Drama

Drama in the Elementary Classroom

[|Drama Warm Ups and Circle Games]

== [|Improv Games] ==

[|Improvs and Warm-Ups]

[|Sample Drama Games]

[|The Drama Notebook]

Drama Strategies: ([])

Cross the Room

 * Directions:**

Students stand in a line on one side of the room, while the teacher reads out lines that all begin with “Cross the room if…”

For example:

…if you live more than a half-hour from school.

…if you have stage fright.

…if you play an instrument.

…if you have traveled abroad.


 * How Could I Use It?**

Teachers might use this exercise as an ice breaker, as a way to assess background knowledge on, or experience with, a topic before studying it or as a way to gauge students’ opinions after they have learned about an issue.

Though it can be used with sensitive topics, keep in mind that, since it requires every student to participate, you might offer students the option of “crossing the room” to a special spot if they are not sure how to answer a question or are uncomfortable doing so.


 * Times Example:**

One way to use this activity is as a warm-up before reading a Times article on a topic about which you know students will have experience and opinions.

For instance, you might use the 2011 Bits blog post, [|“Teenagers Tell Researchers It’s a Cruel, Cruel Online World”] as part of a lesson around cyberbullying. You could ask students to cross the room if…

…they have a profile on Facebook.

…they’ve asked their friends for advice about how to handle a situation online.

…they’ve ever lied about their age to access a site off-limits to someone their age at the time.

…someone has been mean to them online.

…they’ve written something online that has been taken a different way than they intended.

…their parents check up on their online activities.

If you had students answer these questions before they saw the blog post, they would realize as soon as they started reading that all of the questions refer to information in the piece. The activity, then, acts as a kind of “anticipation guide” or “activation of schema” that many literacy experts suggest can act as scaffolding to help students understand informational text.

Spectrogram

 * Directions:**

Participants are told that the room is split into three categories: Yes, No and Maybe.

As questions are asked, students answer by moving to one part of the room or another depending on their point of view. Questions should start off general, then gradually get more specific. Students should move in silence; discussion is saved for later. The last question should be the most provocative, or the one that gets most closely to the issue you’d like them to wrestle with. For example, a final question in a series of questions on climate change could be, “Who thinks global warming is a hoax?”

Once students move for this final question, there will be two or three distinct groups that share the same opinion. Have the students in each group discuss their points of view, and select a representative who will speak on their behalf. Have them take turns stating their case, making sure first that they accurately represent the views of their groups.


 * How Could I Use This?**

Like “Cross the Room,” this exercise could be used either as a warm-up or as a way to have students grapple with something they have just learned. It might also serve as an alternative to doing a class debate.

To take the activity further, you might have students do the exercise in the role of a character, historical figure or as a member of a different demographic. For instance, for the climate change example, they might be assigned the roles of particular political figures, scientists or other stakeholders who might have nuanced thoughts on the topic.

You might also invite students to switch roles at least once during the exercise so that they have a chance to experience another point of view — a basic tenet of role-playing.


 * Times Examples:**

You can use this idea with content in any subject area — whether you’re teaching about [|plagiarism in the digital era], the [|value of algebra], [|the presidential election] or a [|work of literature.]

One way to find useful topics for this exercise is to scan the [|Room for Debate blog] to find issues that interest or affect your students.

For instance, in a recent post, nine people weigh in on the question [|Can School Performance Be Measured Fairly?], a topic that certainly affects students’ lives.

You could draw questions from the posts like “Should teachers be evaluated based on how their students do on standardized tests?” or “Have the standardized tests you’ve taken been a fair measure of what you know and can do?” and have students react to and discuss them.

To take the exercise still further, you could invite students to take the points of view of different stakeholders (students, teachers, administrators, parents, politicians, etc.), and repeat the exercise. How did their answers change?

Object Monologues
Students create and present a monologue (an extended speech spoken by one person usually addressed to someone, either the reader, spectators, or an imagined second character) as if from the point of view of an object they have read about in a newspaper article, work of literature or historical account. Ask students: What would this object say if it could talk and wanted to tell us about its history? Where has it been? What it has done? What events it has witnessed? Tell them that the object should tell about its past and present, but also about its hopes for the future. Each monologue should have a clear beginning, middle and end, and should be written and delivered in the first person (“I” and “me”). Once students have finished writing, have each practice delivering his or her monologue in pairs or small groups until they have a dramatic presentation they feel befits the object and its story. For example, how would [|this object] “speak” differently than [|this one]? (Images from, respectively, [|“New Fossils Indicate Early Branching of Human Family Tree”] and [|“A Lou Gehrig Treasure Trove.”]) Though this exercise may at first seem silly, it can help students approach complex texts with purpose and help them navigate details and description. The exercise also encourages students to raise questions and to research further. For students who are reluctant readers or English-language learners, the final monologue might also achieve something similar to a traditional report, but in a more inviting way. This strategy actually asks students to do something very similar to what the British Museum has been doing in its popular series “History of the World in 100 Objects,” (about which we have a [|lesson plan]). For instance, what is the cultural history of the humble [|compact disc], or the perennially popular [|Rubik’s Cube]? Students can write monologues from the point of view of anything from a famous work of art to an object that is part of a current news story. For instance, an object from the [|“Byzantium and Islam” show at the Metropolitan Museum] could tell a piece of the story of the Byzantine Empire in the Eastern Mediterranean, while one of the [|objects or images] at the [|Buffalo Bill Historical Center] could illuminate the history and mythology of the American West. Each [|Olympic torch], similarly, could tell a story about local tradition and national character. [|Search The Times] by artist to find other images or objects that might work with your curriculum. Doing the exercise with current news may need a bit of tweaking depending on what event or issue you choose, but if yours is a classroom in which students regularly report on current events, you might invite them to do it this way once and report from the point of view of an object in a news story rather than simply recounting a summary of what happened. What would, say, an ear of corn tell us about [|this year’s drought]?
 * Directions**
 * How Can I Use It?**
 * Times Examples**