Drama-Based Pedagogy Strategies

Dear Martin contains many complex themes you may want to explore with students. Drama-based pedagogy, or DBP, uses active and dramatic approaches to engage students in academic, affective, and aesthetic learning through dialogic meaning-making in all areas of the curriculum. You'll find DBP strategies below that can spark difficult discussions, help guide conversations about identity and power, and investigate multiple perspectives. Follow the links to the Drama-Based Instruction Network to find videos, lesson plans, and detailed guides for how to adapt strategies for your contexts.

Discuss Identity

Iceberg of Identity

This strategy invites students to consider all the visible and invisible facets of their identity and how these might impact how they move in the world.

Role on the Wall

This strategy asks students to infer meaning about a character and to visually map the relationship between characteristics (emotions) and actions (behaviors) onto a simple outline of a human figure.

3D Models

This strategy prompts students to self-reflect and then create models of their identity or ideas through sculpture.

Consider Multiple Perspectives

Poster Dialogue

This strategy invites students to share thoughts, symbols, and ideas to respond as individuals to open ended questions before reflecting as a group on connections and themes.

Pass the Picture

This strategy presents students with conflicting visual narratives they must make sense of through dialogue and close looking.

Sculptor/Clay

This strategy asks students to work together to visually represent a word, idea or character, with one individual serving as the “sculptor,” who moves the other individual/s serving as the “clay,” into position.

Spark Difficult Dialogues

Touchstones

This strategy provides a reflective structure for asking questions and responding to topics through an active, student-driven process.

Exploding Atom

This strategy invites students to take a stand on polarizing statements and incites lively discussions as students explain their answers and listen to those who may feel differently.

Truth About Me

This strategy allows students to see their commonalities and differences and can provide an impetus for discussions about social and cultural topics.

Critique Power Dynamics

Great Game of Power

This strategy invites students to make sculptural representations of power relations using common objects. The process of interpreting the images provokes rich dialogues about power and social structures.

Real and Ideal

This strategy asks students to create depictions of real life situations and then to imagine how things could change into ideal scenarios and then discuss what actions they could take to make change.

Machine

This strategy prompts students to represent an idea, process, or system through simple, repetitive body motions in a sequence.

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