In this entry the use of drama and role play as powerful approaches to teaching aspects of English are considered. Drama and role play are important agents for learning in every lesson. Indeed where drama has its own place in the weekly programme, teachers may use a drama lesson to develop a theme from history, geography, science or other curriculum areas. Where English is concerned, drama and role play have a special value: to develop spoken language in a range of contexts; to explore themes arising from children’s experiences, anecdotes and from texts of all kinds; to encourage reading and writing for different purposes and audiences. In doing all this we must remember that language is socially situated and the different kinds and usages have developed to serve different societal purposes. This complexity can be explored through drama.
While the benefits of drama and role play to children’s language and learning are undisputed, it is also valuable experience in its own right; it is the intense involvement in the created situations which leads to worthwhile and varied use of language. Feelings as well as thoughts are important in English and improvisation allows the exploration of many human situations that are part of growing up and often include painful episodes like separation from loved ones and difficulties with friends. Drama can also help children explore interesting aspects of cultural diversity where a story or information book might be a starting point.
Good primary practitioners have always used drama to energise English work. It was encouraging to find drama brought firmly into the 1995 National Curriculum orders and its place has been made even more secure in the 2000 revision. To some extent there has been a softening of the old conflict between drama as a learning process and drama as a product to be presented. It is more helpful to regard these as two complementary aspects, each coming into strong focus at particular times for particular purposes. For example, teachers and pupils studying a play might explore a situation or issue through improvisation. Teachers may also help children to script an improvisation which has stabilised. A scripted improvisation could be the basis for a performance for parents, friends of the school and other children.
Role play in the Early Years (3–6 years)
Children enjoy spontaneous role play from an early age; it allows the expression of feelings, attitudes and opinions in a relatively secure context. Early years teachers build opportunities for role play into their long-term planning and thereby achieve some of the language and literacy objectives in the early learning goals. In the context of imaginative play children can take on different roles. This creates opportunities for using spoken and written language for different purposes and thus makes a considerable contribution to language development.
Young children need space and time for role play. Changing the location of the activity and adding appropriate props increases the range of possibilities. The teacher and nursery team can intervene to link the play with literacy experiences and other learning. They can develop situations out of stories and anecdotes children bring to the classroom. Areas available for role play can be transformed into for example – a cafe, office of a fire station, builders’ yard, post office, shop, train station, clinic or garden centre.
With encouragement, young children will attempt writing linked to the theme of the role play. Five year olds learning about fire fighters might have an office with the duty rotas, posters about fire and safety, forms to fill in, records of fires extinguished, advertisements for fire equipment, instructions for use of fire fighting aids and some cards and letters of thanks from people they had helped. In fact writing appropriate labels, posters and so on is part of helping the children understand the context for their role play.
A home corner also provides a non-threatening context for all kinds of writing to support role play activities like writing stories to read to dolls, menus for the toys’ meals, greetings cards, shopping lists and letters to build into play situations. An outstanding project in which six year olds built much of their talk and writing for a term round the life of Mr Togs (a life-sized doll in charge of the classroom shop) is described and evaluated in Mr Togs the Tailor published by the Scottish Consultative Council on the Curriculum in 1987.
Early Years teams become skilled in observing children’s role play and judging where to intervene to help the children extend their activity. Four year olds who had listened to a reading of Allan and Janet Ahlberg’s picture book Burglar Bill built aspects of the story into their play. To extend the children’s reflection on the key issues – do ex-burglars make good parents? – one of the nursery teachers dressed up as Burglar Betty and holding a doll, answered the children’s questions in role. This is an example of ‘hot seating’ which is a technique useful for any age group when teacher or child ‘in role’ is questioned by others. A student teacher working in the nursery said she will never forget the children’s excitement and the profundity of their questions.
Improvisation and drama at Key Stages 1 and 2
Contexts for speaking and listening One challenge for teachers is to find ways of helping children become competent in the range of speech situations they will encounter as adults. Some of these are unlikely to arise naturally in the course of classroom work or to be part of the day-to-day experience of the child. Providing opportunities for dramatic improvisation, which is a development from the role play of younger children, is a valuable way of encouraging children to use different kinds of spoken language for different audiences and purposes. Examples include: persuading local councillors that provision of a park for the village community is a priority; asking the police to help find a lost bicycle; children and adults in conflict over having a family pet. Often inspiration for these comes from a story. For example, one of my students helped children base an improvisation on the theme in James Simon’s book Dear Greenpeace about a child who is convinced she has a whale in her garden pond. Particularly if you work with older primary children you will find inspiration in Jenny Griffiths’ book An Early Start to Drama. I have seen a number of very successful series of lessons based on the waste dump idea. For example, people oppose the council’s plan to have a chemical waste dump on the boundaries of a small town.
To extend their work and make it worthwhile, sensitive intervention by the teacher is necessary. This can be done by direct support and advice or by the teacher stepping into a role – perhaps as a key figure like a monarch or as a discordant voice such as a dissident peasant. Dorothy Heathcote, a great teacher of drama to all age groups and people of widely varying abilities and needs, showed how a teacher can energise children’s improvisation by taking up a role.
Drama is essentially a cooperative activity and helps children listen, collaborate and learn from each other and to be aware of each other’s needs. The discussion to plan an improvisation, the improvisation itself and its evaluation all help children to become more confident users of the spoken language.
Drama benefits from having space and some basic resources like an overhead projector, musical instruments, a tape recorder, wooden blocks to create structures and some simple props. However, it can sometimes take place in the classroom. Issues arising from books can be explored in pairs, each child taking up a different role. While the emphasis is on the value of the process, I find children love to show their work to the class. Duologue work can lead to scripting.
Contexts for reading and writing In English, themes often arise from the literature children have been enjoying. This ranges from the picture books of the early years (David McKee’s Not Now Bernard; Valerie Flournoy’s The Patchwork Quilt) to collection of short stories (Aesop’s Fables; Jane Kurtz’s Mamo on the Mountain) and novels (Betsy Byars’ The Midnight Fox; Philippa Pearce’s Tom’s Midnight Garden) for older children. Television and film as well as books, newspaper articles and letters all provide powerful stories to extend and reflect on through drama.
Where the issues in literature are explored through improvisation, children bring a new depth to their reading. Discussion of the plot, characterisation and use of language help children benefit from each other’s insights. The planning of how episodes will be acted out and their evaluation contributes to children becoming careful and reflective readers.
Working with texts expands vocabulary in a natural way and is a welcome by-product of children becoming genuinely engaged with the themes they are exploring. Year 5 children, working on improvisations inspired by Barbara Jeffers’ retelling of Brother Eagle Sister Sky, explored environmental concepts like ‘conservation’ and ‘habitats’ and wrote about issues of complexity like the reconciling of the needs of different groups.
Drama creates contexts for many of the kinds of writing both fiction and non-fiction in the renewed Framework (2006). A teacher of a Year 3 class helped children act out parts of Julia and Charles Snape’s picture book Giant. The giant in the story is a huge mountain which disappears when the villagers drop litter in the fields on the mountain side and generally adopt a cavalier attitude to conservation. The interesting thing about this work was that the environmental issues led teacher and children to use information texts to develop their work. The children’s written response was particularly rich and varied and included posters to try to stop the dropping of litter, letters to the giant to persuade her to come back, poems and reports on caring for the environment.
Conclusion
So, drama and improvisation have an important role in energising English and developing chil-dren’s language in ways difficult to achieve by any other means. Above all drama nearly always enthuses children and seems to bring about a spirit of cooperation which leads to much hard work and concentration.
There are a number of very good books, chapters and articles on Drama in the Primary Classroom including:
Clipson-Boyles, Suzi (1999) ‘The role of drama in the literate classroom’ in Prue Goodwin (ed.) The Literate Classroom London: David Fulton. (This has an excellent annotated list of drama techniques with literacy examples.)
Clipson-Boyles, Suzi (2006) Drama in Primary English Teaching. London: David Fulton.
Griffiths, Jenny (1991) An Early Start to Drama Hemel Hempstead: Simon & Schuster Education (practical ideas for building drama round issues).
Neelands, Jonathan (1992) Learning Through Imagined Experience London: Hodder & Stoughton (helpful on drama’s role in language development).
Toye, Nigel and Prendiville, Francis (2000) Drama and the Traditional Story for the Early Years London: Routledge/Falmer.
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