How to approach speaking and listening through drama

How to approach speaking and listening through drama

1. How To Approach Speaking

Why use teacher in role?

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.

This extreme social expectation and law makes the fiction like their reality but also different from it, something that helps drama create a useful distance, which helps the class reflect on their own beliefs and look at the drama world in a more balanced and thoughtful way. All of this introduces an interesting set of issues which children at this age are beginning to experience and understand about their relationship with parents and about their relationship with the opposite sex. 12 How to Approach Speaking and Listening through Drama important areas for personal and social education that the children can identify with.

Teacher as storyteller

The teacher as a storyteller is something all primary school teachers will recognise. The pupil’s role will be dominated by listening and this will be interlaced with questioning, responding and interpreting the meaning and sense of the fiction. 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. The relationship between story and drama in education is a complex and dynamic one. A class can take part in a drama where all of them know the story, where none of them knows the story, or a mixture of both. As long as some fundamental planning strategies are observed, knowledge of the story is not a barrier to participation.

The use of drama strategies to explore events and their consequences, to look at alternatives and test them. 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. 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. 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.

It’s just not fair!

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.

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. We are making a distinction between role behaviour and acting. Both depend on appropriate signing, but whereas the actor must give the non-participant audience the bulk of the signing, a teacher using role can get away with a committed minimum. The class will see the Rat-catcher as overworked and probably needing help to put his/her case to the Mayor.

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 Rat-catcher ‘writes down’ the points and then asks the class/family if they could come to the Mayor to help put the case.

For another example of using OoR to help establish a role see ‘The

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. The result is to make the creative community. 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.

The requirements of working in role

It can be used judiciously to focus work at strategic points or to challenge particular aspects of the children’s perceptions whilst other techniques and conventions are used to support the work and develop it. In order to make the TiR most effective, we need to look at educational drama from the point of view of the ‘audience’, an audience who in this instance are participants at the same time. 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. You’re asking a very complex thing of the group of children. 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.

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. Of course, the pupils sat firm and outfaced him. The class cheered as Macbeth bowed his head and the two pupils stood up, triumphant. When they are given opportunities to influence the outcomes, to make decisions, the drama becomes partly theirs.

Disturbing the class productively

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 result of constructing the situation thus is that they can then discover what it all means. The key is how children are given information. If pupils acquire knowledge and understanding by working for it, stumbling upon it or having it sprung upon them such that their expectations are challenged, their learning experiences will be more dynamic than simply being told.

The class are in role as a village community helping a woman with a baby, who, unbeknownst to them, has fled a revolution.

The art of authentic dialogue – needing to listen – two-way responses

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

In all teaching situations there exists a power relationship between the learners and the teacher. Of course, it does not look like this when the class are responding and contracting into the tasks set by the teacher but should some or all decide not to, the cohesion can be broken. In drama this power relationship is made overt. We must start from the point of view that if the class do not want the drama to work then it will not.

We must begin with the interest level of the class: the plight of Goldilocks will interest the class of 4- or 5-year-olds and a mission to rescue Kai from the

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. 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 organisation 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. 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.

The opposer role has to be used carefully because the response to it can be difficult to handle if it becomes too strong. 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. 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.

Steward in the ‘Macbeth’ drama is like this. He faces the same problem and danger as the other servants represented by the class. The three low status roles present more possibilities for the pupils’ learning because the teacher–pupil power relationship is shifted and they have a semblance of power. We say ‘semblance’ because the pupil power only lies within the fiction and, as always, the teacher is running the class and can come out of role at any time to assume control.

In a fiction what seems to be the truth is as powerful as if it were real. Related to issues of power and role is the issue of power and control in the classroom. Pied Piper’ and analyse how it is handled and chaos avoided. The class have been told they must confront the Mayor.

Before we can confront the Mayor we must set out how his office looks. First you must tell me how big the doors into his parlour are. The distance between the chairs indicates how big the class want the door to be. This is the desk and chair in which the Mayor sits.

Tell me about the desk. Use your ‘drama eyes’ and tell me what you see. The class offer suggestions, building the image of the desk. They then do the same with the Mayor’s chair.

The townspeople are marching down to the Mayor’s parlour. Suggestions are made and those that have a rhythm and meter and words that will maintain the seriousness of the event are chosen. The chant is rehearsed and when it feels and sounds like an angry crowd it is ready to be used. So, we have a parlour, we have an angry crowd and a chant.

We need someone to give a signal to stop the chant otherwise we won’t hear the knock on the door and the conversation with the Mayor. Finally we need one person to be spokesperson to say to the Mayor what you all think. I am going to take the role of the Mayor and I am going wear my chain of office. When I take it off I will be your teacher again and we can talk about what has happened.

You break out of role

OK, let’s stop the drama there and look at what has happened. The key issue in this example is the way in which a potentially chaotic event in the drama is managed by careful structuring and rehearsing before it takes place.

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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 frame of a drama

We are using the idea of a frame as a way of seeing key decisions in planning. 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. It has pre-text, which is derived from the stimulus material . 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.

How did the ‘The Wild Thing’ drama evolve from initial ideas?

Looking at Maurice Sendak’s book Where the Wild Things Are led to ideas about possible roles and situations to explore with the pupils. The book has always held a fascination because of its depiction of boys’ behaviour.

Mother sends Max to bed without supper because he has been naughty. 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.

You can see that we have begun to create ideas of what Max’s room would look like, as it is the central setting. This will lead up to the moment where he reappears. So the teacher directs the picture of Max the class forms. In the Sendak book there is a picture on the wall in the second illustration of a wild creature’s face with ‘Max’ written underneath, clearly a drawing by Max himself.

This suggested including a line drawing of Max chasing his mother with a knife. In addition we added little notes written by Max for the pupils to discover and read. Of course, we could have then developed a drama about finding Max, but it would be difficult to run that without descending into potentially silly non-activities for the pupils searching non-existent places. They do go to the shed his mother talks of, but there draw a blank, apart from the arrival of a figure they take to be him , hide to surprise him, only to find it is his sister.

Instead they have the responsibility to confront Max and make him aware of his problem, his behaviour and the mother’s attitudes.

They need to be gathered round the role sheet and be looking at it. The aim of the drama is now clearly focused, to have the children explore and consider a boy’s unacceptable behaviour and look at a parent–child relationship, to give advice and solve problems. The resolution of the issues is the final stage of the drama. Usually we use forum theatre to set up the class taking over the wronged role, against the role who most needs to learn to change, to see and understand something important about themselves.

The pupils have to show him the error of his ways and how other people, his mother, his sister, really feel about him. Other techniques and roles are used along the way to build the class’s understanding of Max so that they can best see how to help him see his responsibility to others, to change from his totally self-centred way.

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.

Learning objectives

Learning is often focused through a key problem or issue for the children to tackle .

The learning can be in any of five areas

● Language Development – the medium of drama and hence the key impetus to Speaking and Listening . 

● Spiritual, Social, Moral, Cultural, Personal – there is usually this capability in any drama. The very reflective nature of the work, going out of role to examine the meaning of situations and events in the drama, promotes metacognition.

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

If we can refine an objective tightly it will help us make decisions about the structure and what it should do.

Strong material

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

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.

Roles for the pupils

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.

‘Macbeth’ and ‘Daedalus and Icarus’, mountain villagers in ‘The Governor’s

Child’, park volunteers in ‘Charlie’. In all cases belief in the role is built and the learning focused through the problem they encounter. The pupils also have opportunities to take central roles, particularly from TiR at key stages in the dramas. ‘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

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. 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. 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. 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.

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.

Building context

Usually having one main location helps the drama to be properly focused. 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.

Building belief

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.

All of the ingredients contribute to building belief

taking the cloth that becomes the baby in ‘The Governor’s Child’ and deliberately rolling it up into the shape in front of them and asking what it is representing.

In delivering the drama we have to

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.

Decision-making – key developments in the drama which provide the class with challenges

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. As with many art forms, the constraints of the piece are critical to the quality of the product. 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 Governor’s Child’ drama. The issue at this point is one of informing the villagers. We may get their reactions, but these viewpoints are not going to change this decision.

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 major decision is about whether to continue to hide her after the Soldier has visited and the villagers know she represents a danger to them.

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. They may: 

● create context 

● build belief in the roles and therefore the drama 

● focus learning 

● help explore a situation and deepen understanding 

● help to reflect on the meaning of the event.

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. Another example happened with ‘The Wild Thing’.

Road testing the first version

Participants in dramas offer us as the teachers insights into ways of using an established structure. 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 us the sections which are weak and need replanning. 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

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.

There are two main types of this sort of classroom drama that have evolved

‘living through drama’, where the pupils face the events at a sort of life rate in the here and now, and ‘episodic drama’, or strategy-based drama, where the class are led by the teacher in creating situations and events through specific techniques or strategies and where chronology is more broken.

Here are some beginnings of ideas for dramas that can be used to provide short

In each case we have supplied a ‘learning intention’, a starter role and the situation to be set up.

An idea from ‘Romeo and Juliet’

Contact role A teenage boy discovered writing a letter. Context The pupils are all in role as workers on a rich family’s estate. 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.

An idea from ‘Macbeth’

Contact role A maidservant to the Queen. Context The pupils are in role as physicians to the King. She refuses to say any more but asks them to come and observe that night. Key moment later The King calls the physicians to report on his wife’s condition.

An idea from ‘Danny Champion of the World’ by Roald Dahl

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.

The map-makers meet Gollum and try out their riddle. Gollum struggles and eventually, reluctantly, gives them the map. He’s not very good at reading the map and Gollum told him the Dragon’s Lair is the best way out. Gollum is in fact directing him to the dragon Smaug’s lair.

3. How to Generate Quality Speaking and Listening

What is speaking and listening ?

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.

Dialogic teaching

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.

From his own and others’ research, he summarises the picture of classrooms’

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.

This lack of proper talk is all the more serious as it is clear that the primary school years are critical in the development of the brain

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.

How to Generate Quality Speaking and Listening 43

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. This gives pupils confidence in speaking and they see that their contributions matter a great deal. In this way we structure into a drama the very possibility of pupils’ talk mattering. 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. 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. Its usefulness to speaking and listening, and thus language development, is that we create together a shared experience which frames the language and makes us, the pupils and the teacher, communicate more effectively than mere discussion ever can.

This is particularly true for older primary pupils, ages 7–11, who can bring more separate experiences than younger pupils and are often starting their discussion with greater gaps between them, preventing their chances of shared understandings. Very often in discussion pupils are not really listening to each other because they are more concerned about what they want to say than what they can learn from other pupils. All of the pupils still bring ideas and opinions from their separate experiences, but they are all remade by the creation of a new context. Drama produces greater motivation for the pupils, motivation because of their interest in the problem-solving of the drama.

Drama gives the pupils plenty of opportunities to think through speaking and listening. It promotes speech from the pupils because they want to speak, not because they are being asked to speak.

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 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.

All of this ensures that the pupils are thinking about what they are part of, looking at actions and consequences and considering options, looking at what to do and why. This reflective mode is special to drama.

It would be odd to stop a discussion and say, Let’s look at ourselves and what we said, how we were standing, what it meant. In drama we do that routinely and the learning from the elements of the drama becomes even more potent.

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. In drama we can get new levels of listening because of the pupils’ interest in the problem-solving of the drama itself. 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.

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 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. Drama’s inclusion is embedded, first, in its dialogical approach to teaching and learning.

These are

1 Everyone will take part, including the teacher both in and out of role. 

2 We will treat members of the group with respect by listening to them and allowing them to express their views without fear of derision or humiliation.

So inclusion will always be found in drama’s approach to learning and it may also be part of its subject content. 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.

Any children who are at risk of disaffection and exclusion. We would argue that drama has, by its nature, a distinctive role and it is this role we wish to explore further.

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. 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.

Gavin Bolton makes an important distinction when writing about pupils and emotion in drama

I cannot stress enough how important it is for teachers to realise that because drama is such a powerful tool for helping people change, as teachers we need to be very sensitive to the emotional demands we make on our students. 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

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. We can illustrate this by looking at a drama without structured protection by the teacher and then comparing this with the same drama with devices planned into it.

54 How to Approach Speaking and Listening through Drama

You go into role as the workhouse boss and aggressively tell them to stand when you enter the room. One of the class has a rolled up cardigan to represent her baby and takes the role of Martha. The class witness her humiliation, they see her baby being taken off her and given to an older woman who is too ill to work and therefore has to look after the babies. This living-through style of confrontational drama with its raw emotion can be received with derision and light-heartedness by pupils.

Later in the drama one child is asked to stand upon a chair with the label

They are totally inappropriate as ways of structuring a drama lesson. We have no right to subject pupils to this kind of treatment because it is under the cloak of drama and fiction. Our first concern is to take the class to looking at the disturbing reality of the nineteenth-century workhouse and to do that we must find a role for the pupils which gives them power. As the drama progresses and trust in the teacher and the medium is built then the pupils can move closer to the role of the inmates.

The stopping and starting of the drama helps defuse the raw emotion and allows pupils to reflect, negotiate and manipulate the fiction to clarify their own understanding. That does not mean we cannot move closer to these issues as the drama develops, but it does mean we need to find a way into the drama that will not generate counter-productive learning, behaviour that will seek to undermine or destroy the drama.

Let us draw an analogy with the social ritual of the funeral services in

If in drama we are dealing with a potentially emotionally charged topic or one where the cultural taboos of our society are to be examined, we need to take the class there very carefully. We need to build their trust in the fictional world we create through the roles we put them in and the strategies we use. It is this that makes it safe for the participants, for as long as we, as teacher and manager of the fictional world, intervene and reflect upon it, we can facilitate learning and protect the vulnerable. The gradual making of meaning out of this moment unites the class and fully allows for a variety of levels and activity in response so that it is truly inclusive.

Of course, the giving of a voice to an autistic child also produces inclusion in the subject matter too. When doing this drama in school we were not surprised when a child with autism asked Christopher’s Mum whether she thought he might be autistic?.

With the protection of the class role – people who can help worried parents

– he was able to distance himself from the drama being about him, using the given role of someone who can help parents of pupils with autism.

Another example of a powerful and demanding moment occurs in the

‘Macbeth’ drama when the servants are meeting to discuss what to do. Unexpectedly, TiR as Macbeth shouts for them to report to him. This is a shock and can cause anxiety to the members of the class in role as servants. 

● The servants know they have knowledge about him at this point which gives them power, unlike the powerless inmates of the Workhouse.

In both of these cases the class are protected by the fiction and if necessary the teacher can go OoR to negotiate what to do, so that the class is never in any danger from the moment of anxiety.

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. As we have seen in the planning section, good planning creates gaps and spaces for pupils to input their ideas. If we plan for pupils’ ideas to be part of the drama lesson and we are creating a safe environment for this to happen, we are in effect giving them a voice to express their understandings and perspective on the world in which they live. 

The real world outside the drama

They can of course be involved in the school itself and learn about responsibility by taking part in school activities and institutions like the school council. To a limited extent they can have experience in the community as part of their school experience. They can make trips out or relevant visitors can be brought in to make pupils aware of the important structures and ideas that community involves. Indeed, if children get very committed to a real-world project there is a dilemma for the school.

Drama’s relationship to citizenship works on two levels, as a methodology that demonstrates aspects of citizenship in action and when the content is specifically focused upon issues of citizenship. When we consider that drama can link citizenship with personal and social education, and spiritual, moral, social and cultural education, then we can begin to understand the importance of drama as a teaching method.

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.

A drama for teaching about citizenship

If we want the pupils to experience a particular political idea or social situation, the fictional world of drama can provide that situation efficiently and with an immediacy that reality cannot provide. Whilst the fiction also protects the pupils into learning at the same time and allows all avenues to be explored without the real consequences that we indicated above. As one example let us consider the use of ‘The Governor’s Child’ drama as a vehicle for uniting these areas. The drama builds the pupils’ roles as citizens of a mountain village and places them in the situation where the community is under threat.

As citizens the pupils have to take on the responsibility of hiding the woman and baby, thus endangering themselves. The drama opens up the issues of justice and revenge as sought by a revolutionary soldier, the idea of what you undertake when you give someone hospitality and ultimately the question of the worth of the single life against the community. We can see from a summary of the drama that a number of citizenship issues are immediately contextualised and presented to the children. Drama ensures that they have to explore them and get involved in them, to challenge and seek solutions in a number of ways.

Here is a list of the issues and ideas that were identified as present in this drama by a group of teacher trainees when they examined it

Giving the children something they can relate to. They have their say – they have ownership of the key decisions in the drama.

We can see that the ideas listed cover important aspects of the Citizenship curriculum. In addition, the content of a specific drama can be planned to highlight key Citizenship areas. If we examine the thinking behind the planning of the stages of ‘The Governor’s Child’, we can see how by the nature of the tasks, techniques and content, it promotes elements of the Citizenship curriculum. We have given examples from ‘The Governor’s Child’ so that you can see how abstracts like fairness, democracy, identity, community, belonging, responsibility, can be made concrete through the process of drama.

The process makes them more of a community that can work together to the benefit of each individual’s understanding.

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?

In this chapter we would like to examine the relationship between drama in

education and the concept of empathy. Drama is often promoted as a teaching

and learning methodology that generates empathy in pupils, yet there is little

debate about exactly what is meant by this idea. The word empathy is sprinkled liberally throughout education documentation and literature.

And later describe these learning outcomes for 7- and 8-year-olds

They will continue to build on their capacity for empathy and on their awareness and management of feelings, particularly fearfulness in relation to meeting new challenges . Drama makes one of its greatest contributions in modelling and generating this sort of learning. For drama to operate most effectively we need to understand what is happening and how we most effectively create the conditions for empathy to thrive. A phrase commonly linked with empathy is ‘standing in someone else’s shoes’, the idea of, at least for a short time, seeing the world from someone else’s perspective, as if you were standing in their shoes.

The inference is that in some way we can see the world through someone else’s eyes, we can think and feel as they would and in some way put ourselves in their position. However, even the most superficial engagement with this idea uncovers deep-seated problems with it in practice. In fact ‘entering into another’s personality and imaginatively experiencing’ is probably the last thing we would want them to do. We want them to look at, engage with and reflect upon the lives of children of that time.

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. Of course, we could argue that when we are ‘stepping into someone else’s shoes’ we are sharing universal aspects of human existence, for example, love, loss and generosity. These universal aspects of the human condition exist throughout time and are what we can connect with through empathising.

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.

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 One – the cognitive component

Piaget called this aspect of empathy «responding non-egocentrically» as it entails the «setting aside of your own current perspective» and «attributing a mental state to the other person . » .

Component Two – the affective component

‘The second element to empathy is the affective component. 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.

In the next part of the drama the pupils are told that a new inmate is expected and that they are to witness her induction to the workhouse. First, they look at the Workhouse Master as he watches the girl walking towards the gates.

This strategy of conscience alley will enable the class to sympathise with

Martha’s circumstances. The first stage of structuring for empathising is the cognitive stage.

The cognitive stage

3 Martha’s purpose – to enter the workhouse and save the baby. Martha’s approach to the doors of the workhouse, in other words, the pre-text. Workhouse Master – cruel, untrustworthy, manipulative – and finally the low status role of Martha, vulnerable and limited in the choices she can make on her own. The context If we then put these roles in the context of a workhouse – dangerous, forbidding and the last resort of the poor – while at the same time requiring the class to make judgements and a report about the workhouse, we are giving them power to take action.

Events leading up to her approaching the workhouse The pre-text to

When the class meet roles with cruel and negative attitudes, i. The second stage of structuring for empathising is the affective stage.

The affective stage

The roles First the pupils’ role as commissioners is high status, fair-minded, responsible, not easily fooled and trying to make the world a better place. Events leading up to their debrief of the Workhouse Master The pupils share the experience of witnessing the induction of a new inmate. While the class’s attitude to Martha represents the cognitive state, the second stage of the empathetic process is the affective state. Martha.

Of course, this situation is manipulated by the teacher structuring the roles and events in a particular way – the initial meeting with those who run the workhouse, listening to their attitudes and witnessing their deceitful behaviour. How to Generate Empathy in a Drama 67 take place. Of course the nature of the response may vary from mere sympathy with Martha’s predicament to a more dynamic response to help the person by initiating action to help. What distinguishes empathy as a response is its appropriateness to the person’s circumstances.

Those pupils who find it difficult to empathise will have the opportunity to see the skills modelled and the positive consequences played out.

Can we plan for generating empathy?

We can generate empathy through structuring roles and creating a drama frame where it is likely to happen.

The role of the pupils

While placing the pupils in a positive, problem-solving and high status role gives them the power to make judgements about people’s circumstances from a positive point of view, it is also possible to generate empathy for the dispossessed. Later in the workhouse drama the pupils shift their role to inmates, demonstrating life in the workhouse through tableaux based upon the workhouse rules.

The role of the teacher

The role of the pupils needs in the first place to be a community one so that they see the situation from one point of view and are not divided in their attitude. Just as the role of the pupils gives them a perspective from which they can empathise, the role you plan for the teacher is also part of structuring for an empathetic response. The Workhouse Master generates an empathetic response towards Martha from the pupils by his lack of humanity. The modelling by the teacher of roles who are unable to empathise enables the pupils to witness their shortcomings and therefore have a sense of how disabled they are without these skills.

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 theatre, 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).

We are not historians, and in writing this chapter we shared our approach to using drama to teach history with Professor Hilary Cooper at St Martins

In using the arts pupils are creating their own interpretation or account, based upon sources. As was discussed in Chapter 5, the phrase ‘to stand in someone else’s shoes’ is one often used to describe the concept of empathising and it is never more liberally tossed about than in the History and Drama curriculum. To expect a child to ‘step into the shoes’ of a 10-year-old evacuee or a servant in the household of a wealthy family in the nineteenth century, is ignoring the impossibility of this shift for pupils with twenty-first-century minds.

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.

Using drama to make meaning of the past Let us begin by looking at three elements of historical enquiry: 

● A concern with facts 

● A concern with reasons 

● A concern with meanings

Balancing the tensions – stories and history

Much of drama in education operates from creating fictions and telling stories. Of course this is not necessarily in conflict with history as we can approach individuals’ viewpoints in history as their stories of the past. We need to be clear about our learning objectives, about what we are trying to teach. We are going to use a drama about Victorian street children to illustrate how drama and history can be structured to work in harmony.

In using drama we are using a dense form of teaching, because the currency of drama is language, listening and speaking, and we have a cross-curricular approach that will touch upon learning objectives from several areas of the curriculum. Let’s begin with the English and the History National Curriculum learning objectives.

What skills do they need?

The discussion of the role of the historian is a preparation for this. We need to frame the class’s thinking in such a way that they are constrained to think like a historian.

This approach replicates Facts – Hypothesis – Research. The facts are those statements that the whole class can agree are indisputable, for example, ‘there are five boys and one man in the photograph’. The ‘think we know’ section opens up the possibilities for the class, for example, an observation such as the boys are poor will present a possibility based on the evidence of their dress and demeanour. This may generate further research and it may not be resolved.

This in turn raises the opportunities for further research outside the drama lesson.

To focus the work further we start by describing the ‘givens’ in the task. By this we mean the statements under the Facts (‘What do we know?’) column that are given and cannot be contradicted. These are as follows: 

● This is a genuine photograph taken in 1874. 

● There are five boys and one man in the photograph. 

● The name of the man in the photograph is Edward Fitzgerald. 

● Edward Fitzgerald is holding a lamp. 

● The photograph was taken outside some derelict buildings in London. 

This approach allows us to focus the pupils’ attention upon the interpretation of the photograph and how this might be structured. It also underlines the need for research questions and exposes how little we can be certain of at this early stage of the enquiry.

Meetings with teacher in role

This question is there to gauge the pupils’ knowledge at this early stage of the lesson.

Already there are hints at the evangelical nature of Barnardo’s exploits and these can be further examined out of role. ‘after’ photograph to show the immediate and dramatic change Barnardo’s home had made to them. He will open up the issues related to the technology of the photography, how the children would have to stay still for up to half a minute.

Having drawn the class into the photograph through their interviews with

Not all pupils will feel comfortable in taking on the role of the children in the photograph at this point, so a process of selection and contracting the demands inherent in adopting these roles is critical to the success of the next part of the drama.

Modelling the roles

Part of the process of setting this up is the modelling of roles by the teacher before asking pupils to take on this responsibility. We’re going to move the drama on now and meet the boys in the photograph we have been looking at. You must be good at keeping a serious look on your face because, as you can see, the boys in the photograph are going through unhappy times. Finally, I will be with you as Edward Fitzgerald and so you won’t feel left on your own to do this.

The rest of the class will be wealthy ladies and gentlemen who are keen to support

Their task is to decide upon the questions they wish to put to Fitzgerald and the boys. The role of the majority of the class has two facets. The role will put them in a powerful position in relation to Edward Fitzgerald. While the boys may be in fear of the beadle the questioners will not, as their class and superior education puts them in a position of power.

Should they wish to talk to the boys on their own, without the inhibiting presence of Fitzgerald, they may request to do so and this will be acceded to, albeit reluctantly by TiR as Fitzgerald. Away from the rest of the class , those who have decided to be the boys meet with you.

Setting up the boys

Avoid any names of pupils in the class. In the photo some of the boys do look like brothers, others do not. In Saõ Paulo gangs of street children go round together and refer to each other as ‘uncle’, hinting at a family-like grouping.

Having answered these questions and built up a history, there are four

Without the agreement of the group on these the next part of the drama will not work. 1 We must agree that you are afraid of Fitzgerald. If the drama is to work you must agree that you are afraid of him.

2 They must agree that they want to go into the home. This very carefully engineered setting up of the boys is essential for the success of the task. Whatever happens as teacher you will be moving in and out of role, managing the teaching and learning process, checking understanding, negotiating the next question, the next move and using the as-if-it-is-happening-now to engage the pupils attention. They are the scriptwriters, but they are constrained by the ‘givens’, the non-negotiables of frame through which they are exploring how they make sense of this part of history.

In a session with some students, those taking the role of the interested wealthy benefactors asked Fitzgerald to leave, which he did, warning the boys to be best behaved as he left. This was a marvellous opportunity to discuss the implications of his request. Should they give money and food now?.

What are the implications of this?

We can tell the pupils in their planning of the boys that if Fitzgerald leaves they can ask for food and money.

Whole class participation – a sculpture of children living on the streets

In this drama each frame takes the class closer to the children who are the subject of our historical investigations. The next task is to engage the whole class as a sculpture of the children living on the streets.

Who would be furthest away from the fire on this freezing night, December 24th

Find a position you can hold still for at least a minute. This careful building of the image is important because it helps the class create the sculpture by giving them guidance on how to achieve the necessary stillness for its success. Welcome to our new exhibit on the theme of children in the nineteenth century. In the next room we have an interactive exhibit, a sculpture of children who were known as street children.

What is exciting about this exhibit is that not only can you view it, but you can, through the wonders of modern technology, hear what the children represented in the piece are thinking. They are programmed to say what they are thinking at this moment in history. As half the class watch, the teacher touches each of the pupils on the shoulder and they voice their thoughts. Of course, not all pupils will speak and some will repeat what others say, but this is not a problem because the overall effect is to create a sound collage of their thoughts in this situation while at the same time not putting unnecessary pressure on those who cannot think of anything to say and would prefer to listen.

This slowing down of the drama and looking in detail at a particular moment is important and a feature of how drama in education works. Unlike performance and product-orientated drama, the purpose here is to negotiate meanings and consider implications of particular issues. The pupils have been moved frame by frame to make sense of the world of the street children by a gradual edging towards their perspective.

Whole class improvisation

We can use the sculpture and thought-tracking work as a starting point for a whole class improvisation or ‘living through’ part of the drama.

History as a metaphor for now – the global dimension 

It is important that we make the connections between issues in history where they remain issues for us over time. The issue of street children is an example of one of these.

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) 

What do you look for? 

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  

Formative assessment – honouring what children can do

Since the inception of the National Curriculum, assessment of Speaking and

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.

How do we collect data more formally?

The power of the language exchange is contextual. One way of doing this is to go into role as a character from the book and take questions from the class. 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. To set this up properly, the senior management team need to become involved in planning a whole school strategy for the assessment and development of speaking and listening. One teacher can be freed to observe a partner. With A as a critical friend, a lesson or lessons can be carried out by B and the events are logged by the observer A, as well as noted afterwards by B. .

How to Begin Using Assessment through Drama 85

From the evidence, judgements need to be made of the speaking and listening and pupil profiles built up based on the thinking and the empathy demonstrated during a drama. Further evidence is collected by the class teacher from other contexts to check out whether what has been observed in the drama is unique to that context or a general tendency and ability.

Other issues to consider

We often only allow that a pupil is demonstrating engagement in talk when they contribute and demonstrate they have listened. We must learn to read body language, including facial expressions during the drama. If a pupil only speaks once we must look at that single contribution and at other evidence drawn or written after the event to see what they know from the drama. We have to manage the exchanges in a drama so that the naturally dominant voices in the classroom learn to listen and we allow others space to talk.

Other class members are naturally quiet and we will not change people’s personalities so we should not expect them to be as vociferous.

Capturing the samples of speaking and listening

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.

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.

Talk for writing – the wholeness of communication

We can get clear evidence for assessment of the effectiveness of speaking and listening, particularly the latter, from other forms of communication like writing or art work.

Summary of points to consider 

● The nature of assessment of Speaking and Listening 

● Taking account of the context and the interactions 

● The purpose of the assessment 

● Formative assessment – feeding back to the pupils 

● Recording and analysing what we see ● Talk as the basis for writing