How to Approach Speaking and Listening Through Drama
A. How to Begin with Teacher in Role
Why use teacher in role?
The most important resource you have as a teacher when using drama is yourself. 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, at the centre of the dramas that we include in this book, is the key teaching technique that is used, namely teacher in role (TiR). This chapter will set out approaches to TiR and give examples of how it works. Many teachers see TiR as a difficult activity, particularly with older children in the primary school. However, it is our experience that when a teacher takes a role he or she becomes ‘interesting’ to the children, so that there are less control problems because they become engaged. 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).
B. How to Begin Planning Drama
In this chapter we are going to describe and analyse the main components of planning in drama. On this journey we will visit a number of key planning decisions and approaches. These are:
How to begin a plan.
The frame of a drama – first example ‘The Governor’s Child’.
The frame of a drama – second example ‘The Wild Thing’.
How did this drama evolve?
-The ingredients of planning.
-Learning objectives.
-Strong material.
-Roles for the pupils.
-Tension points – risks – theatre moments.
-Building context and belief-building.
-Challenges and decision-making
But before we begin this journey a word of warning to those who are new to this way of working: 'If I was making this journey, I wouldn't start from here!' Planning brand new dramas is complex and, while we hope to unravel some of the complexity in this chapter, the best starting point is using tried and tested dramas first. That is why we have included 14 dramas in this book. When you feel comfortable with the approach, the planning becomes more accessible.
There is even an intermediate stage in planning and that is to take parts of different dramas and remake them as new ones. We cannot establish a simple procedure for an order of planning. 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 . In this way we may come up with an idea for a role that will provide a specific challenge for the class; we may get a mental picture of a particular situation we want the children to become involved in, or an idea for focusing a problem based on the original material.
C. 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.
Dialogic teaching
This is one of the most interesting, potentially powerful and new concepts being promoted in educational circles in the UK. It is the result of extensive work by Robin Alexander and others (Alexander, 2000, Alexander, 2005). 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 oftenspeaking and listening is seen as question and answer, usuallythe teacher questioning and the pupils answering. What we seein classrooms is very often the IRF approach, where the teacher initiates, a childresponds and a teacher gives feedback.
What does dialogic teachingdemand of the teacher?
One of the key changes that drama brings is a different position for the teacher. If the teacher is the young boy, Daedalus, who has taken his father’s secret project design, without his permission, and the pupils are the family servants, then they have important decisions to make about what they do with this knowledge. They will talk to Daedalus in a way that they can never talk to a teacher. 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. They are framed within the drama context to oppose or sort out this behaviour, all the more motivated by the fact it is their teacher behaving in this way through the use of role. So the teacher is able to talk and interact with the pupils in many ways and with many purposes.
The importance of speaking and listening in the teaching/learning process.
How to dialogue with a class so that it is collective, reciprocal, supportive, cumulative, purposeful. The teacher intervening as teacher, but also as other roles within the drama.
How drama produces ilistening of high quality. Do the Speaking and Listening levels in the National Curriculum do justice to the levels of talk pupils can achieve here?
D. How to Use Drama for Inclusion and Citizenship
So inclusion will always be found in drama’s approach to learning and it may also be part of its subject content. Let us begin with defining what we mean by inclusion. In the United Kingdom the Office for Standards in Education Educational inclusion has a broad scope. It is essen- tially about equal opportunities for all pupils, regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, background and attainment, including special needs or disability. The inclusive school will have, within its policies and curriculum, strategies to ‘address racism and promote racial harmony where all pupils know they are valued and important to the school’ .
The concept of drama and keeping pupils safe
There is a perception of drama dealing with issues in a safe way because it uses fictional contexts. It is almost as if by shifting to the fictional, a safe emotional distance is automatically created. It would be simplistic to believe that just because we work within fictional contexts, using fictional roles and events, that the experience for pupils is therefore immediately safe from the negative and destructive emotions of real life experiences. In teaching, whether working inside or outside fiction, we need to be constantly aware of the need to treat pupils in ways that demon- strate respect for persons and awareness of their particular social and emotional circumstances in that learning situation.
The relationship betweenin clusion and citizenship
The QCA booklet on Citizenship for the primary agegroups defines the area asfollows:
The PSHE and Citizenshipframework comprises four interrelated strands which suppot children’s personal and social development. The strands are:
● developing confidence andresponsibility and making the most oftheir abilities;
● preparing to play an active role as citizens;
● developing a healthy, saferlifestyle; and
● developing goodrelationships and respecting the differences between people.
Drama is an inclusive way of working because it is structured on the principle of
‘respect for persons’.
It makes demands upon the teacher to adopt a teaching and learning style that
generates positive social health in the group
The teacher models an attitude that protects pupils from humiliation and derision.
Dramas themselves may examine the concept of the outsider and the inclusive
solutions to problems.
Drama protects pupils through the roles they are given, the roles teachers take
and its analogous way of working
Drama is a method of delivering the Citizenship curriculum that embodies an inclusive approach.
E. How to Generate Empathy in a Drama
This theme focuses on developing children’s knowledge, understanding and
skills in four key aspects of social and emotional learning: empathy, self awareness, social skills and motivation. (DfES 2005, p. 3; emphasis added).
Empathy is often misconstrued.
The components of empathy
Component One – the cognitive component
Component Two – the affective component.
1). How to structure drama for empathetic response
Building the cognitive component
Framing the affective component
2). Planning the role of the teacher and of the pupils for generating empathy.
F. How to Link History and Drama
1) There are tensions between history and drama but they can be resolved by
adopting a conceptual framework that is clear about the learning intentions.
2) Research is a key element in planning roles from history.
3) Using a variety of sources helps to support the validity of the work.
4) It is important to be clear about what you mean when you use the word empathy in relation to drama and history teaching.
Using signifiers, not full costume, when taking on a role allows you to come in
and out of role.
5) Reference to modern day parallels allows you to make the connections between
then and now.
G. 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)
Drama is not just about 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.
What is the purpose of the assessment?
To:
-give feedback to the pupil.
-report to another teacher.
-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
Since 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 recognise achievement and to chart possible development. The prime requirement on teachers when doing assessments is to listen to the pupils and to look carefully at the activity. In the formative role of assessment we need to be feeding back to the pupils during and after the drama. We might stop a drama and say to everyone, Can you see what Nafisa’s question made the Soldier say? That is very important here. Let’s see what the outcome is. Then we are building esteem and boosting achievement.
How do we collect data more formally?
It is not easy and not necessarily useful to assess with reference to fixed lists of criteria. The approach has to be more than ticking a set of boxes, because if we do that we are often going to miss the point. The power of the language exchange is contextual. (See the example we look at later in this chapter, p. 87.).
A simple starting point might be to grasp the level of comprehension of a passage read to the class. One way of doing this is to go into role as a character from the book and take questions from the class. You will get a better understanding of what the class have understood than if you ask them questions about the passage. You can note afterwards key exchanges and contributions by members of the class. Assessment in this context is the detailed study of episodes of speaking and listening. We need to describe what we see and teachers need to operate as researchers of the dialogue in their classrooms.
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.
