1. An awareness of those elements of the story that will not be changed – and agreements about these must be made with the class at the beginning or during the drama, in other words, the non-negotiable elements of the narrative.
Chapter 2
How
to Begin Planning 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
The frame is a dynamic, interrelated and complex weaving of all the other
ingredients. It has pre-text, which is derived from the stimulus material.
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.
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.
Learning objectives
Learning is often focused through a key
problem or issue for the children to tackle (Dorothy Heathcote’s ‘man in a
mess’). This helps hand responsibility for learning to the pupils themselves.
The learning can be in any
of five areas:
a.
Language Development
– the medium of drama and hence the key impetus to
Speaking and Listening (see ‘How to Generate Quality Speaking and
Listening’ p. 41).
b.
Spiritual, Social,
Moral, Cultural, Personal – there is usually this capability in any drama.
c.
Content – the
curriculum, focused on any subject – we have highlighted possibilities in our
examples for English, History, Technology, Art, Geography.
d.
Art Form drama – the
more the class does drama the more they understand the form and the more they
can manipulate and help shape the work.
e.
Thinking Skills –
drama models the mental moves that underpin our thought processes: actions and
consequences, being logical about decisions, giving reasons and arguing
positions. The very reflective nature of the work, going out of role to examine
the meaning of situations and events in the drama, promotes metacognition
Strong material
This may be a piece of writing with key
learning points that are usually unresolved by the writer of the original
material. These often lie in the PSHE curriculum area.
a.
Roles
for the teacher
b.
Roles
for the pupils
The class need to be framed up as a
community, where the class work together supporting each other and working for
the same aims. This builds their ability to communicate with and understand
each other, the best basis for all learning.
c.
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. Tension can be planned in, but
needs to be seized on according to how the class
reacts.
d. Building context
Usually having one main
location helps the drama to be properly focused.
e.
Building belief
If you create the belief that there is something in it for them. Use of
TiR can interest and build belief. The right choice of pupil roles helps that,
especially if meaningful activity can be given to them to establish the roles,
or the situation and place is properly realized and created for the imagination, as indicated
in the previous paragraph.
All of the
ingredients contribute to building belief:
1)
choosing worthwhile material, engaging interest, as with the
dramas here;
2)
having the right ‘hook’ at the beginning, a stimulus, a picture or
artifact, a role or piece of material that raises expectations, like the street
children photograph which never fails to pull the class in;
3)
planning in times to contract and re-contract with the group,
asking them to accept specific conventions, e.g. 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. We have never had a
child challenge the credibility of Maria entering with the baby if contracting
is done in setting up the moment;
4)
raising their status, genuinely,
in the choice of role for them and in the way we deal with them, like the
expert roles we have discussed
5)
choosing the right strategies and the variety of strategies so
that interest and involvement are maintained, like the thought-tracking where
roles are built with their input;
6)
choosing the right task/activities – giving them something to do
that makes sense and through which they contribute to the content and
realisation of the drama, like the creation of the wall paintings in ‘The
Egyptians’;
7)
planning to involve them in key decisions and the creation of the
8)
planning to test belief and take calculated risks – and most
importantly to provide tension, an unexpected moment or encounter, a role that
behaves in a challenging way.
In delivering the drama we
have to:
1)
talk
to them positively
2)
go slowly, stopping and reflecting and taking
the time to do that;
3)
Isolate any problem of non-belief and dealing
with it in role or out of role.
Belief in the drama comes mostly from feeling a part of
the drama and that requires that the class members contribute to the way the
drama develops. As such we have to plan the key moments for critical decisions
for the class.
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. 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. We must plan space for real dialogue, which will involve
listening to and using, where possible, their ideas .
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. This
generates a false situation, knowledge of their position and the understanding
of the roles before they can properly make decisions. 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. They may:
a. Create context
b. Build belief in the roles and therefore the drama
c. Focus learning
d. Help explore a situation and deepen understanding
e. Help to reflect on the meaning of the event
Planning as
a collaborative activity
Planning
for true learning is a social activity and needs to have more than one mind
brought in to develop its full potential. 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
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 re-planning. Their
positive responses reveal new possibilities and can often become incorporated
as ‘givens’ when the drama is used in future.
Types of drama
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.
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. The class must always go away feeling they have
achieved something. They need to have solved the problem.
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.
Chapter 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.
Dialog teaching
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.
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.
The resulting classroom
games include:
a.
Guessing
what is in the teacher’s head – pupils avoiding having to answer the question
b.
Linguistic
tennis – where it is about getting rid of the ball quickly not about developing
an exchange of ideas
c.
Point
scoring – getting the answers right or getting them wrong and feeling a
failure.
What does dialogi teaching demand of the teacher?
Drama certainly demands
these as well. One of the key changes that drama brings is a different position
for the teacher. When the teacher uses role herself she is able to dialogue in
a very different way with the pupils; she leaves teacher talk behind. 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. In his or her roles the teacher
will model, through positive roles, all of the positive aspects for the pupils
and can also portray, through negative roles, many negative aspects of behavior
and language; roles can be aggressive, thoughtless, self-centred, silly,
anti-social, etc. 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.
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. They have to make
sense of the fictional situation as it develops. Unless pupils listen they do
not know what is going on. The teacher can provide surprises, challenges,
interesting people to meet in the forms of teachers in role; pupils can provide
models of language use for each other because lead pupils begin to take
initiative and provide input.
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. In order to carry out all of these
speaking activities they are, of course, inevitably developing their listening
and we see this in all its powerful and active modes, listening that is: open,
sensitive, reflective, receptive, supportive, attentive, collective, creative.
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.
Chapter 4
How to Use Drama for Inclusion and Citizenship
It is concerned with the relationship
between inclusion and drama as a pedagogical approach. Drama’s inclusion is
embedded, first, in its dialogical approach to teaching and learning. This is
reflected in two contracts that form part of its rubric. 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.
Secondly, the subject content of dramas can
have specific learning potential to give a voice to groups whose ideas may not
be heard easily in the real world. So inclusion will always be found in drama’s
approach to learning and it may also be part of its subject content.
Inclusion is essentially about equal
opportunities for all pupils, regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, background
and attainment, including special needs or disability. A school that is
inclusive will provide racial harmony; it will prepare pupils for living in a
diverse and increasingly inter-dependent society.
Inclusion
pays particular attention to the provisions for different groups of pupils.
Provision in the primary school will apply to all of the following groups:
1.
Girls and boys
2.
Minority ethnic and
faith groups
3.
Traveller, asylum
seeker and refugee children
4.
Pupils who need
support to learn English as an additional language (EAL)
5.
Pupils with special
educational needs
6.
Gifted and talented
pupils
7.
Children looked after
by the local authority
8.
Other children, such
as sick children, young carers, those children from families under stress
9.
Any children who are
at risk of disaffection and exclusion. (DfEE, 1999, p. 12)
What can drama offer in terms of inclusion?
1. Drama offers ‘new opportunities to pupils who may have
experienced previous difficulties’ (Ofsted, 2006, p. 7).
2. 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.
3. 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.
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.
Having no voice in society
They come into the drama
lesson wary of saying what they think and reluctant to express a view or make
suggestions that may be challenged by the majority or dominant group. 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
In the drama lesson the
individual’s responses have three components:
1.
What
we think (thoughts)
2.
What
we say (utterances)
3.
What
we do (actions)
The 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:
1.
Developing
confidence and responsibility and making the most of their abilities;
2.
Preparing
to play an active role as citizens;
3.
Developing
a healthy, safer lifestyle; and
4.
Developing
good relationships and respecting the differences between people
How
to approach Citizenship and PSHE through drama: practicing being part of a
society
Drama as citizenship in action
The process of drama
itself is democratic in nature. The underlying rules of drama embody key
democratic values. These are:
1.
That
the class work as a whole group, dividing into sub-groups for some tasks, but
experiencing their class as a democratic community;
2.
That
every member of the group may speak and contribute to the development of the
drama;
3.
That
all members of the group must respect the other members – their opinions and
viewpoints;
4.
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;
5.
That
when group decisions are to be made, debate may happen, but it is the majority
view of the group that will be taken;
6.
That
we reflect together on the meanings we are forging and that together we are
stronger in that creative act.
Chapter
5
How to Generate Empathy in a Drama
What is 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.
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).
Drama makes one of its greatest contributions
in modeling 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. Therefore, before we start we need to liberate the word
from its woolly and misleading usage.
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.
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 behavior
and see how this is replicated in drama.
A working definition of 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’.
In ‘recognizing and responding to any emotion
or state of mind’ we are able to manage and ameliorate problems we are
confronted with or we perceive others to be faced with: ‘Empathy arises out of
a natural desire to care about others’ (Baron-Cohen, 2003, p. 2; emphasis
in the original). It is in this statement that we can make the connection
between empathy, learning and drama, for if we can through the acting out of
imagined realities generate empathetic behavior in pupils, they can not only
learn from each other but also examine and refine their empathetic skills. And
all this is taking place within the safety of pretend worlds without the
consequences of the real world.
The components of empathy
Component one – the cognitive component
Baron-cohen
suggests that there are ‘two major elements to empathy’ and the first of these
is the ‘cognitive component: understanding the other’s feelings and the ability
to take their perspective.
The second
element to empathy is the affective component. This is an observer’s
appropriate emotional response to another person’s emotional state’. There is here a desire to do something, to take
action, and therefore empathy is not just about recognize the emotional state
of someone but also doing something about it.
The cognitive stage
The first stage of
structuring for empathizing is the cognitive stage. In the example given
it has three components:
1.
The
role – Martha represented by a pupil walking down the conscience alley.
2.
The
attitude of Martha as negotiated and agreed with by the class and teacher.
3.
Martha’s
purpose – to enter the workhouse and save the baby.
This representation of
the cognitive stage of empathising has been contracted with the class before
the strategy is enacted. Its success is generated by the constraints imposed on
the roles, the context and the events leading up to Martha’s approach to the
doors of the workhouse, in other words, the pre-text.
The roles First, Empathy here is a
response to the attitudes of the roles they have met. Crimmins – uncaring,
deceitful – and the 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.
Component
Two – the affective component
The affective stage
The second stage of
structuring for empathizing is the affective stage. The three components
this time are the pupils’ role, the context in which they find themselves and
their witnessing of Martha’s treatment by Mards, the Workhouse Master.
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.
The context If
we then put these roles in the
context of a fact-finding commission with the
power to change practices, we give them the opportunity to take action.
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 behavior to take place. Part of the function of teaching and learning
is to create opportunities for assessment.
Can we plan for generating empathy?
We can generate empathy
through structuring roles and creating a drama frame where it is likely to
happen. There are three parts to this process: the role of the teacher, the
role of the pupils and the frame in which they are placed.
The role of the pupils
While placing the pupils in a positive, problem-solving
and high status role (government commissioners) gives them the power to make judgments
about people’s circumstances from a positive point of view, it is also possible
to generate empathy for the dispossessed.
The role of the teacher is also important in the generation of empathy; the relationship
is co-dependent.
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 empathies,
the role(s) 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 modeling by the
teacher of roles who are unable to empathize enables the pupils to witness
their shortcomings and therefore have a sense of how disabled they are without
these skills.
Chapter 6
How to Link History and Drama
A
problematic alliance
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. So it is not surprising that the teacher
using drama should engage the class through the use of roles, contexts and
symbols from the past. in using the arts pupils are creating their own
interpretation or account, based upon sources. In view of the fact that the use
of drama to teach history is not straightforward it is important for the
teacher that a conceptual framework be adopted that balances the tensions
between the medium and the content, between fiction and fact.
Dressing up to go back in time
One popular method of ‘empathizing’
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.
Alternatively, schools will suspend the usual timetable and devote lessons and
other activities to a particular period in time. Teachers may even be locked
into roles from the past (one could almost say trapped in 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:
1.
A
concern with facts
2.
A
concern with reasons
3.
A
concern with meanings
Historians are interested in making deductions and
inferences about sources and then selecting and combining sources to create
accounts of the past. Historical imagination is filling the gaps when sources
are incomplete. In drama we are particularly interested in the last element. It
is here that drama synthesizes story and past events.
The drama
then has an assessment function, as knowledge gained in the research activities
will be exposed during the drama. 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. Essentially history is story; it began as oral
history and is a shared story of society.
Just as painters or novelists will present a view of the past in their
work, the pupil in the drama will use it to create their understanding of
history, and the challenge for the teacher is to plan the lesson conscious of
the tensions between the imagination and the need for authenticity. The first
rule must be complete honesty with the class about what we know, what we think
we know and what we need to find out.
Learning
objectives: History Victorian Britain:
A study of the impact of significant
individuals, events and changes in work and transport on the lives of men,
women and children from different sections of society. (QCA/DfES, 2000)
Learning
objectives: English, Speaking and Listening
In
English pupils have the opportunity:
To present a spoken argument, sequencing
points logically, defending views with evidence and making use of persuasive
language To understand different ways to take the lead and support others in
groups (Year 5) To use a range of oral techniques to present persuasive
argument To understand and use a variety of ways to criticize constructively
and respond to criticism (Year 6)
Setting up a historian’s frame
The drama begins as a
history lesson, with the idea of taking on roles in the lesson introduced from
the beginning. The pupils’ first role is of high status and expertise:
In the drama you will have several roles, one of them will be
historians and at other times you will be the people we are concerned with in
this drama – that is, the poor street children of the 1870s in London.
Let’s start with your role as historians. Before we do, you need
to tell me: What is a historian? What do historians do? What skills do they
need?
The discussion of the
role of the historian is a preparation for this. This imposition of high status
and expertise is designed to engage the class with a sense of responsibility
for the task ahead and leads into the introduction of the first piece of
historical evidence, the photograph.
The photograph on its
own is not enough, however. We need to frame the class’s thinking in such a way
that they are constrained to think like a historian. To do this, we ask three
questions about the photograph:
What
do we know?
What
do we think we know?
What
do we want to
ask?
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
category will enable a high level of success in terms of acceptable responses
because the constraint of ‘indisputable fact’ has been lifted arch.
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
It is important to find
out what the class will ask you; by doing it this way you can get a sense of
what they are interested in and at the same time feel prepared for the initial
couple of questions. It is important to clarify some of these issues but at the
same time not to tell the whole story and in this way maintain the interest of
the class.
Meeting the boys in the photograph
Modelling the roles
Part of the process of
setting this up is the modeling of roles by the teacher before asking
pupils to take on this responsibility. They will have seen you taking the work
seriously and you need to make clear the demands that will be made upon those
who decide to do it. That is the initial contract and by making those elements
explicit the pupils can decide whether they want to volunteer. The role of the
majority of the class has two faces. First is the caring and interested investigator.
The other facet is one of power and class.
Setting up the boys
Away from the rest of the class (you might do this at a break time
or lunchtime), those who have decided to be the boys meet with you. They must
decide upon the following things:
● What are your names? Discuss Victorian boys’ names –
royal names and Old Testament biblical names were common. Avoid any names of
pupils in the class.
● Are any of you related? In the photo some of the boys do
look like brothers, others do not. Why might they be together then? Issues of
safety in numbers, older ones looking after younger ones. In Saõ Paulo gangs of
street children go round together and refer to each other as ‘uncle’, hinting
at a family-like grouping.
● How did you end up living on the streets? Possibilities –
too many mouths to feed, violent fathers, death and disease amongst those
caring for them or avoiding the dreaded workhouse could all be discussed.
● Are any of you ill? Are you doing this to survive but don’t
intend to stay? ● Which one of you is the leader?
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. The use of still image is
important here because it constrains the action and forces the class into a
holding moment which, like a painting or a photograph, allows us to examine the
detail and what it means for us. The whole class need to consider where they
are in the sculpture.
His 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. The class remakes the sculpture and this
time TIR enters into the work which now takes on a ‘living through’ mode of
working. What is important here is the manner in which this is achieved; all
the time as teacher you are enabling the participation of the pupils in a way
that is non-threatening and accesses them to speak when they feel comfortable
to do so. The fear of humiliation by making a mistake or getting it wrong,
fears that are sadly part of the culture of too many classrooms, are eroded.
The instructions and
constraints that help the task to work for both teacher and pupils: The teacher
begins to narrate, the teacher continues – this time oor, Teacher as narrator,
The next section is a transcript of some 10- and 11-year-olds at this point in
the drama. The teacher realizes the
class is too far away and that only the children close to him are responding
verbally to him, although they are all engaged with what is going on.
Drama teaches about
history by creating carefully researched historical contexts and roles. These
roles will generate the need to do something about a particular issue. However
this debate about the particular is really a means to make sense of larger more
general themes. The drama approach must be seen as a particular pedagogical
approach to the subject. Its particularity lies in the use of TIR as a means to
generate other kinds of dialogue beyond the usual teacher–pupil one. It should
be supported by the more traditional approaches to history teaching which are
effective in ways that drama is not, for example, the searching and retrieval
of information. Drama needs to be recognised for what it does best, which is to
negotiate meanings through engagement with imagined realities.
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.
Chapter 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)
We are looking at how best to obtain the
information on the students’ abilities in Speaking and Listening, but the
creation of a fiction, where the art form of drama is essential and the success
of that enterprise depends on valuable interaction between all participants.
However, we must stress we are primarily looking at assessing speaking and
listening, the focus of this book, and we are not providing in this
chapter a framework for the assessment of theatre skills, the art form of
drama, for personal and social development, nor other learning areas that drama
can address.
The currency of drama is speaking and
listening and in its nature it is swift, fleeting and ephemeral. When trying to
assess it we do not get a piece of tangible evidence in our hands. Where
speaking and listening is assessed, there is a tendency to assess it not as an
interactive situation, but as a very narrow construct, something that is not
actually speaking and listening at all – the class talk. A talk by one pupil to
the rest of the class does not usually involve dialogue, except, perhaps, at
the end when there might be questions. In what sense is a talk like this
speaking and listening? It is easier to assess, of course, because it is an
isolated target, one person delivering a set structure in front of the teacher
and class, a performance. This is not what we want to assess; we are interested
in the fluid and often powerful exchanges that a drama brings. Whatever the
difficulties, we must consider assessing speaking and listening for very good
reasons:
1. How do we promote better speaking and listening unless
we assess and reflect on the changes in pupils’ handling of the medium?
2. 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:
1.
Drama
as a context for speaking and listening
2.
Negotiating
and co-operating with others in the creation of drama work and the roles within
it
3.
Expressing
imaginative ideas when contributing to the drama work development
4.
Taking
and using effectively the opportunities within the drama that require oral and
aural communication
5.
Modifying,
selecting and relating language and vocabulary to the changing roles, moods and
situations in the drama work
6.
Controlling
effectively oral and aural communication particularly in challenging sequences
of drama work, e.g. questioning, dilemmas, unfair or emotional situations
7.
Responding
with enjoyment and enthusiasm to the exploration of speech, gesture and sound
8.
Contributing
effectively to critical evaluation of their own work and that of others
If we believe that drama offers all these opportunities
to promote speaking and listening, we cannot neglect its assessment.
What is
the purpose of the assessment?
How
to begin using assessment
1. Give feedback to the pupil
2. Report to another teacher
3. 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
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 recognize 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. Then we are building esteem and boosting achievement.
How do we collect data more formally?
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.
We must gather and record the critical incidents and chart
whatever we notice. Teachers can work in pairs and observe each other's lessons
to record what they see. Some Preparation, Planning and Assessment (PPA) time,
which teachers in England are entitled to, could be used for this purpose. 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.
The observer will tell
the story of the lesson and what it shows. The participant teacher of the
lesson can also note what he or she saw and understood. From the evidence, judgments
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.
For the
development of speaking and listening, we need to regard the class as
colleagues. The class is creating the work with us and they will only develop
their skills if they are provided with rich environments in the dramas by the
teacher, especially working in role.
Other issues to consider
There are other signs
of listening. 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. That will show how they have listened. It is
important to remember that not all class members are ever going to contribute
in the same way; some members will listen more and make one key observation
that needs to be noted for what it shows. Such pupils may distil ideas in a way
that frequent contributors fail to do because they do not listen as well. 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
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:
a.
The language used
b.
The non-verbal communication.
Pictures and captions
There are other models
of recording what is created, using the current technology to freeze moments of
the drama. We can take digital photographs and project these onto a white
board, where children can annotate what it means, showing their ideas by adding
captions or notes of the speech by their roles, bubbles with the thoughts their
roles might have at the moment, etc. If we go lower tech, drama techniques can
be used to help the class themselves assess what is important. The class can
look back over a drama and key moments can be recreated as tableaux. These can
be added to with captions summing up what the picture means. This can help
self-assessment by the children or peer assessment, when reflecting on their
contributions to the drama work, because they are critically analyzing what is
important about what they have done.
Teachers should talk to
children after drama sessions in order to elicit their understanding. Children
need to reflect separately and together on the process. Then they will
understand more about their own achievements in speaking and listening. Such
discussions will provide yet more evidence of what has been going on,
particularly the listening.
Talk for writing – the wholeness of communication
In a school with a
strong policy on speaking and listening there will be major gains in other
areas. 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. In addition the writing itself can
benefit.
The planning and
teaching model with the integration of drama and/or visual approaches was
successful in promoting marked and rapid improvements in standards of boys
writing. The project cited here was set up to do concentrated Literacy work
involving more visual stimuli and drama. Effects on speaking and listening: The
project emphasized the importance of speaking and listening as part of the
writing process and, of course, used drama and role play as central themes in
developing writing.
Conclusion, we know
that assessing and recording speaking and listening is a demanding task, but we
would contend that is no more demanding than other assessment if it is
approached in the right way. Furthermore, we would maintain that the absence of
evidence of pupils’ speaking and listening in a school limits their progress in
all areas of literacy and is depriving them of a key entitlement.
