the townspeople making their way up the mountain when they meet TiR as a child coming in the opposite direction. Ask the pupils what would they like to ask the boy. They certainly will ask him why he is coming down the mountain and what has happened to the other children.
Preparation for the role
In preparing to be this kind of storyteller the teacher must have made particular decisions about this child. Begin by asking the class out of role what they want to ask the child and the order of those questions. This not only provides the teacher with some security in knowing what is going to be asked, at least initially, but also allows some minutes to refine the planning, so that the teacher can be specific in answering their questions. The questions will, to a certain extent, be predictable because they are largely generated by the circumstances of the drama so far and the role the class has taken, which will be that of anxious parents.
Before the drama session, decide what attitude you are going to take when questioned by the class.
It’s just not fair!
They are questioning from within the story, as if they were there. Next we consider this key skill of moving in and out of role.
Moving in and out of role – managing the drama and reflecting on it
We are describing using role as ‘teaching from within’ because the teacher enters the drama world, but it is very important to step out of the fiction often and not let it run away with itself. When using TiR, the teacher is operating as a manager as well as participant and must spend as much time stopping the drama and moving out of role to reflect on what is happening and give the pupils a chance to think through what they know and what they want to do. This OoR working is as important as the role itself. Let us look at an example to see how you as the teacher have the opportunity to negotiate how the role behaves with the class.
This also shows a step from hot-seating to role-playing as a demonstration with a small group. As with all of this section of the book, we are using an example from drama based upon ‘The Pied Piper’ . You set up going into role with one of the groups that you know will handle the situation well. The whole class is involved in defining the role and can use their imaginations, their ‘drama eyes’, to help create the appropriate appearance/behaviour and their own understanding.
This is in contrast to an actor who has to use acting skills to create the role in its entirety for an audience. We are making a distinction between role behaviour and acting. Both depend on appropriate signing, but whereas the actor must give the non-participant audience the bulk of the signing, a teacher using role can get away with a committed minimum. When you have discussed enough you can move back into role and take their stories about the problems the rats are causing.
Give the groups time to prepare their evidence before you go into role to receive the input.
For another example of using OoR to help establish a role see ‘The
The person playing the role can then simply walk forward adopting a serious tone, holding the blanket, without having to pretend any of those outward signs an actor would have to portray if it were a play being performed to an audience. When the drama is stopped they can describe, recap, interpret, think through, consider next moves and understand what is the significance of their work. It is very important to get the participants to look at and interpret what is going on, frequently by stepping out of the drama. Depth in drama depends on the very clear and regular use of OoR negotiation so that the awareness of the co-existence of two worlds is effective at all times.
Children commit to the fictional world of the drama but need always to be aware that it is fiction and to step outside it often to look at what they are doing. Contrary to some opinions, depth is not dependent upon maintaining the fiction all of the time, nor does it depend upon the children losing themselves in the drama. In fact, if the latter takes over, children will get an experience but not understanding. In effective drama, children can actually feel the ‘as if’ world as real at certain points.
The teacher must make sure that if the drama does engage in that way, the pupils know it is a fiction at all times, especially by stopping and coming out of role frequently. The relationship developed by the teacher with the class is dependent on the movement between these two worlds.
The requirements of working in role
It can be used judiciously to focus work at strategic points or to challenge particular aspects of the children’s perceptions whilst other techniques and conventions are used to support the work and develop it. In order to make the TiR most effective, we need to look at educational drama from the point of view of the ‘audience’, an audience who in this instance are participants at the same time. This will help us shape up the TiR elements particularly according to how the audience is seeing things. Here are two responses to considering the ‘audience’ position.
In drama the pupils are making sense actively, knowing their meaning can be acted upon. You’re asking a very complex thing of the group of children. They have to switch from operating as audience to participant and back again often and suddenly. An example of responding to the critical incident occurred in a session on the drama based on Macbeth.
The teacher took this up and put two of the servants on the thrones of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, with the rest of the servants gathered behind the thrones. Of course, the pupils sat firm and outfaced him. The class cheered as Macbeth bowed his head and the two pupils stood up, triumphant. When they are given opportunities to influence the outcomes, to make decisions, the drama becomes partly theirs.
Disturbing the class productively
The teacher’s function is to provide challenge and stimulus, to give problems and issues for the class to have to deal with. The drama is developed through a set of activities that build the class role, which is usually a corporate role.
In setting up the drama we are doing what Heathcote calls ‘trapping
Within a life situation’ . The result of constructing the situation thus is that they can then discover what it all means. The key is how children are given information. If pupils acquire knowledge and understanding by working for it, stumbling upon it or having it sprung upon them such that their expectations are challenged, their learning experiences will be more dynamic than simply being told.
The class are in role as a village community helping a woman with a baby, who, unbeknownst to them, has fled a revolution.
The art of authentic dialogue – needing to listen – two-way responses
This is another reason that the class have more ownership. This community is made most effective by the teacher participating in role. If a teacher runs drama without using TiR there tends to be a lack of dialectic because the teacher produces the structure that the children engage with, but the teacher can only manipulate it from outside that structure. The teacher can fully manipulate the structure from within and the resulting activity can be shown diagrammatically.
The teacher gives the impression of handing over the power and does so in a way that allows him or her to teach properly and yet empower the participants significantly. We are making the distinction here between the aesthetic actor and the social actor. The aesthetic actor will have learned skills related to voice, gesture and physicality that are not required by the teacher using TiR. The teacher in role will already have the skills of the social actor that are used in everyday life.
The class will use their creativity to see the role in a particular way that has been indicated as long as it has been properly signed to them. Whereas the actor defines for the audience the message of the play within the circumstances of the plot, the teacher uses signing as an indication to the audience to join in the encounter, effecting and affecting the enterprise. As a result of this difference, an actor, using lines written as a script, behaves in a very different way from a teacher improvising within a planned structure, who has to take account of what the class will say in response to the moves he or she makes. The audience in the theatre waits for something to happen, but the participants in a drama session make it happen.
As the class feed back their responses and make possible development of the role’s importance the teacher must respond appropriately and therein lies the skill of the ‘subtle tongue’ and the possibility for authentic dialogue. The teacher must respond to these responses in an authentic way, honouring how the class see the role. The TiR as the Steward must honour the truth of both possibilities and, in the first case, be the weak and fearing servant who cannot see how this can be done or, in the second, begin to challenge whether doing nothing in such a situation is going to work in keeping them safe. The class must be made to work to achieve the aim they have been given in the drama.
Let us look at handling an extended example from the ‘Pied Piper’ drama when the class as the villagers finally arrive at the mountain. At this point in the drama they have accepted the main aim as the villagers of getting their children back from the Piper. Mark the space in front of the class, where the children have been said to have entered the mountain, with two chairs. OoR ask them to describe the mountain in front of them and whether there are any clues as to whether the children have, in fact, gone into the mountain as they have been told.
When they are not aware of you, slip behind them and when they are carrying out their task ‘appear’ behind them as the Piper. This simple, theatrical surprise engages the children even more. The dialogue that transpires here is critical to the outcome of the drama. The burden placed on the class at this point is to offer some way of showing their thankfulness, their sincerity and their trustworthiness to the Piper so that he will accept the apology and return the children.
Accept any imaginative offer as long as it is not materialistic but is related more to establishing a human relationship of trust and honour with the Piper. A different learning area would be to have a Piper who is too full of himself, someone who needs to be taught a lesson about justice and fairness. The drama is set up as a framework and is not finished in the same way as a play written by a playwright. In fact, the secret of educational drama is to have the framework, even a tight framework, such that the class feel they have some ownership because of the parts that they are developing.
The pupils can thought-track TiR. A drama technique can be used to help them define possible reasons. The TiR is not exclusively the teacher’s creation. The ‘play’ we are creating is a joint enterprise and, when the beginnings of a role are in place and we have established the givens, the class will know what we are creating and why and can develop that role by the way they respond and the way they see it.
In all teaching situations there exists a power relationship between the learners and the teacher. Of course, it does not look like this when the class are responding and contracting into the tasks set by the teacher but should some or all decide not to, the cohesion can be broken. In drama this power relationship is made overt. We must start from the point of view that if the class do not want the drama to work then it will not.
We must begin with the interest level of the class: the plight of Goldilocks will interest the class of 4- or 5-year-olds and a mission to rescue Kai from the
Snow Queen, children of 7 and 8. The nature of drama makes the interest level a dynamic and flexible dimension. The pupils will, to a certain extent, define a level of interest in a drama by focusing upon the issues that interest them. There is not a hard and fast rule on age groups because we have used Kai with younger children and dramas from our Early Years book have been used with 12-year-olds.
In the classroom, the pupils enter into an agreement with you the teacher that you are in charge. This may be a tacit agreement, it may depend upon many factors but in it the teacher is in charge and there are certain rights and privileges attached to your role. The power relationship is asymmetric. Of course, in drama we have the possibility of shifting the power when we are inside the fiction because we may choose a role that has low status and has little power.
This shift in status and power is very engaging for pupils. It can result in a different kind of dialogue from the usual teacher/pupil one and this can be very attractive to pupils. There are five basic types of role and mostly can be illustrated from the ‘The Dream’ drama. The authority role This is a role like the Duke in the ‘The Dream’ drama, who is presented with Egeus’s problem and has to rule on it.
This figure is usually in charge of an organisation and has the class in a role subordinate to him/her. The role is fair, applies rules and governs properly, but often does not know the full facts and issues and needs the class to investigate and enlighten him/her. It is very close to being teacher and can be reassuring for a class, but also has the negativity of not changing the teacher–taught relationship enough to allow more ownership for the class. The opposer role This is a role that is often in authority but dangerous to and/or creating a problem for another role and, by extension, the class.
Egeus is an opposer role who is against Hermia and therefore in opposition to the class role, as they take her side against his dictatorial treatment of her. This is a stimulating position for many pupils as the opposition of parents is something they have all experienced. The opposer role has to be used carefully because the response to it can be difficult to handle if it becomes too strong. The intermediate role This is often a messenger or go-between, as the servant role used in the ‘The Dream’ drama.
This role is then caught between opposing sides and can appeal to the empathy in the class to help them out of the predicament. The needing help role This is a role like Hermia, who is in need of help to fight the injustice of her father’s decision. This role, like the servant described above, is the best way to get empathy from a class and most raises the status of the class, putting them in a position of responsibility and thus generating interest and learning possibility because the teacher is the one who does not know what to do for once. The ordinary person This role is in the same position as the role given to the class.
Steward in the ‘Macbeth’ drama is like this. He faces the same problem and danger as the other servants represented by the class. The three low status roles present more possibilities for the pupils’ learning because the teacher–pupil power relationship is shifted and they have a semblance of power. We say ‘semblance’ because the pupil power only lies within the fiction and, as always, the teacher is running the class and can come out of role at any time to assume control.
Related to issues of power and role is the issue of power and control in the classroom. Pied Piper’ and analyse how it is handled and chaos avoided. The class have been told they must confront the Mayor. Before we can confront the Mayor we must set out how his office looks.
First you must tell me how big the doors into his parlour are. This is the desk and chair in which the Mayor sits. Use your ‘drama eyes’ and tell me what you see. The townspeople are marching down to the Mayor’s parlour.
So, we have a parlour, we have an angry crowd and a chant. We need someone to give a signal to stop the chant otherwise we won’t hear the knock on the door and the conversation with the Mayor. Finally we need one person to be spokesperson to say to the Mayor what you all think. I am going to take the role of the Mayor and I am going wear my chain of office.
When I take it off I will be your teacher again and we can talk about what has happened. It’s a dreadful situation and I have let you down.
You break out of role
OK, let’s stop the drama there and look at what has happened. The key issue in this example is the way in which a potentially chaotic event in the drama is managed by careful structuring and rehearsing before it takes place.
It can be used judiciously to focus work at strategic points or to challenge particular aspects of the children’s perceptions whilst other techniques and conventions are used to support the work and develop it. In order to make the TiR most effective, we need to look at educational drama from the point of view of the ‘audience’, an audience who in this instance are participants at the same time. This will help us shape up the TiR elements particularly according to how the audience is seeing things. Here are two responses to considering the ‘audience’ position.
In drama the pupils are making sense actively, knowing their meaning can be acted upon. You’re asking a very complex thing of the group of children. They have to switch from operating as audience to participant and back again often and suddenly. An example of responding to the critical incident occurred in a session on the drama based on Macbeth.
The teacher took this up and put two of the servants on the thrones of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, with the rest of the servants gathered behind the thrones. Of course, the pupils sat firm and outfaced him. The class cheered as Macbeth bowed his head and the two pupils stood up, triumphant. When they are given opportunities to influence the outcomes, to make decisions, the drama becomes partly theirs.
Disturbing the class productively
The teacher’s function is to provide challenge and stimulus, to give problems and issues for the class to have to deal with. The drama is developed through a set of activities that build the class role, which is usually a corporate role.
In setting up the drama we are doing what Heathcote calls ‘trapping
Within a life situation’ . The result of constructing the situation thus is that they can then discover what it all means. The key is how children are given information. If pupils acquire knowledge and understanding by working for it, stumbling upon it or having it sprung upon them such that their expectations are challenged, their learning experiences will be more dynamic than simply being told.
The class are in role as a village community helping a woman with a baby, who, unbeknownst to them, has fled a revolution.
The art of authentic dialogue – needing to listen – two-way responses
This is another reason that the class have more ownership. This community is made most effective by the teacher participating in role. If a teacher runs drama without using TiR there tends to be a lack of dialectic because the teacher produces the structure that the children engage with, but the teacher can only manipulate it from outside that structure. The teacher can fully manipulate the structure from within and the resulting activity can be shown diagrammatically.
The teacher gives the impression of handing over the power and does so in a way that allows him or her to teach properly and yet empower the participants significantly. We are making the distinction here between the aesthetic actor and the social actor. The aesthetic actor will have learned skills related to voice, gesture and physicality that are not required by the teacher using TiR. The teacher in role will already have the skills of the social actor that are used in everyday life.
The class will use their creativity to see the role in a particular way that has been indicated as long as it has been properly signed to them. Whereas the actor defines for the audience the message of the play within the circumstances of the plot, the teacher uses signing as an indication to the audience to join in the encounter, effecting and affecting the enterprise. As a result of this difference, an actor, using lines written as a script, behaves in a very different way from a teacher improvising within a planned structure, who has to take account of what the class will say in response to the moves he or she makes. The audience in the theatre waits for something to happen, but the participants in a drama session make it happen.
As the class feed back their responses and make possible development of the role’s importance the teacher must respond appropriately and therein lies the skill of the ‘subtle tongue’ and the possibility for authentic dialogue. The teacher must respond to these responses in an authentic way, honouring how the class see the role. The TiR as the Steward must honour the truth of both possibilities and, in the first case, be the weak and fearing servant who cannot see how this can be done or, in the second, begin to challenge whether doing nothing in such a situation is going to work in keeping them safe. The class must be made to work to achieve the aim they have been given in the drama.
Let us look at handling an extended example from the ‘Pied Piper’ drama when the class as the villagers finally arrive at the mountain. At this point in the drama they have accepted the main aim as the villagers of getting their children back from the Piper. Mark the space in front of the class, where the children have been said to have entered the mountain, with two chairs. OoR ask them to describe the mountain in front of them and whether there are any clues as to whether the children have, in fact, gone into the mountain as they have been told.
When they are not aware of you, slip behind them and when they are carrying out their task ‘appear’ behind them as the Piper. This simple, theatrical surprise engages the children even more. The dialogue that transpires here is critical to the outcome of the drama. The burden placed on the class at this point is to offer some way of showing their thankfulness, their sincerity and their trustworthiness to the Piper so that he will accept the apology and return the children.
Accept any imaginative offer as long as it is not materialistic but is related more to establishing a human relationship of trust and honour with the Piper. A different learning area would be to have a Piper who is too full of himself, someone who needs to be taught a lesson about justice and fairness. The drama is set up as a framework and is not finished in the same way as a play written by a playwright. In fact, the secret of educational drama is to have the framework, even a tight framework, such that the class feel they have some ownership because of the parts that they are developing.
The pupils can thought-track TiR. A drama technique can be used to help them define possible reasons. The TiR is not exclusively the teacher’s creation. The ‘play’ we are creating is a joint enterprise and, when the beginnings of a role are in place and we have established the givens, the class will know what we are creating and why and can develop that role by the way they respond and the way they see it.
In all teaching situations there exists a power relationship between the learners and the teacher. Of course, it does not look like this when the class are responding and contracting into the tasks set by the teacher but should some or all decide not to, the cohesion can be broken. In drama this power relationship is made overt. We must start from the point of view that if the class do not want the drama to work then it will not.
We must begin with the interest level of the class: the plight of Goldilocks will interest the class of 4- or 5-year-olds and a mission to rescue Kai from the
Snow Queen, children of 7 and 8. The nature of drama makes the interest level a dynamic and flexible dimension. The pupils will, to a certain extent, define a level of interest in a drama by focusing upon the issues that interest them. There is not a hard and fast rule on age groups because we have used Kai with younger children and dramas from our Early Years book have been used with 12-year-olds.
In the classroom, the pupils enter into an agreement with you the teacher that you are in charge. This may be a tacit agreement, it may depend upon many factors but in it the teacher is in charge and there are certain rights and privileges attached to your role. The power relationship is asymmetric. Of course, in drama we have the possibility of shifting the power when we are inside the fiction because we may choose a role that has low status and has little power.
This shift in status and power is very engaging for pupils. It can result in a different kind of dialogue from the usual teacher/pupil one and this can be very attractive to pupils. There are five basic types of role and mostly can be illustrated from the ‘The Dream’ drama. The authority role This is a role like the Duke in the ‘The Dream’ drama, who is presented with Egeus’s problem and has to rule on it.
This figure is usually in charge of an organisation and has the class in a role subordinate to him/her. The role is fair, applies rules and governs properly, but often does not know the full facts and issues and needs the class to investigate and enlighten him/her. It is very close to being teacher and can be reassuring for a class, but also has the negativity of not changing the teacher–taught relationship enough to allow more ownership for the class. The opposer role This is a role that is often in authority but dangerous to and/or creating a problem for another role and, by extension, the class.
Egeus is an opposer role who is against Hermia and therefore in opposition to the class role, as they take her side against his dictatorial treatment of her. This is a stimulating position for many pupils as the opposition of parents is something they have all experienced. The opposer role has to be used carefully because the response to it can be difficult to handle if it becomes too strong. The intermediate role This is often a messenger or go-between, as the servant role used in the ‘The Dream’ drama.
This role is then caught between opposing sides and can appeal to the empathy in the class to help them out of the predicament. The needing help role This is a role like Hermia, who is in need of help to fight the injustice of her father’s decision. This role, like the servant described above, is the best way to get empathy from a class and most raises the status of the class, putting them in a position of responsibility and thus generating interest and learning possibility because the teacher is the one who does not know what to do for once. The ordinary person This role is in the same position as the role given to the class.
Steward in the ‘Macbeth’ drama is like this. He faces the same problem and danger as the other servants represented by the class. The three low status roles present more possibilities for the pupils’ learning because the teacher–pupil power relationship is shifted and they have a semblance of power. We say ‘semblance’ because the pupil power only lies within the fiction and, as always, the teacher is running the class and can come out of role at any time to assume control.
Related to issues of power and role is the issue of power and control in the classroom. Pied Piper’ and analyse how it is handled and chaos avoided. The class have been told they must confront the Mayor. Before we can confront the Mayor we must set out how his office looks.
First you must tell me how big the doors into his parlour are. This is the desk and chair in which the Mayor sits. Use your ‘drama eyes’ and tell me what you see. The townspeople are marching down to the Mayor’s parlour.
So, we have a parlour, we have an angry crowd and a chant. We need someone to give a signal to stop the chant otherwise we won’t hear the knock on the door and the conversation with the Mayor. Finally we need one person to be spokesperson to say to the Mayor what you all think. I am going to take the role of the Mayor and I am going wear my chain of office.
When I take it off I will be your teacher again and we can talk about what has happened. It’s a dreadful situation and I have let you down.
You break out of role
OK, let’s stop the drama there and look at what has happened. The key issue in this example is the way in which a potentially chaotic event in the drama is managed by careful structuring and rehearsing before it takes place.
2.
HOW TO BEGIN PLANNING DRAMA
In this chapter
we are going to describe and analyse the main components of planning in drama.
There is even an intermediate stage in planning and that is to take parts of different dramas and remake them as new ones. Clearly the teaching/learning objective will drive the shape of the drama, but the engine that drives the drama needs fuel and that fuel is a piece of strong material, a creative idea, and that is more inspirational than an objectives-led design. This material – a book, a piece of literature, a picture or some other subject matter, fiction or non-fiction – will give us one or more of the elements of a good drama, a role or roles, an interesting context or a dilemma.
The frame of a drama
Translated into terms of process drama as a genre of theatre, we could say that Goffman’s frame constitutes a means of laying in the dramatic tension by situating the participants in relation to the unfolding action. In planning a drama we have to write the main frame, the scenario, in a way that indicates the relationship of the component parts and how the interactions provide tension and potential. Child’ is shown in Figure 2.2.
Looking at Maurice Sendak’s book Where the Wild Things Are led to ideas about possible roles and situations to explore with the pupils. The book has always held a fascination because of its depiction of boys’ behaviour. There is a direct link to PSHE objectives.
Mother sends Max to bed without supper because he has been naughty. Mother finds him gone and seeks help to find him. The next stage was to develop some sense of his mother, her handling of Max and her attitude to him. Learning resides in this, the parent–child relationship, something all children know about but is infinitely variable in levels of success and quality.
The complexity for the drama resides in her role. We considered the mother’s possible ambiguous signals, embodying ideas of softness and indulgence towards Max at the same time as being irritated by Max’s wildness and wanting to control him. Thus we are exploring ideas of why Max is like he is, an exploration that the class will experience through the drama.
Villagers take in Maria and child.
You can see that we have begun to create ideas of what Max’s room would look like, as it is the central setting. This will lead up to the moment where he reappears. So the teacher directs the picture of Max the class forms. In the Sendak book there is a picture on the wall in the second illustration of a wild creature’s face with ‘Max’ written underneath, clearly a drawing by Max himself.
There is even an intermediate stage in planning and that is to take parts of different dramas and remake them as new ones. Clearly the teaching/learning objective will drive the shape of the drama, but the engine that drives the drama needs fuel and that fuel is a piece of strong material, a creative idea, and that is more inspirational than an objectives-led design. This material – a book, a piece of literature, a picture or some other subject matter, fiction or non-fiction – will give us one or more of the elements of a good drama, a role or roles, an interesting context or a dilemma.
The frame of a drama
Translated into terms of process drama as a genre of theatre, we could say that Goffman’s frame constitutes a means of laying in the dramatic tension by situating the participants in relation to the unfolding action. In planning a drama we have to write the main frame, the scenario, in a way that indicates the relationship of the component parts and how the interactions provide tension and potential. Child’ is shown in Figure 2.2.
Looking at Maurice Sendak’s book Where the Wild Things Are led to ideas about possible roles and situations to explore with the pupils. The book has always held a fascination because of its depiction of boys’ behaviour. There is a direct link to PSHE objectives.
Mother sends Max to bed without supper because he has been naughty. Mother finds him gone and seeks help to find him. The next stage was to develop some sense of his mother, her handling of Max and her attitude to him. Learning resides in this, the parent–child relationship, something all children know about but is infinitely variable in levels of success and quality.
The complexity for the drama resides in her role. We considered the mother’s possible ambiguous signals, embodying ideas of softness and indulgence towards Max at the same time as being irritated by Max’s wildness and wanting to control him. Thus we are exploring ideas of why Max is like he is, an exploration that the class will experience through the drama.
Villagers take in Maria and child.
You can see that we have begun to create ideas of what Max’s room would look like, as it is the central setting. This will lead up to the moment where he reappears. So the teacher directs the picture of Max the class forms. In the Sendak book there is a picture on the wall in the second illustration of a wild creature’s face with ‘Max’ written underneath, clearly a drawing by Max himself.
This suggested
including a line drawing of Max chasing his mother with a knife. In
addition we added little notes written by Max for the pupils to discover and
read. Of course, we could have then developed a drama about finding
Max, but it would be difficult to run that without descending into
potentially silly non-activities for the pupils searching non-existent
places. They do go to the shed his mother talks of, but there draw a
blank, apart from the arrival of a figure they take to be
him , hide to surprise him, only to find it is his sister.
Instead they have the responsibility to confront Max and make him aware of his problem, his behaviour and the mother’s attitudes.It needs to be handled dynamically to raise tension, so it is now planned in that the class are considering what they know of Max and thinking where they could look next, the shed having proved fruitless. They need to be gathered round the role sheet and be looking at it. The aim of the drama is now clearly focused, to have the children explore and consider a boy’s unacceptable behaviour and look at a parent–child relationship, to give advice and solve problems. The resolution of the issues is the final stage of the drama.Usually we use forum theatre to set up the class taking over the wronged role, against the role who most needs to learn to change, to see and understand something important about themselves. The pupils have to show him the error of his ways and how other people, his mother, his sister, really feel about him.
The ingredients of planning
Let us take the elements of a drama we have been referring to above and look at them separately with other examples. Creating a drama is very much like cooking.
The learning can be in any of five areas
● Language Development – the medium of drama and hence the key impetus to Speaking and Listening .
Instead they have the responsibility to confront Max and make him aware of his problem, his behaviour and the mother’s attitudes.It needs to be handled dynamically to raise tension, so it is now planned in that the class are considering what they know of Max and thinking where they could look next, the shed having proved fruitless. They need to be gathered round the role sheet and be looking at it. The aim of the drama is now clearly focused, to have the children explore and consider a boy’s unacceptable behaviour and look at a parent–child relationship, to give advice and solve problems. The resolution of the issues is the final stage of the drama.Usually we use forum theatre to set up the class taking over the wronged role, against the role who most needs to learn to change, to see and understand something important about themselves. The pupils have to show him the error of his ways and how other people, his mother, his sister, really feel about him.
The ingredients of planning
Let us take the elements of a drama we have been referring to above and look at them separately with other examples. Creating a drama is very much like cooking.
The learning can be in any of five areas
● Language Development – the medium of drama and hence the key impetus to Speaking and Listening .
●
Spiritual, Social, Moral, Cultural, Personal – there is
usually this capability in any drama. The very reflective nature of the
work, going out of role to examine the meaning of situations and events in
the drama, promotes metacognition.
● Comparing the drama version of the story and the original myth.
If we can refine an objective tightly it will help us make decisions about the structure and what it should do.
Strong material
Let us again look at our drama ‘The Wild Thing’ from Where the Wild Things Are. Sendak shows us Max, a boy who is very imaginative, but whose behaviour is very wild. It also hints at him learning something important on the island, how he misses his home and his mother. The story finally shows Max returning to his room, but there is no resolution of what he will be like in the future, no exploration of his relationship with his mother, whether he continues to behave wildly in his wolf suit.
This is a gift for drama because we have a number of PSHE issues implied through the story but not dealt with and we can add key roles to look at these issues and embody in them their attitudes to Max.
Roles for the pupils
They can be an expert community, the ‘Mantle of the Expert’ role. The ‘Mantle of the Expert’ role gives the pupils status and an objective viewpoint to consider situations often fraught with emotions and opposing attitudes. We use this sort of communal role as they also invest the pupils with the skills and attributes that we would want them to exhibit – they have to be analytical, compassionate, communicative, thoughtful, creative, listeners.
‘Macbeth’ and ‘Daedalus and Icarus’, mountain villagers in ‘The Governor’s Child’, park volunteers in ‘Charlie’. In all cases belief in the role is built and the learning focused through the problem they encounter. The pupils also have opportunities to take central roles, particularly from TiR at key stages in the dramas. ‘The Wild Thing’, Charles in ‘Charlie’, Hermia in ‘The Dream’, and many others.
They take it over at a crucial moment where the chance to change things, to challenge injustice or correct a wrong is paramount.
Tension points – risks – theatre moments
Tension provides the momentum that pushes the class, demands a response, engages them. This is a very demanding moment, but one that the children, after initial hesitation, tackled with great commitment. All the times we have done the drama they have never failed to do this. There is a bit of a risk on our part because we cannot ensure they will do it, but should they not do so we plan to go out of role and discuss how they see what is happening and what they think needs to be done.
Tension can be planned in, but needs to be seized on according to how the class react. One theatre moment happened this way. ‘The Governor’s Child’ is planned with the possibility of searching the village and the teacher will be looking for a chance to create a moment of near discovery. With a class of 10-year-olds the tension was created on the spur of the moment by the teacher’s use of the potential of the planned situation itself.
The tension at that point was palpable with all eyes on the class member whose job it was to handle the situation. The teacher playing the Soldier built the situation admirably, with never any intention of finding Maria, but the class could see the possibility. The tension rose even though, or maybe because of the theatricality of the moment. Tension here is produced by the collective imagination, what the consequence of discovery would be.
● Comparing the drama version of the story and the original myth.
If we can refine an objective tightly it will help us make decisions about the structure and what it should do.
Strong material
Let us again look at our drama ‘The Wild Thing’ from Where the Wild Things Are. Sendak shows us Max, a boy who is very imaginative, but whose behaviour is very wild. It also hints at him learning something important on the island, how he misses his home and his mother. The story finally shows Max returning to his room, but there is no resolution of what he will be like in the future, no exploration of his relationship with his mother, whether he continues to behave wildly in his wolf suit.
This is a gift for drama because we have a number of PSHE issues implied through the story but not dealt with and we can add key roles to look at these issues and embody in them their attitudes to Max.
Roles for the pupils
They can be an expert community, the ‘Mantle of the Expert’ role. The ‘Mantle of the Expert’ role gives the pupils status and an objective viewpoint to consider situations often fraught with emotions and opposing attitudes. We use this sort of communal role as they also invest the pupils with the skills and attributes that we would want them to exhibit – they have to be analytical, compassionate, communicative, thoughtful, creative, listeners.
‘Macbeth’ and ‘Daedalus and Icarus’, mountain villagers in ‘The Governor’s Child’, park volunteers in ‘Charlie’. In all cases belief in the role is built and the learning focused through the problem they encounter. The pupils also have opportunities to take central roles, particularly from TiR at key stages in the dramas. ‘The Wild Thing’, Charles in ‘Charlie’, Hermia in ‘The Dream’, and many others.
They take it over at a crucial moment where the chance to change things, to challenge injustice or correct a wrong is paramount.
Tension points – risks – theatre moments
Tension provides the momentum that pushes the class, demands a response, engages them. This is a very demanding moment, but one that the children, after initial hesitation, tackled with great commitment. All the times we have done the drama they have never failed to do this. There is a bit of a risk on our part because we cannot ensure they will do it, but should they not do so we plan to go out of role and discuss how they see what is happening and what they think needs to be done.
Tension can be planned in, but needs to be seized on according to how the class react. One theatre moment happened this way. ‘The Governor’s Child’ is planned with the possibility of searching the village and the teacher will be looking for a chance to create a moment of near discovery. With a class of 10-year-olds the tension was created on the spur of the moment by the teacher’s use of the potential of the planned situation itself.
The tension at that point was palpable with all eyes on the class member whose job it was to handle the situation. The teacher playing the Soldier built the situation admirably, with never any intention of finding Maria, but the class could see the possibility. The tension rose even though, or maybe because of the theatricality of the moment. Tension here is produced by the collective imagination, what the consequence of discovery would be.
Building context
Usually having one main location helps the drama to be properly focused. The tomb could focus all the activity of the drama. That planning decision reinforced the importance of the depictions on the walls so that they can also then be used more at other stages of the drama. That consolidation of the context strengthened the integrity of the drama and helped structure it, as you will see from the full plan.
Building belief
It is the need to get the class to trust in the teacher and what the teacher is creating. Only if you create the belief that there is something in it for them. Use of TiR can interest and build belief.
All of the ingredients contribute to building belief
taking the cloth that becomes the baby in ‘The Governor’s Child’ and deliberately rolling it up into the shape in front of them and asking what it is representing.
In delivering the drama we have to
We have to remove ideas that may get in the way of the drama working , but doing it in such a way that the pupil offering the idea genuinely does not feel rejected in the process and is willing to continue to make suggestions.
There are teacher decisions and pupil decisions and we have to be clear about the timing and nature of both, why one should be the teacher’s and why another should be the pupils’. Many teacher decisions are built into the plan as givens, otherwise there will be no clear direction for the learning. What we embed as non-negotiable in the planning of a drama tightens the focus and ensures a concentration on the particularity of the main event. We must plan space for real dialogue, which will involve listening to and using, where possible, their ideas .
The success of the lesson will be how closely the pupils follow my plan and deliver what I have planned. It has to be recognised that in drama lessons the dynamic of teacher planning and pupil response must have fluidity. The teacher may plan for little space for pupils’ decisions in some parts of the lesson and more in other parts. Highly constrained planning is often a feature of the early phases of the drama lesson where common agreements are necessary in order to build the context.
In these early phases of the drama lesson the pupils do not have enough information to make key decisions. Later in the drama there can be more space and more possibilities for pupil contribution. It may be better to use a drama where tight planning is the norm throughout because the class are inexperienced and not ready to take on the responsibility of key decisions. Here are examples of the difference between a closed access and open access approach to drama.
‘The Governor’s Child’ drama. We may get their reactions, but these viewpoints are not going to change this decision. This is because at this point we are building context, a context where Maria will be hidden by the villagers and that will provide the major challenge and decisions later. The major decision is about whether to continue to hide her after the Soldier has visited and the villagers know she represents a danger to them.
The drama conventions, strategies and techniques
There are many techniques for structuring the stages of a drama.
Planning as a collaborative activity
In our team, one member may have the beginning of an idea and sketch that idea out, but usually turns to another member of the team for feedback and a planning discussion. This functions as a means to bounce ideas, to see flaws and to provide insights into the potential for learning. The complexity of drama means a multiplicity of possible learning outcomes. For example, when planning developments to the original ‘Macbeth’ drama, we wanted to add the ‘Witch’ section.
We began with the idea of facing the class with the ambiguity and teasing language that the witches in the original demonstrate. One of us, A, had ideas about the Witch arriving at the castle door, a vagrant, carrying something.
Road testing the first version
Participants in dramas offer us as the teachers insights into ways of using an established structure. Once we have the beginnings of a drama we need to try ideas out. When a class are responding to strong moments in a drama they not only provide ideas for future use, but also show us the sections which are weak and need replanning. Their positive responses reveal new possibilities and can often become incorporated as ‘givens’ when the drama is used in future.
He had to manage the situation carefully to avoid the drama deteriorating. It was clear that whilst that attitude in Max might recreate ideas from the book, the entry needed to be more subtle and the context of Max’s adventure built more in order to work.
Another example of the class offering new ideas as to what to do and the form to use when you run the drama occurred in a run of ‘Daedalus and
King Minos what they have found out about Daedalus’s plan, we were out of role discussing the pros and cons and putting forward powerful arguments on both sides when one pupil said, I’d like to see two of the servants discussing what to do. This was a gift, so the teacher set up a forum, asking for two pupils who had strong arguments on each side to take the chairs, gathering the others around and having them offer to take over the seats as they wanted to add different points. The discussion was thus more potent as they argued the choices in role. This method of moving forward can then be taken as the planned possibility for exploring the issue in future use of the drama.
The group even took the drama further themselves. The quality of the drama develops in these ways. You can choose to incorporate them in future versions of the drama.
There are two main types of this sort of classroom drama that have evolved
‘living through drama’, where the pupils face the events at a sort of life rate in the here and now, and ‘episodic drama’, or strategy-based drama, where the class are led by the teacher in creating situations and events through specific techniques or strategies and where chronology is more broken. Of course, most dramas have a mixture of the styles, but the younger or more inexperienced a class, the more ‘living through’ will dominate to create the tensions and challenges more directly.
In one outing of ‘The Governor’s Child’ the class could in fact see a greater dramatic satisfaction in partial success. The three teachers who were observing one of us teach this drama had discussed between the sessions what they thought the class would choose to do in the second session. Two thought they would resolve in a happy ending, the third saw them choosing complete disaster as the outcome for that sense of destruction children can seek at times.
In each case we have supplied a ‘learning intention’, a starter role and the situation to be set up.
An idea from ‘Romeo and Juliet’
Learning intention Parental control over children. Contact role A teenage boy discovered writing a letter. Context The pupils are all in role as workers on a rich family’s estate. Key moment later Depending on what the pupils decide to do, the daughter of the family approaches them either to attack them for siding with her father or to thank them for the letter and seek their help to escape that night.
An idea from ‘Macbeth’
Contact role A maidservant to the Queen. Context The pupils are in role as physicians to the King. Key moment later The King calls the physicians to report on his wife’s condition.
An idea from ‘Danny Champion of the World’ by Roald Dahl
Contact role Danny is discovered upset on the steps of his gypsy caravan. Context The pupils are in role as estate workers on Lord Victor Hazell’s estate. Key moment later Danny’s Dad returns – cannot say where he has been or what he was doing.
Contact role Bilbo Baggins
Context The pupils are all in role as map-makers for Gandalf the Wizard.
The map-makers meet Gollum and try out their riddle. Gollum struggles and eventually, reluctantly, gives them the map. Key moment later The map-makers get a panicky message. He’s not very good at reading the map and Gollum told him the Dragon’s Lair is the best way out.
Usually having one main location helps the drama to be properly focused. The tomb could focus all the activity of the drama. That planning decision reinforced the importance of the depictions on the walls so that they can also then be used more at other stages of the drama. That consolidation of the context strengthened the integrity of the drama and helped structure it, as you will see from the full plan.
Building belief
It is the need to get the class to trust in the teacher and what the teacher is creating. Only if you create the belief that there is something in it for them. Use of TiR can interest and build belief.
All of the ingredients contribute to building belief
taking the cloth that becomes the baby in ‘The Governor’s Child’ and deliberately rolling it up into the shape in front of them and asking what it is representing.
In delivering the drama we have to
We have to remove ideas that may get in the way of the drama working , but doing it in such a way that the pupil offering the idea genuinely does not feel rejected in the process and is willing to continue to make suggestions.
There are teacher decisions and pupil decisions and we have to be clear about the timing and nature of both, why one should be the teacher’s and why another should be the pupils’. Many teacher decisions are built into the plan as givens, otherwise there will be no clear direction for the learning. What we embed as non-negotiable in the planning of a drama tightens the focus and ensures a concentration on the particularity of the main event. We must plan space for real dialogue, which will involve listening to and using, where possible, their ideas .
The success of the lesson will be how closely the pupils follow my plan and deliver what I have planned. It has to be recognised that in drama lessons the dynamic of teacher planning and pupil response must have fluidity. The teacher may plan for little space for pupils’ decisions in some parts of the lesson and more in other parts. Highly constrained planning is often a feature of the early phases of the drama lesson where common agreements are necessary in order to build the context.
In these early phases of the drama lesson the pupils do not have enough information to make key decisions. Later in the drama there can be more space and more possibilities for pupil contribution. It may be better to use a drama where tight planning is the norm throughout because the class are inexperienced and not ready to take on the responsibility of key decisions. Here are examples of the difference between a closed access and open access approach to drama.
‘The Governor’s Child’ drama. We may get their reactions, but these viewpoints are not going to change this decision. This is because at this point we are building context, a context where Maria will be hidden by the villagers and that will provide the major challenge and decisions later. The major decision is about whether to continue to hide her after the Soldier has visited and the villagers know she represents a danger to them.
The drama conventions, strategies and techniques
There are many techniques for structuring the stages of a drama.
Planning as a collaborative activity
In our team, one member may have the beginning of an idea and sketch that idea out, but usually turns to another member of the team for feedback and a planning discussion. This functions as a means to bounce ideas, to see flaws and to provide insights into the potential for learning. The complexity of drama means a multiplicity of possible learning outcomes. For example, when planning developments to the original ‘Macbeth’ drama, we wanted to add the ‘Witch’ section.
We began with the idea of facing the class with the ambiguity and teasing language that the witches in the original demonstrate. One of us, A, had ideas about the Witch arriving at the castle door, a vagrant, carrying something.
Road testing the first version
Participants in dramas offer us as the teachers insights into ways of using an established structure. Once we have the beginnings of a drama we need to try ideas out. When a class are responding to strong moments in a drama they not only provide ideas for future use, but also show us the sections which are weak and need replanning. Their positive responses reveal new possibilities and can often become incorporated as ‘givens’ when the drama is used in future.
He had to manage the situation carefully to avoid the drama deteriorating. It was clear that whilst that attitude in Max might recreate ideas from the book, the entry needed to be more subtle and the context of Max’s adventure built more in order to work.
Another example of the class offering new ideas as to what to do and the form to use when you run the drama occurred in a run of ‘Daedalus and
King Minos what they have found out about Daedalus’s plan, we were out of role discussing the pros and cons and putting forward powerful arguments on both sides when one pupil said, I’d like to see two of the servants discussing what to do. This was a gift, so the teacher set up a forum, asking for two pupils who had strong arguments on each side to take the chairs, gathering the others around and having them offer to take over the seats as they wanted to add different points. The discussion was thus more potent as they argued the choices in role. This method of moving forward can then be taken as the planned possibility for exploring the issue in future use of the drama.
The group even took the drama further themselves. The quality of the drama develops in these ways. You can choose to incorporate them in future versions of the drama.
There are two main types of this sort of classroom drama that have evolved
‘living through drama’, where the pupils face the events at a sort of life rate in the here and now, and ‘episodic drama’, or strategy-based drama, where the class are led by the teacher in creating situations and events through specific techniques or strategies and where chronology is more broken. Of course, most dramas have a mixture of the styles, but the younger or more inexperienced a class, the more ‘living through’ will dominate to create the tensions and challenges more directly.
In one outing of ‘The Governor’s Child’ the class could in fact see a greater dramatic satisfaction in partial success. The three teachers who were observing one of us teach this drama had discussed between the sessions what they thought the class would choose to do in the second session. Two thought they would resolve in a happy ending, the third saw them choosing complete disaster as the outcome for that sense of destruction children can seek at times.
In each case we have supplied a ‘learning intention’, a starter role and the situation to be set up.
An idea from ‘Romeo and Juliet’
Learning intention Parental control over children. Contact role A teenage boy discovered writing a letter. Context The pupils are all in role as workers on a rich family’s estate. Key moment later Depending on what the pupils decide to do, the daughter of the family approaches them either to attack them for siding with her father or to thank them for the letter and seek their help to escape that night.
An idea from ‘Macbeth’
Contact role A maidservant to the Queen. Context The pupils are in role as physicians to the King. Key moment later The King calls the physicians to report on his wife’s condition.
An idea from ‘Danny Champion of the World’ by Roald Dahl
Contact role Danny is discovered upset on the steps of his gypsy caravan. Context The pupils are in role as estate workers on Lord Victor Hazell’s estate. Key moment later Danny’s Dad returns – cannot say where he has been or what he was doing.
Contact role Bilbo Baggins
Context The pupils are all in role as map-makers for Gandalf the Wizard.
The map-makers meet Gollum and try out their riddle. Gollum struggles and eventually, reluctantly, gives them the map. Key moment later The map-makers get a panicky message. He’s not very good at reading the map and Gollum told him the Dragon’s Lair is the best way out.
3. HOW TO GENERATE QUALITY
SPEAKING AND LISTENING
What is speaking and listening ?
When a pupil is speaking and listening properly, he or she is able to see how each contribution arises from what has already been said. Reading and writing come later in language learning and should not come until the child’s head is full of the words that reading and writing will demand.
Dialogic teaching
English pupils, in this characterisation at least, are individuals struggling to survive in the crowd. The context within which mistakes are admissible, as in the Russian classrooms, greatly reduces this element of gamesmanship. This explains the apparent paradox of why, although the climate of Russian classrooms tends to be viewed by Western observers as authoritarian, even oppressive, Russian pupils are eager to answer questions while in the supposedly more democratic climate of English classrooms they may be reluctant to do so.
From his own and others’ research, he summarises the picture of classrooms’
In schools too often speaking and listening is seen as question and answer, usually the teacher questioning and the pupils answering. What we see in classrooms is very often the IRF approach, where the teacher initiates, a child responds and a teacher gives feedback. This approach limits the pupil’s speaking and listening engagement with the teacher, as well as preventing engaging with, and listening to, other pupils. We need to see pupils initiating the talk much more with pupils asking questions rather than the teacher.
Too often talk is this ‘recitation’ where teacher speaks most and pupils listen or only answer questions.
This lack of proper talk is all the more serious as it is clear that the primary school years are critical in the development of the brain
Talk, being central to the development of the brain, must be a priority for teachers. Alexander promotes dialogic teaching as the most powerful form of talk in the classroom.
Drama shares the elements listed above, and it promotes pupils’ thinking because of the quality, dynamics and content of talk that can develop. It is about pupils having the desire to speak rather than being required to speak.
In one run of the drama pupils used their role to point out the error of Max’s ways, asserting, You are only 7 and must listen more to your mother, at the same time making clear that they saw their role as adults and the teacher’s role as only a little boy. This gives pupils confidence in speaking and they see that their contributions matter a great deal. In this way we structure into a drama the very possibility of pupils’ talk mattering. The drama itself provides a form which ensures that the pupils are part of a context with roles that always have direction, often a problem to solve, a person to help, and with strategies and structure that ensure a framework for the language.
As the drama develops the pupils develop as a community on the basis of the shared experience. That in itself provides a cumulative language world which is very rich and where the pupils, if the drama engages properly, care in a way that promotes collective, reciprocal and supportive talk. We would maintain that drama is more effective in developing pupils’ ways of thinking, ways of understanding, than ordinary classroom discussion because the language of drama, as the language of all artistic creation, is a heightened version of the language of everyday talk. Its usefulness to speaking and listening, and thus language development, is that we create together a shared experience which frames the language and makes us, the pupils and the teacher, communicate more effectively than mere discussion ever can.
This is particularly true for older primary pupils, ages 7–11, who can bring more separate experiences than younger pupils and are often starting their discussion with greater gaps between them, preventing their chances of shared understandings. Very often in discussion pupils are not really listening to each other because they are more concerned about what they want to say than what they can learn from other pupils. All of the pupils still bring ideas and opinions from their separate experiences, but they are all remade by the creation of a new context. Drama produces greater motivation for the pupils, motivation because of their interest in the problem-solving of the drama.
Drama gives the pupils plenty of opportunities to think through speaking and listening. It promotes speech from the pupils because they want to speak, not because they are being asked to speak.
What does dialogic teaching demand of the teacher?
One of the key changes that drama brings is a different position for the teacher. If the teacher is the young boy, Daedalus, who has taken his father’s secret project design, without his permission, and the pupils are the family servants, then they have important decisions to make about what they do with this knowledge. They will talk to Daedalus in a way that they can never talk to a teacher. The teacher working through drama is intervening as teacher but also as other roles within the drama, roles that are models and anti-models to promote the pupils’ language in ways that teacher language cannot.
They are framed within the drama context to oppose or sort out this behaviour, all the more motivated by the fact it is their teacher behaving in this way through the use of role. So the teacher is able to talk and interact with the pupils in many ways and with many purposes. The teacher engages with the class and their contributions help build the fictional world. The magical world of the fiction and the parallel real-world that we exist in can help each other, so that the language the pupils use in the drama can be looked at from the real world when we stop the drama.
This ‘metaxis’ makes the language possibilities far richer than mere discussion can. When dropping out of role, the teacher promotes a different form of language, reflecting on what has just happened, examining it and defining what it means before planning what to do further. All of this ensures that the pupils are thinking about what they are part of, looking at actions and consequences and considering options, looking at what to do and why. This reflective mode is special to drama.
It would be odd to stop a discussion and say, Let’s look at ourselves and what we said, how we were standing, what it meant. In drama we do that routinely and the learning from the elements of the drama becomes even more potent.
Transcript from a session on Daedalus and Icarus
This comes from the third hour-long session of this drama with a class of mixed 8- and 9-year-olds.
I’ll have to have words with the servants if it’s got in the dustbin.
’ Icarus might go and he might pick them up and say, ‘I have found them’ and say they were in the dustbin.
Conclusions
Lucy, one of the brightest members of the class, who saw the implications of lying from the beginning, very shrewdly sees how the teacher is making the pupils face the consequences of Icarus’s taking of the folder. Centrally, the idea of actions and consequences is brought into very sharp relief, the teacher and the class together exploring the consequences of taking the folder in the first place. Lucy has taken the drama on and helped the teacher explore this important area. The class have paid very close attention, listening not only to the teacher but also their peers, their representatives in the hot-seat.
Their feeling of involvement shows clearly by the way they shriek when Daedalus talks of having to speak to the servants about either the throwing away of the folder, or in version 2, their knowledge of the plan. Obviously the teacher stopped to talk this through with them after Lucy’s final pronouncement but they did not need the implications interpreting at the moment of revelation in the drama.
When a pupil is speaking and listening properly, he or she is able to see how each contribution arises from what has already been said. Reading and writing come later in language learning and should not come until the child’s head is full of the words that reading and writing will demand.
Dialogic teaching
English pupils, in this characterisation at least, are individuals struggling to survive in the crowd. The context within which mistakes are admissible, as in the Russian classrooms, greatly reduces this element of gamesmanship. This explains the apparent paradox of why, although the climate of Russian classrooms tends to be viewed by Western observers as authoritarian, even oppressive, Russian pupils are eager to answer questions while in the supposedly more democratic climate of English classrooms they may be reluctant to do so.
From his own and others’ research, he summarises the picture of classrooms’
In schools too often speaking and listening is seen as question and answer, usually the teacher questioning and the pupils answering. What we see in classrooms is very often the IRF approach, where the teacher initiates, a child responds and a teacher gives feedback. This approach limits the pupil’s speaking and listening engagement with the teacher, as well as preventing engaging with, and listening to, other pupils. We need to see pupils initiating the talk much more with pupils asking questions rather than the teacher.
Too often talk is this ‘recitation’ where teacher speaks most and pupils listen or only answer questions.
This lack of proper talk is all the more serious as it is clear that the primary school years are critical in the development of the brain
Talk, being central to the development of the brain, must be a priority for teachers. Alexander promotes dialogic teaching as the most powerful form of talk in the classroom.
Drama shares the elements listed above, and it promotes pupils’ thinking because of the quality, dynamics and content of talk that can develop. It is about pupils having the desire to speak rather than being required to speak.
In one run of the drama pupils used their role to point out the error of Max’s ways, asserting, You are only 7 and must listen more to your mother, at the same time making clear that they saw their role as adults and the teacher’s role as only a little boy. This gives pupils confidence in speaking and they see that their contributions matter a great deal. In this way we structure into a drama the very possibility of pupils’ talk mattering. The drama itself provides a form which ensures that the pupils are part of a context with roles that always have direction, often a problem to solve, a person to help, and with strategies and structure that ensure a framework for the language.
As the drama develops the pupils develop as a community on the basis of the shared experience. That in itself provides a cumulative language world which is very rich and where the pupils, if the drama engages properly, care in a way that promotes collective, reciprocal and supportive talk. We would maintain that drama is more effective in developing pupils’ ways of thinking, ways of understanding, than ordinary classroom discussion because the language of drama, as the language of all artistic creation, is a heightened version of the language of everyday talk. Its usefulness to speaking and listening, and thus language development, is that we create together a shared experience which frames the language and makes us, the pupils and the teacher, communicate more effectively than mere discussion ever can.
This is particularly true for older primary pupils, ages 7–11, who can bring more separate experiences than younger pupils and are often starting their discussion with greater gaps between them, preventing their chances of shared understandings. Very often in discussion pupils are not really listening to each other because they are more concerned about what they want to say than what they can learn from other pupils. All of the pupils still bring ideas and opinions from their separate experiences, but they are all remade by the creation of a new context. Drama produces greater motivation for the pupils, motivation because of their interest in the problem-solving of the drama.
Drama gives the pupils plenty of opportunities to think through speaking and listening. It promotes speech from the pupils because they want to speak, not because they are being asked to speak.
What does dialogic teaching demand of the teacher?
One of the key changes that drama brings is a different position for the teacher. If the teacher is the young boy, Daedalus, who has taken his father’s secret project design, without his permission, and the pupils are the family servants, then they have important decisions to make about what they do with this knowledge. They will talk to Daedalus in a way that they can never talk to a teacher. The teacher working through drama is intervening as teacher but also as other roles within the drama, roles that are models and anti-models to promote the pupils’ language in ways that teacher language cannot.
They are framed within the drama context to oppose or sort out this behaviour, all the more motivated by the fact it is their teacher behaving in this way through the use of role. So the teacher is able to talk and interact with the pupils in many ways and with many purposes. The teacher engages with the class and their contributions help build the fictional world. The magical world of the fiction and the parallel real-world that we exist in can help each other, so that the language the pupils use in the drama can be looked at from the real world when we stop the drama.
This ‘metaxis’ makes the language possibilities far richer than mere discussion can. When dropping out of role, the teacher promotes a different form of language, reflecting on what has just happened, examining it and defining what it means before planning what to do further. All of this ensures that the pupils are thinking about what they are part of, looking at actions and consequences and considering options, looking at what to do and why. This reflective mode is special to drama.
It would be odd to stop a discussion and say, Let’s look at ourselves and what we said, how we were standing, what it meant. In drama we do that routinely and the learning from the elements of the drama becomes even more potent.
Transcript from a session on Daedalus and Icarus
This comes from the third hour-long session of this drama with a class of mixed 8- and 9-year-olds.
I’ll have to have words with the servants if it’s got in the dustbin.
’ Icarus might go and he might pick them up and say, ‘I have found them’ and say they were in the dustbin.
Conclusions
Lucy, one of the brightest members of the class, who saw the implications of lying from the beginning, very shrewdly sees how the teacher is making the pupils face the consequences of Icarus’s taking of the folder. Centrally, the idea of actions and consequences is brought into very sharp relief, the teacher and the class together exploring the consequences of taking the folder in the first place. Lucy has taken the drama on and helped the teacher explore this important area. The class have paid very close attention, listening not only to the teacher but also their peers, their representatives in the hot-seat.
Their feeling of involvement shows clearly by the way they shriek when Daedalus talks of having to speak to the servants about either the throwing away of the folder, or in version 2, their knowledge of the plan. Obviously the teacher stopped to talk this through with them after Lucy’s final pronouncement but they did not need the implications interpreting at the moment of revelation in the drama.
4. HOW TO USE DRAMA FOR
INCLUSION AND CITIZENSHIP THIS CHAPTER IS CONCERNED WITH THE RELATION
This chapter is concerned with the relationship between inclusion
and drama as a pedagogical approach. We look at how drama, through
its idiosyncratic approach, facilitates inclusion. We then make the
link to the Citizenship curriculum and how drama’s approach to inclusion is an
intrinsic part of this area. Drama’s inclusion is
embedded, first, in its dialogical approach to teaching and learning.
These are Everyone will take part, including the teacher both in and out of role. Secondly, the subject content of dramas can have specific learning potential to give a voice to groups whose ideas may not be heard easily in the real world. So inclusion will always be found in drama’s approach to learning and it may also be part of its subject content. The inclusive school will have, within its policies and curriculum, strategies to ‘address racism and promote racial harmony where all pupils know they are valued and important to the school’ .
Inclusion pays particular attention to the provisions for different groups of pupils. Any children who are at risk of disaffection and exclusion. We would argue that drama has, by its nature, a distinctive role and it is this role we wish to explore further.
The concept of drama and keeping pupils safe. There is a perception of drama dealing with issues in a safe way because it uses fictional contexts. It is almost as if by shifting to the fictional, a safe emotional distance is automatically created. It would be simplistic to believe that just because we work within fictional contexts, using fictional roles and events, that the experience for pupils is therefore immediately safe from the negative and destructive emotions of real life experiences. In teaching, whether working inside or outside fiction, we need to be constantly aware of the need to treat pupils in ways that demonstrate respect for persons and awareness of their particular social and emotional circumstances in that learning situation.
On one level, the teacher must make the content interesting and appropriate for the pupils, that is, it should be related to their needs and structured in such a way as to grab and hold their attention. The risk of criticism and humiliation by pupils has to be removed or at least made clear as an unacceptable way to behave. This can be done by the teacher modelling how to behave when they make a mistake. Teachers need to demonstrate how to deal with mistakes made by pupils and by protecting and defending them if they are subjected to negative response by classmates.
The risk of making mistakes does not automatically vanish because we are using role-play. The principle of protecting pupils from humiliation and embarrassment remains inside and outside the fictional world of drama, in fact, it underpins good teaching and helps raise the social health of the class by modelling positive ways of treating each other.
Gavin Bolton makes an important distinction when writing about pupils and emotion in drama cannot stress enough how important it is for teachers to realise that because drama is such a powerful tool for helping people change, as teachers we need to be very sensitive to the emotional demands we make on our students. The notion of ‘protection’ is not necessarily concerned with protecting participants from emotion, for unless there is some kind of emotional engagement nothing can be learned, but rather to protect them into emotion. This does not mean we do not take risks or put pupils in situations that feel risky but these risks are perceived rather than actual. He suggests three ways to deal with a topic indirectly The drama teacher plans dramas with these devices in order to shift and adjust the emotional proximity of the class in relation to the social event they are examining. We can illustrate this by looking at a drama without structured protection by the teacher and then comparing this with the same drama with devices planned into it. You go into role as the workhouse boss and aggressively tell them to stand when you enter the room. One of the class has a rolled up cardigan to represent her baby and takes the role of Martha. The class witness her humiliation, they see her baby being taken off her and given to an older woman who is too ill to work and therefore has to look after the babies. This living-through style of confrontational drama with its raw emotion can be received with derision and light-heartedness by pupils. Later in the drama one child is asked to stand upon a chair with the label.
These are Everyone will take part, including the teacher both in and out of role. Secondly, the subject content of dramas can have specific learning potential to give a voice to groups whose ideas may not be heard easily in the real world. So inclusion will always be found in drama’s approach to learning and it may also be part of its subject content. The inclusive school will have, within its policies and curriculum, strategies to ‘address racism and promote racial harmony where all pupils know they are valued and important to the school’ .
Inclusion pays particular attention to the provisions for different groups of pupils. Any children who are at risk of disaffection and exclusion. We would argue that drama has, by its nature, a distinctive role and it is this role we wish to explore further.
The concept of drama and keeping pupils safe. There is a perception of drama dealing with issues in a safe way because it uses fictional contexts. It is almost as if by shifting to the fictional, a safe emotional distance is automatically created. It would be simplistic to believe that just because we work within fictional contexts, using fictional roles and events, that the experience for pupils is therefore immediately safe from the negative and destructive emotions of real life experiences. In teaching, whether working inside or outside fiction, we need to be constantly aware of the need to treat pupils in ways that demonstrate respect for persons and awareness of their particular social and emotional circumstances in that learning situation.
On one level, the teacher must make the content interesting and appropriate for the pupils, that is, it should be related to their needs and structured in such a way as to grab and hold their attention. The risk of criticism and humiliation by pupils has to be removed or at least made clear as an unacceptable way to behave. This can be done by the teacher modelling how to behave when they make a mistake. Teachers need to demonstrate how to deal with mistakes made by pupils and by protecting and defending them if they are subjected to negative response by classmates.
The risk of making mistakes does not automatically vanish because we are using role-play. The principle of protecting pupils from humiliation and embarrassment remains inside and outside the fictional world of drama, in fact, it underpins good teaching and helps raise the social health of the class by modelling positive ways of treating each other.
Gavin Bolton makes an important distinction when writing about pupils and emotion in drama cannot stress enough how important it is for teachers to realise that because drama is such a powerful tool for helping people change, as teachers we need to be very sensitive to the emotional demands we make on our students. The notion of ‘protection’ is not necessarily concerned with protecting participants from emotion, for unless there is some kind of emotional engagement nothing can be learned, but rather to protect them into emotion. This does not mean we do not take risks or put pupils in situations that feel risky but these risks are perceived rather than actual. He suggests three ways to deal with a topic indirectly The drama teacher plans dramas with these devices in order to shift and adjust the emotional proximity of the class in relation to the social event they are examining. We can illustrate this by looking at a drama without structured protection by the teacher and then comparing this with the same drama with devices planned into it. You go into role as the workhouse boss and aggressively tell them to stand when you enter the room. One of the class has a rolled up cardigan to represent her baby and takes the role of Martha. The class witness her humiliation, they see her baby being taken off her and given to an older woman who is too ill to work and therefore has to look after the babies. This living-through style of confrontational drama with its raw emotion can be received with derision and light-heartedness by pupils. Later in the drama one child is asked to stand upon a chair with the label.
They are totally inappropriate as ways of structuring a drama
lesson. We have no right to subject pupils to this kind of treatment
because it is under the cloak of drama and fiction. Our first concern is
to take the class to looking at the disturbing reality of the
nineteenth-century workhouse and to do that we must find a role for the pupils
which gives them power. As the drama progresses and trust in the teacher
and the medium is built then the pupils can move closer to the role of the
inmates.
The stopping and starting of the drama helps defuse the raw emotion
and allows pupils to reflect, negotiate and manipulate the fiction to
clarify their own understanding. That does not mean we cannot move closer
to these issues as the drama develops, but it does mean we need to find a
way into the drama that will not generate counter-productive
learning, behaviour that will seek to undermine or destroy the drama.
Let us draw an analogy with the social ritual of the funeral
services in
If in drama we are dealing with a potentially emotionally charged topic or one where the cultural taboos of our society are to be examined, we need to take the class there very carefully. We need to build their trust in the fictional world we create through the roles we put them in and the strategies we use. It is this that makes it safe for the participants, for as long as we, as teacher and manager of the fictional world, intervene and reflect upon it, we can facilitate learning and protect the vulnerable. The dramas we include in this book cover some challenging ideas.
The gradual making of meaning out of this moment unites the class and fully allows for a variety of levels and activity in response so that it is truly inclusive. Of course, the giving of a voice to an autistic child also produces inclusion in the subject matter too. When doing this drama in school we were not surprised when a child with autism asked Christopher’s Mum whether she thought he might be autistic?.
With the protection of the class role – people who can help worried parents he was able to distance himself from the drama being about him, using the given role of someone who can help parents of pupils with autism.
Another example of a powerful and demanding moment occurs in the
‘Macbeth’ drama when the servants are meeting to discuss what to do. This is a shock and can cause anxiety to the members of the class in role as servants.
If in drama we are dealing with a potentially emotionally charged topic or one where the cultural taboos of our society are to be examined, we need to take the class there very carefully. We need to build their trust in the fictional world we create through the roles we put them in and the strategies we use. It is this that makes it safe for the participants, for as long as we, as teacher and manager of the fictional world, intervene and reflect upon it, we can facilitate learning and protect the vulnerable. The dramas we include in this book cover some challenging ideas.
The gradual making of meaning out of this moment unites the class and fully allows for a variety of levels and activity in response so that it is truly inclusive. Of course, the giving of a voice to an autistic child also produces inclusion in the subject matter too. When doing this drama in school we were not surprised when a child with autism asked Christopher’s Mum whether she thought he might be autistic?.
With the protection of the class role – people who can help worried parents he was able to distance himself from the drama being about him, using the given role of someone who can help parents of pupils with autism.
Another example of a powerful and demanding moment occurs in the
‘Macbeth’ drama when the servants are meeting to discuss what to do. This is a shock and can cause anxiety to the members of the class in role as servants.
● The servants know they have knowledge about him at this point
which gives them power, unlike the powerless inmates of the Workhouse. Absence, like
We thought the banquet was so successful last night, your
majesty, that we were looking to plan another, as one inventive pupil
said to one of us as Macbeth. In both of these cases the class are
protected by the fiction and if necessary the teacher can go OoR to negotiate
what to do, so that the class is never in any danger from the moment of
anxiety.
Having a voice in society
If we return to the central idea in drama of creating an ‘as if’ world we see that it is a world that is, at least in part, created by the participants through their ideas. As we have seen in the planning section, good planning creates gaps and spaces for pupils to input their ideas. If we plan for pupils’ ideas to be part of the drama lesson and we are creating a safe environment for this to happen, we are in effect giving them a voice to express their understandings and perspective on the world in which they live. Figure 4.1 describes the pupils who have the confidence to express an opinion in the drama lesson.
There will be a relative congruence or not in the relationship between these components. Whether what I think is close to what I say, whether what I say bears any relationship to what I do will shift in relation to the social circumstances of the moment. If there is we can assess the learning and needs of the pupil more easily. One can imagine that more secure pupils whose self-worth is high will present a more congruent view of these three factors.
Having a voice in society
If we return to the central idea in drama of creating an ‘as if’ world we see that it is a world that is, at least in part, created by the participants through their ideas. As we have seen in the planning section, good planning creates gaps and spaces for pupils to input their ideas. If we plan for pupils’ ideas to be part of the drama lesson and we are creating a safe environment for this to happen, we are in effect giving them a voice to express their understandings and perspective on the world in which they live. Figure 4.1 describes the pupils who have the confidence to express an opinion in the drama lesson.
There will be a relative congruence or not in the relationship between these components. Whether what I think is close to what I say, whether what I say bears any relationship to what I do will shift in relation to the social circumstances of the moment. If there is we can assess the learning and needs of the pupil more easily. One can imagine that more secure pupils whose self-worth is high will present a more congruent view of these three factors.
If they do not, they may feel the wrath of others in the
group, not necessarily during the lesson but afterwards. If the
concept of ‘giving pupils a voice’ means enabling pupils to express their
feelings, their ideas and their suggestions for action, then drama
holds the possibility of being a truly inclusive experience. It can do
this by shifting pupils into a fictional world where they are no longer
speaking as themselves but through the fictional context the teacher has
structured for them and the class. The safe distance enables them to say
and do the things they may not say or do in the real world.
The dialectic that exists between the real world and the drama
fictitious.
The real world outside the drama
They can of course be involved in the school itself and learn about responsibility by taking part in school activities and institutions like the school council. To a limited extent they can have experience in the community as part of their school experience. They can make trips out or relevant visitors can be brought in to make pupils aware of the important structures and ideas that community involves. Indeed, if children get very committed to a real-world project there is a dilemma for the school.
Drama’s relationship to citizenship works on two levels, as a methodology that demonstrates aspects of citizenship in action and when the content is specifically focused upon issues of citizenship. When we consider that drama can link citizenship with personal and social education, and spiritual, moral, social and cultural education, then we can begin to understand the importance of drama as a teaching method.
So any whole class drama carried out in the methodology represented in this book is strong on the model of democracy, corporate learning, responsibility and tolerance.
A drama for teaching about citizenship
If we want the pupils to experience a particular political idea or social situation, the fictional world of drama can provide that situation efficiently and with an immediacy that reality cannot provide. Whilst the fiction also protects the pupils into learning at the same time and allows all avenues to be explored without the real consequences that we indicated above. As one example let us consider the use of ‘The Governor’s Child’ drama as a vehicle for uniting these areas. The drama builds the pupils’ roles as citizens of a mountain village and places them in the situation where the community is under threat.
As citizens the pupils have to take on the responsibility of hiding the woman and baby, thus endangering themselves. The drama opens up the issues of justice and revenge as sought by a revolutionary soldier, the idea of what you undertake when you give someone hospitality and ultimately the question of the worth of the single life against the community. We can see from a summary of the drama that a number of citizenship issues are immediately contextualised and presented to the children. Drama ensures that they have to explore them and get involved in them, to challenge and seek solutions in a number of ways.
The group, when they have taken in the woman and child and have been visited by the soldier searching for her, have to decide collectively whether they will continue to protect her, given that she lied to them originally about her and the baby’s identity.
The real world outside the drama
They can of course be involved in the school itself and learn about responsibility by taking part in school activities and institutions like the school council. To a limited extent they can have experience in the community as part of their school experience. They can make trips out or relevant visitors can be brought in to make pupils aware of the important structures and ideas that community involves. Indeed, if children get very committed to a real-world project there is a dilemma for the school.
Drama’s relationship to citizenship works on two levels, as a methodology that demonstrates aspects of citizenship in action and when the content is specifically focused upon issues of citizenship. When we consider that drama can link citizenship with personal and social education, and spiritual, moral, social and cultural education, then we can begin to understand the importance of drama as a teaching method.
So any whole class drama carried out in the methodology represented in this book is strong on the model of democracy, corporate learning, responsibility and tolerance.
A drama for teaching about citizenship
If we want the pupils to experience a particular political idea or social situation, the fictional world of drama can provide that situation efficiently and with an immediacy that reality cannot provide. Whilst the fiction also protects the pupils into learning at the same time and allows all avenues to be explored without the real consequences that we indicated above. As one example let us consider the use of ‘The Governor’s Child’ drama as a vehicle for uniting these areas. The drama builds the pupils’ roles as citizens of a mountain village and places them in the situation where the community is under threat.
As citizens the pupils have to take on the responsibility of hiding the woman and baby, thus endangering themselves. The drama opens up the issues of justice and revenge as sought by a revolutionary soldier, the idea of what you undertake when you give someone hospitality and ultimately the question of the worth of the single life against the community. We can see from a summary of the drama that a number of citizenship issues are immediately contextualised and presented to the children. Drama ensures that they have to explore them and get involved in them, to challenge and seek solutions in a number of ways.
The group, when they have taken in the woman and child and have been visited by the soldier searching for her, have to decide collectively whether they will continue to protect her, given that she lied to them originally about her and the baby’s identity.
Here is a list of the issues and ideas that were identified as
present in this drama by a group of teacher trainees when they examined it Giving the children something they can relate
to. They have their say – they have ownership of the key decisions in the
drama.
In addition, the content of a specific drama can be planned to
highlight key Citizenship areas. A key element of the approach is again
the use of the teacher to provoke, to challenge, to guide and to
model. Citizenship, but for us it must involve the teacher
role-playing too. We have given examples from ‘The Governor’s Child’ so
that you can see how abstracts like fairness, democracy, identity, community, belonging, responsibility, can
be made concrete through the process of drama.
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