The drama section of the curriculum encourages teachers to plan their drama programs in units – that is in a series of connected lessons. The curriculum includes four required units, each of which is presented in two mini-units. The mini-unit themes are required. The sample topics and activities are suggestions.
The time allotment for drama is 50 minutes per week. It follows then, that roughly three to five weeks could be spent on each mini-unit. It is not required, however, that the two mini-units be given equal time.
The activities provided for each mini-unit are intended to be a starter list only. As teachers become more experienced in using the curriculum guide, they will certainly want to add other activities or adapt the ones provided for different topics. The activities are listed in three categories: introductory, main, and concluding activities. These three categories have the following purposes:
Introductory Activities
Main Activities
Concluding Activities
A sample form for planning drama lessons from the curriculum guide can be found on page 134. Remember that lessons can include research, discussion, reflection, and a variety of other activities as drama experiences. The following are steps to consider when planning drama units.
Familiarize yourself with the information provided for your grade. Become familiar with the scope of learning objectives. Study the four unit overviews. Become familiar with the units and mini-units. Read the sample unit for your grade (available on CD-ROM and on Saskatchewan Learning website). This provides a model for unit planning. Read the sample units for other grades to get a sense of how other units and themes or topics are addressed (available on CD-ROM and on Saskatchewan Learning website).
Select a unit. Most teachers will want to begin with Unit 1: Learning to Create; however, the units may be taught in any order. Choose a mini-unit theme and topic. You may use the sample topic suggested in the guide or select one of more relevance to your students and community. Refer to Drama Unit Overviews and Sample Topics of this curriculum guide.
Teacher Note:
You may wish to begin by using the sample unit for your grade as it includes detailed lesson plans (available on CD-ROM and on Saskatchewan Learning website).
Develop a plan for structuring the drama. For assistance with this step, read the section that follows entitled Planning the Drama. You may refer to the Starter List of Activities in the curriculum guide or develop your own activities. Lessons may be either 25-minute lessons (two per week) or 50-minute lessons (one per week), although teachers could plan for any combination totalling 50 minutes per week.
Plan for potential directions or episodes within the drama. The following are important aspects of lesson planning:
Step Five
Refer to the Sample Checklist for Planning a Drama Mini-unit on page 133. This checklist is a means of ensuring that Core Curriculum Components and Initiatives are included in every unit. It also acts as a reminder of the importance of including a variety of teaching strategies in the drama strand.
This section of the curriculum provides teachers with essential information for planning drama and for guiding students toward achievement of the foundational objectives and related learning objectives. It includes a description of the recommended approaches and a step-by-step guide to drama work with students.
The approach taken to the teaching and learning of drama in the Elementary Level Arts Education curriculum is “drama in context”. Drama in context is also referred to as drama for understanding, role drama, group drama, or process drama.
Step One: Choosing the Topic
Step Two: Structuring the Drama
Step Three: Working Within the Drama
Step Four: Reflection
Step One: Choosing the Topic
As in all subject areas, the foundational objectives and learning objectives are a teacher's first consideration. Observe and listen to the students to identify relevant topics for exploration. Brainstorming sessions and an ongoing suggestion box are likely to provide a class with more than enough ideas for a year's work in drama. It is important for students and teacher to reach consensus on the choice of topics as all members of the class must be willing to make a commitment to the work.
Topics suitable for drama are ones that “represent the everyday experience and forms of knowledge that all students possess in part, whatever their ability, background or ethnicity” (Neelands, 1984, page 6). Such topics spark discussion, trigger personal connections, and lead to questions about the motivation, intentions, and consequences of the actions of people. Following are some possible topics to which students may add their own suggestions.
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Social Issues |
Natural and Human-made Disasters |
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When the class has agreed upon a topic for the drama, students next suggest various aspects of the topic for exploration. Students could be asked to pose “What if...” questions sparked by consideration of the topic choice.
Individual or group brainstorming sessions generate more ideas than can be structured into one drama, but valuable ideas are revealed that might not otherwise have been considered. A webbing, which organizes the thinking of the group, is helpful as the teacher moves toward identifying the focus; that is, one particular aspect of the topic for exploration.
If a class chooses to do a drama about “the environment”, a possible focus might be provided by the question, “What would the members of a community do if they discovered frogs in a local pond were dying from a mysterious illness?” The drama could begin with people (e.g., students in role) questioning a scientist.
During the course of a drama, the focus can shift allowing the topic to be approached from other points of view. For example, in the environment drama, the focus could shift to the question, “What measures can be taken to ensure that ponds will not be contaminated in future?” In this case, a government official (e.g., teacher in role) could call together a panel of experts (e.g., students in role) who have previous experience with environmental safety.
Step Two: Structuring the Drama
Working in dramatic situations offers unique challenges to the traditional functions of students and teachers in the classroom. Teachers are at times called on to shift from the “natural authority” role and become one member of a group. This way of working guides students toward a deeper understanding of themselves, others, their world, and dramatic art form.
The structuring of a drama is the pre-planning phase of drama work. Before approaching the structuring of the work, teachers:
Drama strategies are selected and combined in various ways during initial planning. The strategies are also used by teachers and students for various purposes as the drama unfolds.
Following is a list of some drama strategies from which teachers may choose as they structure the work. Many of these and others are included in the sample units:
Role Teacher in role Narration Imaging Voting Tableau Tapping in Mime Dance drama Parallel play Storytelling Story theatre Sidecoaching Flashbacks and flashforwards Interviews The hot seat Journeys Meetings Ritual Drawing/painting Writing Choral speaking Games, exercises, and warm ups Improvisation
Role is the basic ingredient of work in drama. When the children and teacher assume roles in a drama, they are acting “as if” they are someone else. They are experimenting with what it feels like to be in someone else's shoes and developing empathy with those other lives. They are not, like the actor, portraying a fully-developed character.
Teacher in role is one of the most effective ways for teachers to work in drama. By taking on roles, the teacher is able to provide the students with a model through the use of appropriate language and apparent commitment to the process and to the work. Role enables the teacher to work with the children and to facilitate the shaping of the work from within.
The role that the teacher chooses depends upon what she or he hopes to achieve within the work. The following describe some basic types of role available to the teacher (Neelands & Goode, 2000).
Teacher Note:
It would be unusual for a teacher to work constantly in one role for the duration of a drama. Within a drama, teachers may shift in and out of role, into different roles, and out of role altogether to work in more familiar ways such as side-coach, narrator, or facilitator. What you want to accomplish determines what role you choose.
Narration can be used to establish mood, to bridge gaps in time, and to register decisions made by the students within the drama. For example, as students are imagining themselves in a ship adrift on the sea, the teacher might read an excerpt from a sailor's daily log book.
Imaging is a technique that allows the students to slow down and focus on an issue. The students, sitting quietly with eyes closed, allow pictures to form in their minds. These images may be motivated by bits of narration, music, sounds, or smells.
Voting is a familiar strategy not necessarily associated with the arts. At times, when consensus is not achieved, voting is the next best option.
A tableau is a still image, a frozen moment, or a photograph. It is created by posing still bodies and communicates a living representation of an event, an idea, or a feeling. This valuable drama strategy can be used to encourage discussion and reflection.
Tapping in is a means by which those individuals represented in a tableau may be prompted to express their response to the particular moment that is captured in time and space by the tableau. The teacher places a hand on the shoulder of one of the students in role in the tableau and poses questions that are designed to reveal the actor's thinking about the situation represented by the tableau.
Mime is a silent art form in which the body is used as the instrument of communication. Mime enables the children to explore and to represent ideas and events through movement and gesture. For example, the children create a circus parade or, as merchants, go silently about their tasks at the village market.
Dance drama is expressive movement through which ideas, stories, sounds, and music can be interpreted. It can be used to express such episodes as dream sequences and parts of celebrations.
Parallel play describes a situation in which all of the students work simultaneously but separately in their own space. It allows students time to “try on” their roles before working in role in a larger grouping. For example, each of the animals moves at will through the jungle prior to being called to a jungle gym workout.
Storytelling is a means of creating and sharing stories. The stories may be familiar or unfamiliar, the stories of others, or the student's own. In drama, storytelling is a means of sharing and reflecting on each other's experiences and the experiences of the group.
Story theatre techniques may be used in drama as stories are told. As the story is told by a narrator, others act it out either while speaking the dialogue or through miming the action. Alternatively, the narration may be provided by those who are acting out the characters, animals, or inanimate objects.
Flashbacks and flashforwards can be used effectively to help build belief, to challenge the children to consider the consequences of decisions, and to support periods of reflection. For example, in a drama about newcomers to the west, the students are asked to work in pairs, one in role as a newcomer and one as someone who was left behind. They are asked to improvise the difficult goodbye they would have to say before their departure.
Interviews work well to encourage seriousness, to reveal a variety of perspectives, and to aid reflection. Interviews can encourage spontaneous storytelling. Some examples are lawyer and client, coach and player, and fisherman and fish. The large group interview strategy has become known as the hot seat .
Journeys can provide not only a strategy but, if focused, a context in itself. Students can explore different kinds of journeys ranging from journeys into space to journeys to new lands. Students can be challenged by such problems as deciding whether or not to go, preparing to go, saying goodbye, and coping with the unknown along the way.
Meetings can help the whole group establish focus and begin to build belief. At first, the teacher could assume the familiar leader-type role but as the students and teacher become more experienced in drama, the teacher could become one of the group and the students the authority.
Ritual is a technique in which one action is repeated by many individuals to formalize or to provide specific significance to a situation. For example, members of a top secret space mission (e.g., students in role) board their spacecraft one by one prior to launch. As they do so, they are given a computerized identification bracelet and are required to state why they have committed themselves to the mission.
The drawing and painting of treasure maps, maps of the town, blueprints of haunted houses, floor plans of factories, and wanted posters can be used within a drama. Such work can help the students build belief.
Writing of family records, headlines, diaries, letters, journal entries, news stories, ledgers, poetry, chants, and legends can be used within a drama. Writing, which can slow down and deepen the students' thinking about the work, provides an opportunity to respond to and to record their feelings and findings.
Choral speaking is a means by which poetry, chants and raps, short stories, fairy tales, fables, and legends are interpreted and communicated vocally by a group. For example, a drama might be inspired by a particular poem. The students and teacher might decide that group speaking of the piece would provide ideal closure for the work.
Games, exercises, and warm ups are used as classroom drama activities to develop personal and social skills such as trust or risk taking, as well as to develop imagination, concentration, and vocal skills. Many of these familiar activities can be used purposefully and imaginatively within a dramatic context.
Improvisation is any unscripted drama work. A distinction must be made between spontaneous improvisation, which is immediate and unrehearsed, and prepared improvisation, which is shaped and rehearsed. Spontaneous improvisation is characteristic of much of the work done within contextual dramas. As students shape and refine their work toward the development of a collective creation, they engage more in prepared improvisation.
Sidecoaching is normally done by the teacher. Occasionally, students may be asked to sidecoach. The individual who is sidecoaching the class provides information that guides the students' dramatic experience. For example, the students might be engaged in parallel play as they prepare for a journey while the teacher sidecoaches instructions about what students need to pack in their cases.
Teacher Note:
There are additional drama strategies suggested in a variety of resources. Refer to Arts Education: A Bibliography for the Elementary Level (2003) for drama resources that include the above-mentioned and other strategies.
In Grades 1-5, the primary concern is not the quality of the presentation. What is important is the students' achievement of new understanding.
As well as having a grasp of the learning objectives and the available strategies, the teacher needs to be aware that:
Dramas take shape episode by episode. They are not structured along plot lines as stories and plays often are. Within each episode, the emphasis is placed on what is happening now, not what will happen next.
Teacher Note:
Time for reflection (i.e., time for recalling, reacting to, and describing one's experience both in and out of role) is very important. During these periods of reflection, students have the opportunity to consider their actions and the consequences, and to clarify and share that experience. By so doing, students are evaluating their work which deepens their understanding of it, and enables them to contribute to the course of the work. It may well be that the most valuable learning occurs during these periods of reflection.
In drama, questions are used within the work to involve the students, to assess students' belief and commitment, to assist with control, and to encourage reflection.
The table in the following link features a variety of question approaches a teacher can use both to structure drama work and to guide the drama in progress.
At this point in the process of planning a drama, the teacher plans the lesson much as she or he would any lesson. It is now a case of determining which strategies best facilitate the students' exploration of the topic and their achievement of the curriculum objectives. When structuring a drama, the teacher is in effect drawing a map. The map, however, is not the journey. The course of the journey must be determined by the students. Although the starting and ending point for the drama may be planned, each drama will be different as no two journeys are ever exactly the same.
Teacher Note:
There are a number of other types of questions suggested in resources such as Structuring Drama Work by Neelands and Goode, 2000 and in Asking Better Questions: Models, Techniques and Classroom Activities for Engaging Students in Learning by Morgan and Saxton, 1994.
Step Three: Working Within The Drama
When the structuring of the work is complete, the teacher is prepared to begin the drama with the students. A trusting environment is essential as students are being asked to join the teacher in a “pretend world”.
As the drama unfolds, the teacher must ease ownership of the work into the students' hands. The idea of a carefully planned lesson being allowed to take on a life of its own might be somewhat disquieting. The following section entitled Planning on your Feet provides some strategies for keeping the drama moving in a positive direction. The teacher, who is ultimately responsible for the whole work, can and must control the quality of the experience while encouraging the students to take more responsibility in determining its direction, shape, and meaning.
Figure 1 illustrates the functions and responsibilities of teacher and students in working through a drama together.
Figure 1: The Functions and Responsibilities of Teacher and Students in Drama
In order to be comfortable and to participate with ease in dramatic situations, teachers and students must work within each situation. As teachers and students gain experience, they learn that a drama cannot fail. This is not to say that control in a drama cannot be lost. Examples include the following:
If this happens, it may be that the drama requires new life or closure. In such cases, the teacher can:
If, at any time during a work, the teacher is unable to think quickly enough to accommodate unexpected responses and events that signal a change of direction for the work, the teacher may “buy time” in a number of ways:
As drama strategies are explored and used over time, teachers and students make more skilful choices. Remember that a drama can be stopped at any time. If the drama feels uncomfortable or out of control, or simply does not seem to be working for whatever reason, slow the pace of the work and provide for extra periods of reflection. During these times, teachers and students are usually able to identify reasons for the lack of success of a particular episode and propose solutions.
Keep a log book of the drama in progress. It provides a wealth of information to support student assessment, assessment of the work itself, and the effectiveness of the teacher's roles in it. It can offer insights into how the dramas are working and strengthen future structuring of dramas .
Step Four: Reflection
Teacher Note:
Unfortunately, it is often the reality of drama classes that time simply runs out before students get an opportunity to reflect upon the work achieved in the class. It is a good idea to structure all dramas so that times for reflection are provided frequently as the work unfolds. Reflection must also occur as a final or summative experience for each drama and for each collective creation.
Periods of reflection enable students in and out of role to pause and to clarify their thinking about the development of the drama. Periods of reflection provide students with opportunities to examine the sources of ideas to discover what makes the drama meaningful, and to understand how individual responses and choices influence the responses and choices of others.
A variety of strategies can be used to encourage student reflection both within and outside of dramatic situations. Whole group discussion, interviews, tableaux, prepared improvisation, drawing, writing in role, and journal writing are effective in motivating students' critical consideration of both the form and the content of their work.
Questions that request the expression of personal experiences and attitudes can be used to guide a summative personal journal entry. The following are examples: “Have you ever had to make a decision that was as difficult for you as this one was for each of these townspeople? Which part of the drama was most challenging for you? Why? What advice would you give to another class undertaking a similar project?”
Sample Checklist for Planning a Drama Mini-Unit
Sample Planning Form for a Drama Lesson
