Drama - a tool for engaging students in any subject

OK, so I'm an English teacher, thus it's pretty easy to get drama into the class. However, I'm not just talking about acting out the texts we study. 

Oh no. 

Do you have to teach your students to use the passive voice?  OK, so after you have taught the form of the grammar point, set up a crime scene in class, and have them role-play being CSI, awarding points for every correct usage of the passive (e.g. "Buzz Lightyear may have been stabbed with the highlighter sir").

Yet, these kind of role-plays aren't limited to the Language departments. I was doing some training in a bilingual school outside Madrid and persuaded the Geography teacher to give this ago. Walking down the corridor the next day, he dashed out of his room, dragged me in and I was treated to a dramatic rendering of weather patterns: some students were playing the cold front, others area of high pressure, still more storm clouds. It was amazing! Forget the students: I swear I learned more about weather in those 5 minutes than the rest of my school career! 

Since then I've seen brilliant performances of the chemical process behind photosynthesis, electrons flowing through resistors and long-shore drift. Naturally, there's loads of subsidiary benefits too, including team-building and developing communication skills. But most importantly, every single one was full of engaged students, learning through doing and loving every minute of it. 

Drama is for everyone, not just the Performing Arts faculty.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Feedback - picking them up and moving them on

For many, marking is the bane of the teacher's existence. I, however, love it, for it is the perfect opportunity to give feedback . Feedback is your opportunity as an educator to have a personal conversation with each student about their learning, what they did well, what they need to improve and how they can do better. As such, done well, it is a massive opportunity for you to engage students by celebrating their successes and then granting them agency to achieve meaningful goals.  So, what are the key ingredients? Given I did my PGCE in 2011, unsurprisingly I use the acronyms WWW, EBI and DIT. That is: What went well   Even better if Directed improvement task However, while many teachers tend to focus on the latter two, I want to suggest that the first one, the WWW, is actually the most important.   Put yourself in the shoes of a mid-level student: you try your hardest, really revise and prepare, put your best into a piece of work, and when that comes back all...
Read more

Beep! - an engaging reading activity for any topic

For my first post, the ultimate time-efficient reading game: Beep! It's super simple. As you read a text out loud to the class, you make deliberate mistakes e.g. you say Calcium Oxide instead of Calcium Carbonate; you swap Chile for China; you muddle etre and avoir . The students must follow along in their own copies and shout "Beep!" if/when they spot the mistake. Keep a score (you can also deduct points for premature beeping). Any one student who dominates (e.g. that sole native speaker in a class of language learners), make them the scorer or even get them to take over the reading and mistake making. This works on many levels: for a start, it's fun in way that reading a large chunk of text often isn't. However, in order to play students must read along with you. How often do we suspect/know that half the class has drifted off while you read aloud, even if you get the students to take turns? Beep gets them reading word for word! Finally, you can of cours...
Read more

Jenga! - a metaphor for how writers use tension

Image
 I love finding ways to get games into the classroom (if you've read any of my other posts, you may have noticed). It is a great way to immediately amp up the students' engagement and energy levels. Many of the others I've written about - beep, bingo, taboo - can work in any subject. This one, I'm afraid, is purely for those Literature teachers among us... Jenga is a tense game. Therefore, I use it as a metaphor for tension in a text. I literally get the students to play Jenga as we read a tense moment of a text. Favourite moments for this include: Romeo & Juliet Act 3 Scene 5; the bit with Candy's dog in Of Mice and Men ; and when Fi gatecrashes the wedding in KE Salisbury's the face that pins you . As I'm reading I call people up to take a turn. The other students will get massively distracted, but at this point you pause (maybe while a student has half pulled out a brick) and ask the students if they are enjoying the lesson. "Yes!" they ...
Read more