Summarizing " How to Approach Speaking and Listening through Drama "

" How to Approach Speaking and Listening through Drama "

1. How to Begin with Teacher in Role

    -  Why use teacher in role?

The most important resource you have as a teacher when using drama is yourself. 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.

Teacher as storytellerThe teacher as a storyteller is something all primary school teachers will recognize. 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.

It means a known narrative can still be used, the knowledge of the narrative is not a barrier to its usage. However, if the pupils are locked into the original narrative it is problematic. It is the negotiable and dynamic elements of the relationship between drama and narrative that liberate the pupils and the teacher from merely retelling the known story. 

2. A willingness to move away from the fixed narrative to an exploration of the narrative.

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. 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 . 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. This provides the background to a simple hot-seating of the child.

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. You are going to be telling them a story but it will be as if they had just met you and it will not be the voice of the narrator re-telling someone else’s story but in the present tense as if it is happening now.

 

The boy: You should have seen it! Lights, big dipper, toffee apples. Oh! the smell of the toffee apples … and all free. He was standing at the entrance shouting ‘It’s all free. Help yourself. Any ride, any food, anything you want you can have.’ It’s just not fair!

This interactive storytelling has an immediacy and urgency and is working at a different level of discourse from the read story, and yet it is still storytelling. It is essential that the teacher stops and comes out of role and reflects with the class on what has been said, but that is also true of the more traditional mode of reading from a book. 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. Next we consider this key skill of moving in and out of role.

Teaching from within

 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.

 

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.

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. 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. (Johnson and O’Neill, 1984, p. 99).

The requirements of working in role
 

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. 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. When considering the way of showing the overthrow of Macbeth, one of the class of 10-year-olds said, I want to sit on the throne and stop him sitting on it. 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. He then set up the entry of Macbeth to the throne room.

TiR as Macbeth entered slowly and stopped as though taking in the situation. Of course, the pupils sat firm and outfaced him. He froze and one of the servants, picking up the idea of the situation, strode up to Macbeth, ordered him to kneel and took the crown from Macbeth to carefully and ceremoniously place it on the head of the usurping servant. The class cheered as Macbeth bowed his head and the two pupils stood up, triumphant. to the class, it is possible to turn them into the wrong sort of audience, giving them too passive a role. When they are given opportunities to influence the outcomes, to make decisions, the drama becomes partly theirs.

Disturbing the class productively

- Discovery/uncovering – challenge and focus

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. We have to help them into the drama, making them comfortable, and then disturb that comfort productively. In setting up the drama we are doing what Heathcote calls ‘trapping within a life situation’ .

The key is how children are given information. They can be handed it on a plate or they can be given opportunities to uncover/discover/be surprised by information. In this last case there is much more involvement and ownership, especially if they have to work to get the information from someone who is reluctant to give it , someone who only gives clues as to what is really going on , someone who does not realise the importance of the information . Hence the skill of the teacher lies in the art of the unexpected.

An example of this occurs in ‘The Governor’s Child’, a drama based on Brecht’s Caucasian Chalk Circle. Responding to your class The art of authentic dialogue – needing to listen – two-way responses The class working as a community is the key to the use of drama as a teaching method. 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 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 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. A drama technique can be used to help them define possible reasons. 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.

 The teacher–taught relationship 

In all teaching situations there exists a power relationship between the learners and the teacher. The learners are bound together as a group merely by being the learners and, of course, as there are more of them than there are of you, they hold the power.

The pupils will, to a certain extent, define a level of interest in a drama by focusing upon the issues that interest them. 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. 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 organization 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. We have to know what response to expect and be able to channel it productively.
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. In the ‘The Dream’ it might be a servant to Egeus who is sympathetic to Hermia but does not know what best to do as she cannot just tell her employer what she thinks he should do. So she seeks the help of the class to solve her dilemma.
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. We do not have this sort of role in our ‘The Dream’ drama but the Steward in the ‘Macbeth’ drama is like this.

Summary of points to consider
● Why we use teacher in role – pupils listen to teachers in role
● How we expand the possibilities of story and explore story
● Operating the two worlds of drama, inside and outside the fiction
● Moving in and out of role – managing the drama and reflecting on it
● Building the teacher role with the support of the class
● What, when and how to give information for maximum influence and effect
● How to dialogue with the class – teachers learning to listen well
● How we work with the class as collaborators
● Choosing the role – the low status roles offer more learning possibilities
● Handling drama – structuring for control – imposing shape and constraint

 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 central idea came with thinking of how Grusha is shunned by people she seeks help from.

The drama that evolved seemed strong and suitable for adaptation to a wide range of age groups. 

The frame of a drama

Goffman uses ‘frame’ to refer, essentially, to the viewpoint individuals will have about their circumstances and which helps them to make sense of an event or situation and to assess its likely impact upon themselves as individuals. 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.

An example of thinking through a plan

Looking at Maurice Sendak’s book Where the Wild Things Are led to ideas about possible roles and situations to explore with the pupils. 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. Therefore the next planning decision was about who the children might be in order to encounter this experience, what viewpoint will they have to see the situation of a missing Max.

One answer was an agency, based on ideas of ‘Mantle of the Expert’ from Dorothy Heathcote’s work , which unites the children in a particular viewpoint with particular expertise. In this case it becomes ‘Lost & Found’, an agency expert in finding lost children.

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. It is easy to serve up a fast food meal, which has very little quality and goodness, but it is a more detailed, careful and thorough process to create a quality meal from scratch with good ingredients. Our ingredients include the following. The very reflective nature of the work, going out of role to examine the meaning of situations and events in the drama, promotes metacognition.

 

The first two could be further refined to

● Comparing the drama version of the story and the original myth.

Let us again look at our drama ‘The Wild Thing’ from Where the Wild Things Are. Maurice 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.

In addition, no other family members appear in the story. 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.

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. We see this with all the aggrieved roles in ‘Scrooge’, Maria in ‘The Governor’s Child’ and with the adoption of the sister’s role in ‘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.

The class choose how and where they hide Maria. 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. At his second return to look for Maria and the baby, the Soldier searched the village. 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. There was no shed of course and Maria was pretending to be hidden. In reality, Maria was in full view of everyone with the agreed convention of her hiding being symbolised by crouching down.

This provides the fictional belief in her invisibility aided by the Soldier never looking at her. But then the Soldier is the teacher so unless the class accept the fiction nothing will work. 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.

It started with the tomb and we planned to spend time creating it and its wall paintings as the early belief building activity. However, then the main role, Geb, was found praying at a temple separate from the tomb. Then we realised that if we had a separate temple we would have to spend time establishing belief in it as well. There was no reason that Geb’s discovery should not happen in the tomb, and that gave us even more potential because he should not be there and we could raise the tension through that prohibition.

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. 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.

In delivering the drama we have to

● talk to them positively ... accepting answers as far as possible and looking for elements within a suggestion that might hold possibilities even when the whole idea does not. 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. As such we have to plan the key moments for critical decisions for the class. 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. When the plan is laid very close to expected responses, and even, in the worst case, when expected responses are laid on top of the plan, so that the plan is a predictor of the response, the correspondence of plan and responses leaves little or no room for a proper dialogue to develop.

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 examples are from ‘The Governor’s Child’ drama. 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 class should always have the opportunity to make choices, to see alternatives in the way we approach situations, to look at the consequences of actions, but they have to be far enough into the drama to have belief in the.

These three elements are directly influenced by the constraints or givens planned into the drama by the teacher. The drama conventions, strategies and techniques There are many techniques for structuring the stages of a drama. Variety of activity for the class is important but each chosen technique must fit the moment and do a particular job.

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

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.

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 Icarus’.

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. They moved immediately to spontaneously suggesting ideas as to how to avoid telling the truth of Daedalus’s plans – evolving a substitution of a decoy set of plans and drawings instead of the ones for flight. Even the minority who had opted to tell Minos began to contribute ideas to the decoy approach and we had the next stage of the drama, a group to produce the decoy drawings and two groups to work on building the wings for Daedalus and Icarus.

The quality of the drama develops in these ways. You can choose to incorporate them in future versions of the drama. You will see other added ideas from work with classes highlighted in the dramas in Part Two, where the plans are outlined.

What about endings to dramas?

The most difficult thing can be resolving a drama satisfactorily in the time and to the satisfaction of the class. This is to some extent in the planning but mostly in the handling of the drama. They need to have solved the problem. You, in role as Max, will feel the pressure if they apply it well and can begin to signal that you do see you might be wrong always to think of yourself, that you are listening for the first time.

We look to the class tackling the problem, the issue, the difficult role, the wrong attitude. However, the ending is not always a happy ending where all people become friends and the problem goes away. If the issue is not easy to solve in reality then pupils will see through it if you give them too easy a change in the problem role and too soft a landing. Avoid that easy ending.

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.

Finally – the key decisions
With all plans you need to ensure that a tension moment comes early to spur the interest of the group and that a TiR features early to model the commitment and seriousness of the drama.
Summary of points to consider
● How to begin a plan – facing the problems of starting from scratch 

● The frame – the way the elements link together to provide viewpoint for the class 

● The elements of planning including: learning objectives, a stimulus to learning, roles for the teacher and for the children, how to create tension points, building context and belief in the drama, the decision-making for the class, the choice of strategies and techniques 

● Planning with someone else 

● Road testing the first version  
 

Appendix: Drama starters

In each case we have supplied a ‘learning intention’, a starter role and the situation to be set up. Contact role A teenage boy discovered writing a letter. Context The pupils are all in role as workers on a rich family’s estate. They have been ordered to patrol the estate and gardens for their employers, in advance of the important forthcoming wedding of the daughter to a cousin of the Prince’s.

Their job is to ensure that all the area inside the estate walls is secure, all the gates locked and that there are no strangers around. 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. Contact role A maidservant to the Queen. Context The pupils are in role as physicians to the King.

An idea from ‘Danny Champion of the World’ by Roald Dahl Learning intention Responsibility and children. 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. They discover Danny but he is reluctant to speak.

Key moment later Danny’s Dad returns – cannot say where he has been or what he was doing.

3. How to Generate Quality Speaking and Listening

 
Authentic dialogue – teacher and pupil talk with a difference

What is speaking and listening ?

Speaking and listening is the most important communication form that human beings use. Really effective oracy, developmental speaking and listening, will help pupils build their language, their understanding, their ability to handle their own world, making sense of it and who they are in it. It has to be an interaction with others where both sides are contributing. 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. True speaking and listening for learning is effective ‘talk’, not two separate activities, as the phrase ‘speaking and listening’ suggests; it is an oral language interaction, which, at its best, is complex, demanding and truly creative. Learning is a social activity and thus talk is its real source. Writing is a solo activity, which allows the individual to distil ideas already learned; it comes later. Teachers are encouraged to generate this sort of work:
We’re convinced that excellent teaching of speaking and listening enhances pupils’ learning and raises standards further. Giving a higher status to talk in the classroom offers motivating and purposeful ways of learning to many pupils, and enables them and their teachers to make more appropriate choices between the uses of spoken and written language. (QCA, 2003, p. 4)
We believe that to develop the most productive talk, we need to think about it as dialogue.
Dialogic teaching
This is one of the most interesting, potentially powerful and new concepts being promoted in educational circles in the UK. It is the result of extensive work by Robin Alexander and others (Alexander, 2000, Alexander, 2005). This approach to oracy in the classroom raises the profile of talk, speaking and listening, from the poor relation of English in the National Curriculum, to become the central focus, the pivot of learning across the curriculum. Alexander’s work is a prompt for the greater awareness, for the growing importance of talk in the classroom. However, it is clear from his research that many classrooms in England lack the authentic dialogue to promote true learning, where talk lacks the status it has elsewhere in Europe.
We registered a clear difference …. mainly in England and Michigan, in which there was much informal conversation, a great deal of reading and writing, but relatively little structured talk.

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. 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.

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.

Alexander, in examining current research in the use of dialogical teaching, highlights three areas that are essential for the achievement of authentic dialogue but which are very demanding and more difficult for teachers to achieve in ordinary classroom settings.

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. In this way we structure into a drama the very possibility of pupils’ talk mattering. The second concern, the question of whether ‘extended talk is dialogical teaching’ is important to reflect upon in drama because poorly managed dramas can lack direction as much as any discussion. However, if the drama is properly planned and focused, if the learning objective is clear, then we have the capacity for the dialogue to be at its most purposeful.

‘Form and content’ are central to the planning of drama. 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.

So drama is a more coherent approach to teaching 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. The reason for this is that drama utilises a new context, a fictional world which is parallel to reality, but in which the uses of language can be as rich and varied as we want. In contrast, communication within the drama is based on the shared world that we are creating together.

Drama produces greater motivation for the pupils, motivation because of their interest in the problem-solving of the drama. 

• 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.

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. This reflective mode is special to drama.

• How is listening of high quality taught through drama?

Drama is the creation of meanings in action and pupils have to struggle all the time to make sense of what is going on around them so that they can engage with it. Unless pupils listen they do not know what is going on. In drama we can get new levels of listening because of the pupils’ interest in the problem-solving of the drama itself. The focus of the problem or dilemma that the pupils face embodies the nature of the language.

This is because each pupil has to make sense of what the teacher and the rest of the pupils are gradually building up around them. Pupils feel valued in drama and consequently have more confidence in what they want to say and show more respect to what other contributors to the drama say. In order for drama to work the teacher has to listen very closely as well, to see where the pupils are, to pick up what the pupils are offering and use it within the drama. 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.

The teacher is taking the role of Daedalus and another adult the role of Icarus at the beginning of this.

- 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 relationship between inclusion and drama as a pedagogical approach. We look at the expectations for schools to be inclusive and the demands made upon them to fulfil these expectations. 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.

We will begin by defining what we mean by inclusion. We will then present a model of how drama relates to inclusion and describe a particular drama session which aims to ‘promote tolerance and understanding in a diverse society’ . Drama’s inclusion is embedded, first, in its dialogical approach to teaching and learning. So inclusion will always be found in drama’s approach to learning and it may also be part of its subject content.

Let us begin with defining what we mean by inclusion. In the United Kingdom the Office for Standards in Education Educational inclusion has a broad scope. It is essentially about equal opportunities for all pupils, regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, background and attainment, including special needs or disability. 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.

We would argue that drama has, by its nature, a distinctive role and it is this role we wish to explore further.

What can drama offer in terms of inclusion?

● Drama offers ‘new opportunities to pupils who may have experienced previous difficulties.

● Drama takes account of pupils’ varied life experiences and needs by using fictional contexts and roles which enable pupils to explore the underlying issues safely. 

● For some pupils drama may offer experiences that are different to those they experience in the real world, for example taking the role of the outsider or the role of the one in charge.

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.

In fact, it could be argued, the risk increases because the opportunity to behave as someone else may be perceived as giving licence to anti-social behaviour. The opportunity to act in ways that are not our usual selves can be extremely valuable because it allows pupils to adopt other attitudes than their own, to test out viewpoints, but the teacher has to structure this in such a way that it does not, under the licence of fiction, leave pupils vulnerable and emotionally damaged or hurt. 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. 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

Put the pupils in a role that only obliquely connects them with the topic. 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.

- 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.

- Having no voice in society

We cannot leave our real-world selves outside the door of the classroom and consequently there is a dynamic relationship between how we think and behave in the fictional world of the drama and how we think and behave in the real world.

One can imagine that more secure pupils whose self-worth is high will present a more congruent view of these three factors. This may be because of the risks involved in disclosing those feelings and beliefs, there may be issues of status or conformity which prevent saying what they feel and acting how they see fit. In fact, if we relate this model to individuals or groups who may feel they are indeed outsiders their reluctance to disclose their true feelings and remain silent may be the safest option. 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.

he relationship between inclusion and citizenship
If drama by its very operational values is an inclusive way of working and if the contents of some dramas are in themselves examining the nature of the outsider, then Citizenship and PSHE are an integral part of the drama experience. The QCA booklet on Citizenship for the primary age groups defines the area as follows:
The PSHE and Citizenship framework comprises four interrelated strands which support children’s personal and social development. The strands are:
● developing confidence and responsibility and making the most of their abilities;
● preparing to play an active role as citizens;
● developing a healthy, safer lifestyle; and
● developing good relationships and respecting the differences between people.

Drama as citizenship in action How does the drama method promote this learning? The process of drama itself is democratic in nature. The underlying rules of drama embody key democratic values. These are:
● that the class work as a whole group, dividing into sub-groups for some tasks, but experiencing their class as a democratic community;
● that every member of the group may speak and contribute to the development of the drama; ● that all members of the group must respect the other members – their opinions and viewpoints;
● that we stop the drama at any point to consider and discuss what is happening and what it means so that everyone may clarify their understanding and therefore have a greater chance to make a contribution;
● that when group decisions are to be made, debate may happen, but it is the majority view of the group that will be taken;
 ● that we reflect together on the meanings we are forging and that together we are stronger in that creative act.
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.

Summary of points to consider
● Drama is an inclusive way of working because it is structured on the principle of ‘respect for persons’ 
● It makes demands upon the teacher to adopt a teaching and learning style that generates positive social health in the group ● The teacher models an attitude that protects pupils from humiliation and derision 
● Dramas themselves may examine the concept of the outsider and the inclusive solutions to problems
 ● Drama protects pupils through the roles they are given, the roles teachers take and its analogous way of working
 ● Drama is a method of delivering the Citizenship curriculum that embodies an inclusive approach

5. How to Generate Empathy in a Drama

 What is empathy?

The word empathy is sprinkled liberally throughout education documentation and literature. For example, the Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning (SEAL) documents that are, at the time of writing, being trialled in the UK make reference to empathy (SEAL, 2006). For our age group (7–11), under the theme heading of New Beginnings, they outline the following overview:

The Nike-shod twenty-first-century pupil is as far removed from the barefooted ‘street urchin’ in dress as in life experience. We want them to look at, engage with and reflect upon the lives of children of that time. We want to work in a way that grabs pupils’ interest, maintains their attention and beguiles them to look at Victorian life for poor children and understand it in relation to their own. To do this we make a shift into a fictional world, where time and place can be reallocated and we can behave ‘as if’ it were happening now, where it is possible to dialogue with fictional ideas of people who no longer exist and where we have an understanding of the empathetic process that engages emotionally without the cruel consequences of the real Victorian world for children.

Empathy, like drama, is framed in the particular and so we need to move from broad-brush emotions to their demonstrable particularity. Drama works by focusing upon the particular and moving from the particular to the general. To understand drama’s relationship with empathy we need to deconstruct the process of empathetic behaviour and see how this is replicated in drama.

A working definition of empathy

We need a definition that not only belongs to the real world but can be replicated inside the drama lesson. Pupils will then be able to empathise without having to bear witness to or have the actual life experiences of those to whom they are directing their empathy. In this way we protect pupils from actual real life experiences and yet generate the opportunity to empathise with those caught up in these experiences. Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, the director of the Autism Research Centre at Cambridge, suggests that ‘empathizing is the drive to identify another person’s emotions and thoughts, and to respond to them with an appropriate emotion’ .

The components of empathy The idea of a ‘cognitive’ stage and an ‘affective’ stage in the empathetic process is taken from the writings of Alan Leslie in his work at London University, as summarised by Simon Baron-Cohen . Component Two – the affective component ‘The second element to empathy is the affective component. This is an observer’s appropriate emotional response to another person’s emotional state’ . Having recognised the emotional state of the person, the observer is moved to ‘alleviate their distress’ .

There is here a desire to do something, to take action, and therefore empathy is not just about recognising the emotional state of someone but also doing something about it.

An example of structuring drama for empathetic response

Let us use these ideas to analyse how empathy might be generated using as an example ‘The Workhouse’ drama. Building the cognitive component Out of role, the class have studied a photograph of the workhouse and now move into a fictional context, that is, standing outside the workhouse and ‘using their drama eyes’ in describing it.

Summary of points to consider
● Empathy is often misconstrued 

● The components of empathy Component One – the cognitive component Component Two – the affective component 

● How to structure drama for empathetic response Building the cognitive component Framing the affective component 

● Planning the role of the teacher and of the pupils for generating empathy
 
6. How to Link History and Drama

 A problematic alliance
For drama there is a fatal attraction with history as a source for its content. Drama as a medium with which to engage with the past is established in theater, film, literature, radio and television. In fact one of the Key Elements in the History National Curriculum is the interpretation of history,
People represent and interpret the past in many different ways, including: in pictures, plays, films, reconstructions, museum displays, and fictional and nonfiction accounts. Interpretations reflect the circumstances in which they are made, the available evidence, and the intentions of those who make them (for example, writers, archaeologists, historians, filmmakers).

Dressing up to go back in time

One popular method of ‘empathising’ in the teaching of history takes the form of dressing up in costumes from the past. Schools across the country plan days of ‘visiting the past’ by dressing up and sometimes actually going to historic sites in their costumes. Teachers may even be locked into roles from the past , thinking, misguidedly in our view, this will generate ‘empathy’ in the pupils with people from history. While dressing up in costumes is a very popular history/drama experience, we must be guarded about what we think children may learn by the experience.

Let us begin by looking at three elements of historical enquiry

In drama we are particularly interested in the last element. It is here that drama synthesises story and past events. As a teacher planning a history-related drama this does not mean abandoning facts and reasons. Of course, the research is not just a task for the teacher but one that can be shared with the pupils in lessons introducing the topic and before the drama work takes place.

The drama then has an assessment function, as knowledge gained in the research activities will be exposed during the drama.

Meetings with teacher in role Having collated some evidence, hypotheses and research questions we can use drama as a means to test out some of their observations. The role of Edward Fitzgerald, the man holding the lamp in the picture, is a good starting point as it opens up the possibilities drama offers as a way to access history and what it means to the class:  
Summary of points to consider
● There are tensions between history and drama but they can be resolved by adopting a conceptual framework that is clear about the learning intentions
● Research is a key element in planning roles from history
● Using a variety of sources helps to support the validity of the work
 ● It is important to be clear about what you mean when you use the word empathy in relation to drama and history teaching
● Using signifiers, not full costume, when taking on a role allows you to come in and out of role
● Reference to modern day parallels allows you to make the connections between then and now

7.  How to Begin Using Assessment of Speaking and Listening (and Other English Skills) through Drama.

What is assessment?
The primary aim of assessment is to provide information about the development and achievement of those involved in the teaching and learning situation. Assessment records evidence related to students' abilities, both actual and potential, and charts their progression. The intended audience of assessment feedback should always include the students themselves. (Clark and Goode, 1999, p. 15)

Whatever the difficulties, we must consider assessing speaking and listening for very good reasons:
● How do we promote better speaking and listening unless we assess and reflect on the changes in pupils’ handling of the medium? ● Are we being fair to those pupils who demonstrate ability in this area if we do not honour their abilities, especially if they lack success in other areas?
These considerations have driven our own use of assessment of drama and speaking and listening for many years.
What do you look for?
Jim Clark and Tony Goode identify key ways that drama promotes speaking and listening:
Drama as a context for speaking and listening
● Negotiating and co-operating with others in the creation of drama work and the roles within it
● Expressing imaginative ideas when contributing to the drama work development
● Taking and using effectively the opportunities within the drama that require oral and aural communication
● Modifying, selecting and relating language and vocabulary to the changing roles, moods and situations in the drama work
● Controlling effectively oral and aural communication particularly in challenging sequences of drama work, e.g. questioning, dilemmas, unfair or emotional situations
● Responding with enjoyment and enthusiasm to the exploration of speech, gesture and sound
● Contributing effectively to critical evaluation of their own work and that of others.

What is the purpose of the assessment?
To:
● give feedback to the pupil
 ● report to another teacher
● report to a parent
As we have indicated, the first is vital. Pupils need to know what they are doing, how they can improve and to be encouraged in speaking and listening, after all it is the primary communication skill.
Formative assessment – honouring what children can do
Since the inception of the National Curriculum, assessment of Speaking and Listening has been formative and informal. We would not change that approach. Our approach is not to produce league tables, but to give a snapshot of pupils’ communication skills in order to recognise achievement and to chart possible development. The prime requirement on teachers when doing assessments is to listen to the pupils and to look carefully at the activity. In the formative role of assessment we need to be feeding back to the pupils during and after the drama. We might stop a drama and say to everyone, Can you see what Nafisa’s question made the Soldier say? That is very important here. Let’s see what the outcome is. Then we are building esteem and boosting achievement.

How do we collect data more formally?
         A simple starting point might be to grasp the level of comprehension of a passage read to the class. One way of doing this is to go into role as a character from the book and take questions from the class. You will get a better understanding of what the class have understood than if you ask them questions about the passage. You can note afterwards key exchanges and contributions by members of the class.
       Assessment in this context is the detailed study of episodes of speaking and listening. We need to describe what we see and teachers need to operate as researchers of the dialogue in their classrooms. Educational research is becoming more encouraging of detailed description of events, particularly when looking at classrooms in the action research method we are advocating.

Capturing the samples of speaking and listening

There is readily available technology that can record work and allow us to consider it at greater length after the event, particularly video recording. This is an approach we have been taking for a long time now; it provides evidence that we use to assess our own performance as teachers working in drama. Again, if teachers are paired to do the assessment, one can handle the camera while the other teaches. Some teachers object to the use of video recording on the grounds that it distorts the drama process. Our experience is contrary to that. If it is used frequently and if it is negotiated with the class, they soon forget the camera and the work continues in its spontaneity. In fact, if anything, we find that it helps raise the status of the work and aids concentration levels. Analysing video recordings of drama we need to look at issues relating to:
● the language used
● the non-verbal communication
● proximity to the teacher – who are the invisible pupils, the outsiders of the drama who do not seem in any way engaged?
● the empathetic and affective tendencies of pupils, their speech and their actions as they intervene.