how to approach speaking and listening through drama

how to approach speaking and listening through drama 

The most important resource you have as a teacher when using drama is yourself. Learning demands intervention from the teacher to structure, direct and influence the learning of the pupils.  One of the best ways to do that in drama work is to be inside the drama.  There, at the center  of the dramas that we include in this book, is the  teaching technique that is used, namely  teachers in role (TIR). Many teachers see TIR as a difficult activity, particularly with older children in the primary school. 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. TIR creates a particular context and can raise the level of commitment and the meaning-making. You are not effective as a teacher if you do not at some point engage fully with the drama yourself by using TIR. 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. It can be used with 10- or 11-year-olds as a way of introducing Shakespeare or for other objectives.

The teacher as a storyteller 

the teacher as a storyteller is something all primary school teachers will recognize. Voice, intonation and interpretive skills, are good and, where relevant, whether accompanying illustrations have impact and resonance. dynamic one. It means a known narrative can still be used, the knowledge of the narrative is not a barrier to its usage. A willingness to move away from the fixed narrative to an exploration of the narrative. The use of drama strategies to explore events and their consequences, to look at alternatives and test them. For example, roles and contexts may already be decided but new events may be introduced, the delivery of a letter, for example. How the class respond to this event is not known and it is at this point that they become the writers of the narrative. Let us illustrate these ideas with an example from ‘The Pied Piper’ drama (a drama we designed for 6-year-olds but have used with secondary pupils: see Toye and Prendiville, 2000, p. 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. (In many versions of this story the child is a ‘cripple boy’. 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. Begin by asking the class out of role what they want to ask the child and the order of those questions. Before the drama session, decide what attitude you are going to take when questioned by the class. Of course, all these things are possible from the text of a book; however, the pupils will be defining what is important, which are the most important ques- tions to be asked and how to handle the mood of the storyteller, whose views on the events may be very different from those of the audience whom he addresses. Be clear about his attitude towards being left behind, what has hap- pened and how he feels about it. Then run the hot-seating. The dialogue might go something like this:. The boy: Them! They get to go into the fairground and I don’t! Some friends I’ve got. Stop and come out of role and discuss what they have found out. At this point some questions about what the little boy saw will emerge. The boy: You should have seen it! Lights, big dipper, toffee apples. It engages the class and gives them the opportunity to generate new questions and to make sense of what is happening in an interactive way. They are questioning from within the story, as if they were there.Teaching from within Moving in and out of role  managing the drama and reflecting on it this OoR working is as important as the role itself. It manages the role and therefore the drama; it manages the risk, establishes where the class is and helps pupils believe in the drama. 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. The class in groups of five have created tableaux as families taking part in bread-making in the kitchen. You negotiate your entry: I will enter as the rat runs out of the door. 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. 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. The class will see the Rat-catcher as overworked and probably needing help to put his/her case to the Mayor. Give the groups time to prepare their evidence before you go into role to receive the input. For another example of using OOR (out of role) to help establish a role see ‘The Governor’s Child’ drama for the entry of Maria, a travel-weary woman carrying a baby. This is because the class will see it as they have described it themselves. OOR is very important as a way of negotiating the intent and meaning of the role and is the way the teacher can best control and manage learning. For the class are both an audience and observers of their own activities. It is very important to get the participants to look at and interpret what is going on, frequently by stepping out of 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. A class reflect together in order to draw conclusions and consequently can influence each other far more in their understanding. The relationship developed by the teacher with the class is dependent on the movement between these two worlds :

 ● It is not, Listen and I will tell you a story. 

● It is, You will become a playmaker, an author with me and will be a part of the story that I start and we create together.

 Drama then teaches in the following way. Taking a moment in time, it uses the experiences of the participants, forcing them to confront their own actions and decisions and to go forward to a believable outcome in which they can gain satisfaction