Drama and Action Strategies to Support Reading and Learning

 

Drama Strategy Chart

Basic Drama Strategies/Strategy Families

 

Re-enactments: Re-enactments can be used before, during or after reading. Re-enactments prepare and assist students to figure out and represent the literal and implied meanings of a textual episode by reframing it into a script, or simply enacting it.

 

Variations: Freeze the re-enactment and tap individual characters awake to talk to them about what they are thinking or feeling at the moment. 

Change the text by reframing, recasting, changing, or probing it in some way, having a character say something different or make a different decision, for example. This strategy will help students figure out what texts are explicitly and implicitly saying, and are not saying, and how a different construction would change the text and what THE TEXT MEANS.

 

Role-Play: Students assume the different perspectives of characters, objects, forces or ideas and interact with others, also assuming some kind of role.  Students are provided with a dramatic situation and something to discuss, achieve and be able to deliver or report on after the role-play. Role plays are typically quite short (60-90 seconds) although they can be extended as students get more experience. 

 

Variations- Carousel/Revolving Role Play, Questioning Roles

Hotseating: Hotseating intensifies role-playing by putting students ‘on the spot’ so they can be addressed, advised, interviewed, and questioned in role as a character, force or idea by a forum of students also in role, as journalists, other characters or interested parties, et al.  This technique helps students improve their ability to analyze characters, infer, elaborate and think on their feet.  A “life line” group can assist the person or people on the hotseat, as needed.

 

Variations: Lifeline, Inner Voice/Alter Ego, Good Angel/Bad Angel, Whispers, panel discussion or press conference

 

Discussion Dramas: These are techniques support student talk and conversation about issues that matter by putting them in role and in a small or large group of other students in role. This frees students to explore issues and express opinions that they want to deal with, but without being personally responsible for these viewpoints since they are expressed “in role”. By using these enactments, students not only deepen their understanding through talk, but their participation increases and they are more willing to try out new points of view. Through these discussions they also enhance their thinking skills.

 

Variations: In-role discussions in small groups, in Forum Drama perhaps with “teacher in role”, Radio Show

 

Correspondence Dramas: These enactments are any writing the student does while in role. They provide students with a purpose, meaningful information, a situation and an audience. Writing also helps deepen a student’s awareness of how different types of text are constructed.

 

Variations: Character diary, Character Facebook page and posts, Character Letter or Postcard exchange, Choral Montage based on character correspondence

 

 

Tableaux: Tableau is derived from the French word for visual presentation. Tableaux help students visualize and explore both the text and the subtext of a narrative, including setting, scenes, situations, characters, relationships, and meanings. Using this technique, students can ALSO represent vocabulary and create mental models of complex concepts and procedure

 

Variations: Video Clip, Slide Show, Best/Worst Scenario

 

Mantle of the Expert: means to wear the cloak of a MORE EXPERT PERSON AND TO OPERATE ON THE STORY WORLD OR IMAGINED CONTEXT WITH this more expert person’s knowledge and power. This technique helps students learn the ways of thinking and knowing that experts use to understand, produce, represent, and use content knowledge.

 

Variations/Extensions: Creating imaginary and real social actions or social action artifacts. Create museum exhibits or even a complete museum. Create public service announcement. Create a service learning project. All reflecting and requiring expert knowledge from reading and inquiry.

 

 


Notes from Dr Norah Morgan                    E.Boas  NNHS

 

J T DILLON (1983)

"TO CONCEIVE AN EDUCATIVE QUESTION REQUIRES THOUGHT,
 To formulate it requires labour,
 To pose it, tact.
 None of this is mysterious
 And all of it is within our reach."

Don’t be concerned with covering the curriculum instead look to uncover it; where the students bring their knowledge and experience to the topic?

 

Low-key drama and Questioning

Dr Norah Morgan

Take a small fragment of prose or a poem with lots of unanswered questions. For example,

"In the year AD2020 Mary Ellery, daughter of William and Elizabeth Ellery, left her home in Townsville to travel to the planet Osiris. She was a member of the group 'Venture' led by Doctor James Harvey. Mary never returned though she had left earth with the group. The team does not speak of her. There is no mention of her in the records and her name does not appear in the medal citation which honours the work of Dr. Harvey and his group."


 

 

The Learner:

Questioner wants to know.

 

The Absentee:

Questioner is filling in gaps.

 

The Researcher:

Questioner wants to find out something specific.

 

The Policeman:

Questioner is looking for facts; questions are direct.

 

The Detective:

Questioner is looking for clues; questions are indirect and divergent as inconsistencies are sought out.

The Devil's Advocate: Questioner is challenging the argument, statements or the story by taking the opposite point of view.

 

The Interviewer:

Questioner is building a picture of the one being interviewed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Role Play and Questioning Roles

 

Some roles that promote questioning:

 


 The Absentee/Stranger in Role: questioner is filling in gaps


 The Interviewer: questioner is building a picture of the one being interviewed


 The Policeman: questioner is looking for facts; questions are direct. Seeking to establish the facts.


 The Detective: questioner is looking for clues; questions are indirect and divergent as incongruencies are sought out.  Seeking to infer.


 The Devil's Advocate: questioner is challenging the argument, statements or the story by taking the opposite point of view.

 

The Researcher: questioner wants to find out something specific about underlying guiding principles

 

 

 


Visualization Response/Drama Response Activities Criteria Guide

        

When using drama and visualization strategies to teach reading, you’ll want to demonstrate your understanding of how adolescent readers read and respond to literature, as described in You Gotta Be the Book, and how they “bring meaning forward” learning text by text and activity by activity, as we know the best instrution helps students to do. 

      When designing drama and visualization activities you might give students a handout that would guide them through the process of engaging in and completing that activity, and/or you might choose to create a model of the completed activity (with video if drama) with an attached description.  In my experience, the most successful assignments of these kinds meet the following criteria. 

 

Criteria:

___1. Each activity should require students to evoke the world of the text.

 

___2. The activities should encourage students to elaborate on the story world, to fill in gaps, to make inferences and to extend their reading beyond the text.

 

___3. The activities should encourage students to reflect – to revisit textual facts  and details and experiences, and to re-organize, bring forward and represent their experience and what they learned.

 

___4. The activities should encourage students to achieve a richer and more “valid” reading of the text.

 

___5. The activities should ask students to hone other skills and develop knowledge outside the domain of the text, e.g. learn about interviewing skills, news show formats, review writing, etc. (Cf. Use of visuals and drama in Action Strategies, and Reading IS Seeing.)

 

___6. The activities should be fun for the kids, and should ask them to learn something they didn’t already know (instead of just revisiting what they already know) and to achieve or practice some new learning processes they do not already master.

 

___7. The activities should do some real world work, viz. pursuing and completing them should help to teach other kids in the class about each other, about the book or unit topic, about ways of reading, and may perhaps be part of a community service or partner school project, etc.  In any case, the work should be real have some real world audiences.

 

___8. The activity should demonstrate how art and drama work as assisted performance in the creation of new responses and knowledge creation.


The Fan Club

 

Adapted from the story written by Rona Maynard

 

 

It was Monday again.  Rain splattered the cover of Algebra I as Laura heaved her books higher on her arm and sighed.  School was such a bore.

     Before her, the high school building loomed, massive and dark against the stormy March sky. In a few minutes she would have to face them -- again. Laura closed her eyes trying to block out the memory of Diane Goddard’s sleek blond hair and Terri Pierce’s hot-pink fingernails.  And Carol and Steve and Bill and Nancy.

     But it was no good.  She heard again their laughter, smothered at first, then outright loud as Laura had struggled to think of the right answer in algebra class.  That was Friday.  Now it was Monday, another damp, cold day in a school filled with too many Dianes and Terris and Steves.

     They sat at the back in algebra and in English class, passing notes and whispering to one another.  Laura thought of their latest-fashion clothes and their identical outlooks and their superior stares as they passed her in the corridors.  They were clods, the whole gang of them.

     Laura shoved her way through the main door of the building.  Upper-classmen thronged the hall, streamed in and out of doors, and passed bulletin boards covered with red and yellow posters advertising the latest rock concert.  Reluctantly, Laura submerged herself in the stream.

     Down the hall a short way were Diane and Terri and Steve, standing in a tight little circle, as always, in front of their lockers.  They were laughing, as always.

     As Laura opened her locker, she heard Diane squeal, “It’ll be a riot!  can’t wait to see her face when she catches on.”

     Laura flushed painfully, hiding behind her open locker door so the three would not see her. 

     “What do you think she’ll do?”  Steve said.

     “Run out of the room probably,” said Terri.

     Again Laura closed her eyes. Her mind went back to the previous Friday. .

 

     She was standing alone in front of the class, unable to multiply or divide or factor, unable even to think--just feeling the room heat up like a hot-air balloon ready to explode.

     “Don’t you know the answer, Laura?” asked Mr. Knowles. His voice was hollow, distant, an echo behind the sound of rustling papers and hushed whispers.  Laura stared at her half-finished homework and the scribbled flowers in the margins.  On the cover of her notebook was a sketch of a guitar she had drawn that morning in class. 

     “Well, Laura?”

     She really had tried to memorize the theorems the night before.  But then she had pushed the textbook aside to scratch into her notebook the lyrics to a new song she was writing.  She could multiply and divide those words and rhythms better than she ever could the lifeless numbers in Algebra I.  Besides, what did it matter?  One day she would me a musician and live in New York City or L.A.  And everyone would accept her, and there would be no more algebra. 

     Snickers from the back of the room filled the silence. They swelled into mocking giggles that rang in her ears. “You can sit down now, Laura,” said Mr. Knowles, not trying to hide his exasperation. . .

 

“Laura!”

She looked up startled.  It was Rachel who was calling her and who stood beside her now at the locker.  She was wearing a floral blouse and a corduroy skirt that billowed over the heavy columns of her legs.  Laura glanced sideways at Diane and Terri and Steve.  They were fumbling with little yellow index cards, passing them out among the circle of freshmen guys and girls who had gathered around.  Then Diane looked up, directly at Laura, and she laughed out loud.  Laura closed her locker and turned away.

     “Why didn’t you come over this weekend like you said you were going to?” Rachel said.

     Rachel stood there, her mouth half open, her pale, moonlike face strangely urgent.  Shapeless black curls ringed her forehead.  Laura shrugged. “I had to study.”

     Rachel shrugged too, forgiving the broken promise.  The two girls started walking down the hall, away from the exclusive circle.  “So did you watch ‘World of Nature’ last night,” Rachel asked, “on channel 11?”

     “No Rachel.  I almost never watch that kind of program.”

     “You used to.”

     Rachel was her old friend.  In grade school, everyone had called her “Horton,” a friendly nickname for Hortensky.  Her father was Jacob Hortensky, the tailor.  He ran a greasy little shop where Laura could always smell the cooked cabbage from the back rooms where the family lived.  Laura hadn’t been there since the two girls had started high school last September.  As freshmen they shared only one class, English.  No one called Rachel “Horton” anymore.

     “It was a really good documentary.  It was all about monarch butterflies and how far they can travel.” Rachel was smiling, flapping her hands as she talked.  “Remember when we found a monarch chrysalis and kept it at my house until it hatched?  Remember how beautiful it was?  We let its wings dry off and took it outside so it could fly away to Mexico.  And then waved good-bye.  That really was exciting!”

     Once they had shared a deep interest in science and insects.  Now, even if you still liked that stuff, you should have enough sense not to show it.

     “That was a pretty good poem you wrote for English class last week,” Rachel said. 

     “You think so?” said Laura.  “I mean, not many people like poetry.”

     “Your stuff is good, though.  I wish I could write like you.”

     Laura turned.  “I have to go.”

     “Why don’t you come over after school today?  You can stay for dinner.  My parents would really like that--they ask about you all the time.  They wonder what happened to you.”

     Laura remembered the narrow, dirty street and the tattered awning in front of the tailor shop.  Once, none of that had mattered.  “OK,” Laura said, faking enthusiasm.  “I’ll see you later.”

 

In homeroom, Laura spread her notecards over her desk, reviewing one last time her speech for English class.  “We will now have the national anthem,” said the voice on the loudspeaker.  Like the others, Laura stood.  She shifted her weight from one foot to the other.  It was so false, so pointless.  How could they sing of the land of the free when there was still so much that was unfair going on in the world?

     That thought was the theme of her oral report.  Laura imagined herself standing in front of the class, in front of that exclusive little circle led by Diane and Terri and Steve and Bill, and her throat went dry.  Just be confident, she told herself. 

     The steel sound of the bell shattered the silence.  Amid scraping chairs and cries of “Hey, wait!” Laura escaped homeroom and started for English class.  She moved down the hall with the crowd, a thronging jostling mass.  Laura felt someone nudge her.  It was Bill.  “Now there’s a good-looking girl.” Smiling, he pointed to the other side of the hall.

     The gaudy flowers on Rachel’s blouse stood out garishly, too summery for gray March.  What a lumpish, awkward creature Rachel had become!  Did she have to dress like that?  Laura thought.  Didn’t she see how her stockings wrinkled around her heavy ankles?  Laura turned to say something to Bill, but he had gone ahead into the room.  Rachel went in behind him, and just then her books tumbled from her arms onto the floor.

     Laura was behind her, still in the hall, but she heard the laughter. 

     The bell rang.  Students ambled to their seats.  Laura saw Diane and Terri exchange eager last-minute whispers.  “Steve doesn’t have his,” Diane said.

     “Don’t put it on until it’s time.” said Terri.

     After 20 minutes of reviewing last night’s homework, Miss Merrill pushed aside Adventures in Literature and beamed at the class as if they were in for a real treat.  “All right, people, get out your notecards.  Today we start our oral reports.  Laura, will you begin, please?”

     At once, Laura’s throat clamped tight like a hinged lid.  It was as if she had eyes in the back of her head, so clearly could she see Diane and Terri and Steve grinning at her, waiting for her to make a fool of herself again.

     Careful, careful, she thought as she stood and walked to the front of the room.  Look confident.

     Before her, the room was large and still; 25 round, blurred faces stared back at her.  Was that Diane’s muffled laughter already?  Laura folded her hands over her notecards and looked at the rear wall, strangely distant now, its brown paint cracked and peeling.  A dusty portrait of Robert Frost, a card with the seven rules for better paragraphs, last year’s calendar. . . and the hollow ticking of the clock.

     “Well,” Laura cleared her throat.  “My report is on civil rights.” A chorus of snickers rose from the back of the room.

     “Most people,” Laura began, then began again, “most people don’t care enough about others, but we are all responsible for those people who haven’t had the same advantages as we.”  Even as she repeated the words she had practiced all weekend, Laura wondered if anyone was really listening. 

     “A lot of people think prejudice is limited to ethnic groups.  But most of us are prejudiced - whether we know it or not - in other quiet ways.  It’s not just that we don’t give people who are different a chance; we don’t give ourselves a chance either.”  She looked past the rows of blank, empty faces, past the bored stares of Diane and Terri.  All they cared about were concerts and parties.

     “One person’s misfortune is every person’s responsibility,” she recited.  She wondered if Diane or Terri or Steve knew what it was like to be unwanted and unaccepted.  What misfortunes did they have?  None.

     “Most of us are proud that we live in a free country.  But is it really true?  Can we call the United States a free country when millions of people face prejudice and discrimination every day?  Laura looked at Rachel, who was staring at her with deep attention.

     Laura took a breath, ready for the big finish.  “Only when Americans learn to respect the dignity of all people can we truly call our country free.”

 

The room was silent.

     “Very nice, Laura.”  Miss Merrill looked briskly around the room.  Laura returned to her seat, and the other students waited in dread  to see who would be next.  “Rachel Hortensky,” Miss Merrill announced.

     There was a ripple of dry, humorless laughter - almost, Laura thought, like the sound of a rattlesnake.  Rachel stood before the class now, her face red, her heavy arms piled with shoeboxes.

     Shoes?  whispered Steve.  “She’s going to talk about shoes?”

     Diane giggled, tossed her hair back, and winked at Steve.

     Rachel’s smile twitched at the corners, and Laura knew that her old friend Horton, who had never been afraid of mice, or garter snakes or spiders was frightened now.  Rachel set her stacked boxes on the desk without paying much attention to how they were balanced.  Immediately they collapsed to the floor with a ringing clatter.  Now everyone, not just Diane, was giggling. 

     “Hurry and pick them up, Rachel,” Miss Merrill said sharply.

     Rachel crouched on her knees and began very clumsily to gather her scattered treasures.  Some of the boxes had broken open, spilling their contents.  Her index cards had fallen, too, and she shuffled them together quickly.  At last she stood.  “My report is on shells,” she said.

     A cold and stony silence settled upon the room.

     “People might collect shells simply because they’re kind of pretty.  They might find them on the beach.”

     “Well, whaddaya know!” It was Steve’s voice sounding a mock amazement.  Laura jabbed her notebook with her pencil.  Why was he so cruel?

     “This one,” said Rachel, opening the first shoebox, “is one of the best.” Off came the layers of paper and there, at last, smooth and pearly and shimmering, was the shell.  Rachel turned it over lovingly in her hands. “It has white, fluted sides like the close-curled petals of a flower and a scrolled coral back,” she said.

     Laura held her breath.  It was beautiful, really beautiful, but from the back of the room the snickers had started again.

     “I bet she bought it at Woolworth’s,” said Diane.

     “It might make a nice ashtray,” said Steve.

     Rachel seemed not to hear.  The shells were something she knew about and loved . She held out another, a small, drab, brownish thing.  “This is the common snail shell,” said Rachel. “It is a different kind of pretty. . . . “

 

Just as Rachel finished, the bell sounded.  Suddenly, chairs were shoved aside at the back of the room, and there was the sound of many voices whispering. They were standing, the whole row of them, their faces grinning with delight. Choked giggles, shuffling their feet, and then applause -- wild, sarcastic, malicious applause. 

     Laura turned and stared at them.  They were all wearing the little yellow index cards that Diane and Terri had passed out earlier that morning. Drawn in the center was a fat, frizzy-haired figure.  Printed in big red block letters above and below it was HORTENSKY FAN CLUB.

     Then Laura understood.  It was what all the snickering had been about that morning at the lockers.  She had been wrong.  Diane and Terri and Steve weren’t out to get her after all.  It was Rachel they were after.

     Rachel stared in frozen confusion, looking at the applauders in the back of the room.  Her hand holding the brown shell began to tremble, and she dropped it.  As it shattered on the floor, the sound was drowned out by the laughter and clapping.

     Diane slid forward.  “Here, Laura,” she said, holding out a yellow index card.  “Here’s one for you.”

     For a moment Laura stared at the card.  It was pierced with a safety pin. They must have planned the joke over the weekend and brought the pins to school with them.  Laura looked at Diane’s mocking smile.  She heard the pulsing, frenzied rhythm of the claps and the stamping , faster and faster.

     Laura reached out slowly and took the card from Diane.  She pinned it to her sweater.  As she turned back, she saw Rachel’s stricken face.

     “She’s such a nerd, isn’t she?”

     Diane’s voice was soft and intimate.

     And Laura began to clap.

 

Rona Maynard was a 15-year-old student when she wrote this story.      


The Fan Club

Revolving Role Play Drama

 

0- Frontload - 4 corners

         - People tend to be unaware of prejudice that does not directly affect them.

         - People tend to ignore or discount prejudice that does not directly affect them on a daily basis.

         - Everyone is prejudiced in quiet ways.

         - the people who are most prejudiced tend to be the most adamant that they are not prejudiced.

         - children/students need to have their civil rights more vigorously defended than that of any other group.

 

1 -    A is Laura

         B is a friend who is enjoying school (or Mom)

 

R:     Dad - what did you find out from Laura?

 

(Flashback Drama - back to the scene when Laura first began to dislike school)

 

2-    A is Mr. Knowles

         B is Laura’s mother

 

R:     Why do kids not engage in school? (Who is interested in this question?  Chance for a mantle of the expert drama)  What was hard about responding as a parent?

 

3-    Alter Ego Drama

         What are you really trying to say?

 

         Postcards from the past - illustrate

 

4-    Missing Scene drama

         Before the story: what happened with Steve, Diane, Bill and Terri?

 

5-    Radio Show

         What do you think of the point of Laura’s speech?  Are we all prejudiced in quiet ways?

         Vote with your feet drama

 

6-    Whispers (Agent for character strategy)

         A is Rachel

         B is her guardian angel

 

7-    Choral Montage

 

8-    Hotseat - Character Interview or Press Conference

         Tableau - Slide show of key scenes

 

9-    Statue - Commemoration

         Scene after the story

 

10-  Follow up on issues

         Interview a lawyer or law firm:  What are civil rights?  Were Rachel’s civil rights violated.  Research and follow up on a subsequent day of class.