How to approach Speaking and Listening through Drama

Resume of Micro teaching Course

Name: Eri Fettri (171230074)

Class: TBI-6C

Chapter 1

How to Begin with Teacher in Role

Why use Teacher in Role?

     Learning demands intervention from the teacher to structure, direct and influence the learning of the pupils. One of the best ways to do that in drama work is to be inside the drama. Therefore, the key of teaching technique that is used, namely teacher in role (TIR). 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 (see ‘The Dream’ drama based on A Midsummer Night’s Dream). The class were calling out and not listening properly. She was talking over them and trying to teach without getting their full attention. Then she explained that they could ask questions of one of the roles from the story and that she was going to become that role when she sat down. She picked up a ribbon with a ring threaded on it and put it round her neck as the role signifier. When she sat down as Hermia, they were focused entirely on her and were listening very closely, putting hands up to ask questions and taking turns in a very orderly way.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.

     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. It can be used with 10- or 11-year-olds as a way of introducing Shakespeare or for other objectives

     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. Even if the main aim of the work is not a study of the Shakespeare play, the role can be used to open up very important areas for personal and social education that the children can identify with. Hermia and later, if you introduce them, Egeus, and Demetrius and Lysander, the rivals for her love. For another example of the simple use of hot-seating see the Tim the Ostler section in ‘The Highwayman’ drama. This can show important elements of how the children see the text, what their comprehension of it is.

Teacher as storyteller

    The teacher as a storyteller is something all primary school teachers will recognize. The teacher’s role will be to communicate the text in a lively and interesting manner, holding their attention and engaging their imagination. In making judgements about the quality of this method of teaching, the critical questions will be around whether the content of the story interests the class and holds their attention, whether the delivery of the teacher, i. The connection between the teacher as storyteller and the teacher using drama, lies in the fact that they both use the generation of imagined realities in order to teach.

    The relationship between story and drama in education is a complex and dynamic one. It means a known narrative can still be used, the knowledge of the narrative is not a barrier to its usage.  However, if the pupils are locked into the original narrative it is problematic. It is the negotiable and dynamic elements of the relationship between drama and narrative that liberate the pupils and the teacher from merely retelling the known story. As long as some fundamental planning strategies are observed, knowledge of the story is not a barrier to participation. Broadly these pre-requisites are :

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.

2. A willingness to move away from the fixed narrative to an exploration of the narrative. In these periods the class develop hypotheses, test them and reflect upon 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. How the class respond to this event is not known and it is at this point that they become the writers of the narrative.

     Let us illustrate these ideas with an example from ‘The Pied Piper’ drama (drama is designed for 6-year-olds but have used with secondary pupils: see Toye and Prendiville, 2000, p. 225) . You put the pupils in role as the townspeople making their way up the mountain when they meet TIR as a child coming in the opposite direction. This provides the background to a simple hot-seating of the child.

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. 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.Then we are going to be telling them a story but it will be as if they had just met us and it will not be the voice of the narrator re-telling someone else’s story but in the present tense as if it is happening now.The story re-told in a specific place (coming down the mountain path) at a specific time (within minutes of a significant event) and from the child’s point of view, not a dispassionate onlooker or observer of events. Then run the hot-seating. Stop and come out of role and discuss what they have found out. Negotiate what they need to ask next. Then go back into role.

     This interactive storytelling has an immediacy and urgency and is working at a different level of discourse from the read story, and yet it is still storytelling. It is essential that the teacher stops and comes out of role and reflects with the class on what has been said, but that is also true of the more traditional mode of reading from a book. It engages the class and gives them the opportunity to generate new questions and to make sense of what is happening in an interactive way.They are questioning from within the story, as if they were there. Next we consider this key skill of moving in and out of role.

Teaching  from within

Moving in and out of role – managing the drama and reflecting on it

     This is 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 TI(R, 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 (OoR) 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. Then 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/behavior 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 behavior and acting. Both depend on appropriate signing, but whereas the actor must give the non-participant audience the bulk of the signing, a teacher using role can get away with a committed minimum. When you have discussed enough you can move back into role and take their stories about the problems the rats are causing. Give the groups time to prepare their evidence before you go into role to receive the input.

    OoR is very important as a way of negotiating the intent and meaning of the role and is the way the teacher can best control and manage learning. For the class are both an audience and observers of their own activities. 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.

    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. That is also a protection. A class reflect together in order to draw conclusions and consequently can influence each other far more in their understanding. They are in the process of negotiating a group meaning, something that can be held true for all of them.

    The relationship developed by the teacher with the class is dependent on the movement between these two worlds. TIR changes the nature of the contract entered into by the class. The result is to make the creative community. Drama then teaches in the following way.

The requirements of working in role

    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. They have to switch from operating as audience to participant and back again often and suddenly. When they are given opportunities to influence the outcomes, to make decisions, the drama becomes partly theirs.

Disturbing the class productively

Discovery/uncovering – challenge and focus

     The 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. The fact that, as in any good play, the class discover things as they go along provides the possibility of productive tension.

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

It is important to withhold information early on, as any good playwright will do. Planning the ‘how’ and the ‘when’ of strategies is all-important here.

Responding to your class

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

     The class working as a community is the key to the use of drama as a teaching method. This community is made most effective by the teacher participating in role. If a teacher runs drama without using TIR there tends to be a lack of dialectic because the teacher produces the structure that the children engage with, but the teacher can only manipulate it from outside that structure.

    The teacher can fully manipulate the structure from within and the resulting activity can be shown diagrammatically. The teacher gives the impression of handing over the power and does so in a way that allows him or her to teach properly and yet empower the participants significantly. We are making the distinction here between the aesthetic actor and the social actor. The aesthetic actor will have learned skills related to voice, gesture and physicality that are not required by the teacher using TIR.

    The teacher in role will already have the skills of the social actor that are used in everyday life. These are skills that are learned in the presentation of self in every day life, the skills. The class will use their creativity to see the role in a particular way that has been indicated as long as it has been properly signed to them. Whereas the actor defines for the audience the message of the play within the circumstances of the plot, the teacher uses signing as an indication to the audience to join in the encounter, effecting and affecting the enterprise.

    As a result of this difference, an actor, using lines written as a script, behaves in a very different way from a teacher improvising within a planned structure, who has to take account of what the class will say in response to the moves he or she makes. The audience in the theater waits for something to happen, but the participants in a drama session make it happen. As the class feed back their responses and make possible development of the role’s importance the teacher must respond appropriately and therein lies the skill of the ‘subtle tongue’ and the possibility for authentic dialogue. The teacher must respond to these responses in an authentic way, honouring how the class see the role. 

    The class must be made to work to achieve the aim they have been given in the drama. Let us look at handling an extended example from the ‘Pied Piper’ drama when the class as the villagers finally arrive at the mountain. At this point in the drama they have accepted the main aim as the villagers of getting their children back from the Piper. Mark the space in front of the class, where the children have been said to have entered the mountain, with two chairs. 

    OoR ask them to describe the mountain in front of them and whether there are any clues as to whether the children have, in fact, gone into the mountain as they have been told. When they are not aware of you, slip behind them and when they are carrying out their task ‘appear’ behind them as the Piper. This simple, theatrical surprise engages the children even more.

    The dialogue that transpires here is critical to the outcome of the drama. The burden placed on the class at this point is to offer some way of showing their thankfulness, their sincerity and their trustworthiness to the Piper so that he will accept the apology and return the children. Accept any imaginative offer as long as it is not materialistic but is related more to establishing a human relationship of trust and honor with the Piper. A different learning area would be to have a Piper who is too full of himself, someone who needs to be taught a lesson about justice and fairness. 

    The drama is set up as a framework and is not finished in the same way as a play written by a playwright. In fact, the secret of educational drama is to have the framework, even a tight framework, such that the class feel they have some ownership because of the parts that they are developing. A drama technique can be used to help them define possible reasons. The TiR is not exclusively the teacher’s creation. They will know as much about why a father tries to dominate a child, particularly from the child’s point of view.

    The ‘play’ we are creating is a joint enterprise and, when the beginnings of a role are in place and we have established the givens, the class will know what we are creating and why and can develop that role by the way they respond and the way they see it.

The teacher–taught relationship

     In all teaching situations there exists a power relationship between the learners and the teacher. The learners are bound together as a group merely by being the learners and, of course, as there are more of them than there are of you, they hold the power. 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 Snow Queen, children of 7 and 8. For those aged 10 or 11 it may be the jealousy of Tim the Ostler that gains their attention. The nature of drama makes the interest level a dynamic and flexible dimension.

    In the classroom, the pupils enter into an agreement with you the teacher that you are in charge. This may be a tacit agreement, it may depend upon many factors but in it the teacher is in charge and there are certain rights and privileges attached to your role. Of course, in drama we have the possibility of shifting the power when we are inside the fiction because we may choose a role that has low status and has little power. 

   There are five basic types of role and mostly can be illustrated from the ‘The Dream’ drama. 

The authority role. 

   The role is fair, applies rules and governs properly, but often does not know the full facts and issues and needs the class to investigate and enlighten him/her. It is very close to being teacher and can be reassuring for a class, but also has the negativity of not changing the teacher–taught relationship enough to allow more ownership for the class.

The opposer role 

    This is a role that is often in authority but dangerous to and/or creating a problem for another role and, by extension, the class. The opposer role has to be used carefully because the response to it can be difficult to handle if it becomes too strong. We have to know what response to expect and be able to channel it productively.

The intermediate role  

    This is often a messenger or go-between, as the servant role used in the ‘The Dream’ drama. This role is then caught between opposing sides and can appeal to the empathy in the class to help them out of the predicament. 

The needing help role 

    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 is a lower status role, the teacher being ‘the one who does not know’, a very powerful position of ignorance that teachers cannot ordinarily occupy. It is powerful because it shifts responsibility more to the pupil roles.

    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. 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.

 Then 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.

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.