Teaching of Drama in the Primary School, The

Brian George Woolland

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317895961
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

The importance of drama in primary school has been elevated in recent years, with many teachers continuing to make it high priority in their teaching. They recognise that it can enrich children's understanding of the world and motivate and encourage them in other curriculum work. This lively and readable book offers a blend of theory and practice based on the author's own considerable experience as a drama teacher. He provides numerous examples taken from work with children in schools, which will help teachers to prepare for drama sessions in the classroom. The book examines the role of drama as a subject in its own right as well as its role in delivering other aspects of the curriculum within primary education. It assumes no prior knowledge of teaching drama and will therefore be useful to trainee teachers and in-service teachers wanting to make use of drama in their daily teaching.

Part One
The Place of Drama in the Primary School

Chapter 1
Introduction

The purpose of this book is

1. To consider the importance of drama in the primary school, both as a subject in its own right and as a means of motivating and enhancing learning in other curriculum areas.
2. To suggest a coherent approach to the teaching and use of drama in primary schools.
3. To offer a range of examples of good practice.
4. To look at ways and means of creating successful and exciting theatrical presentations and productions.

The book is aimed at teachers (and prospective teachers) in primary and middle schools. The approaches to teaching drama suggested here should hold good with whatever age group is being taught. There is, however, very little published about teaching drama with children in their first years of schooling (in Key Stage One) and I have therefore included a specific section on working with children in Years One and Two, attempting to show how some of the ideas described elsewhere in the book (which might at first glance appear slightly inaccessible) can be readily adapted for use with this age group.

Hopefully, the book will be of use not only to teachers who have never taught drama (and who, perhaps, feel a little anxious about making a start) but also to those with considerable expertise. The book asserts that drama is an important subject in its own right and should be taught as such; but it also recognises that drama has a vitally important part to play in developing the whole school curriculum.

The book attempts to show that there are many opportunities within the school for sharing drama work; that you don't have to wait for a major School Play in order to develop good presentational work; that the valuable exploratory activities of high quality classroom work need not and should not be threatened by presenting work to an audience; that the School Play itself (too often an annual merry-go-round of fraught tempers and frayed costumes) can be a joyous event.

Using this book

The book is organised into six parts:

Part One examines the place of drama in the primary school:

1. How does drama fit into the National and the school?
2. What is drama? And what constitutes quality in educational drama?
3. Why we should find time and space for drama.

Part Two, Drama in Practice, looks at the practice and processes of teaching drama. Although each of the four chapters are subdivided into sections for easy reference, it's important not to think of any of the techniques referred to here as self-contained. Good drama is not about having loads of good ideas, but about teasing out the meanings and the significance in what is often one very simple idea.

Here, as elsewhere throughout the book, there are numerous examples given of work in practice. These are all genuine examples of work with children in primary schools (in a wide variety of different types of catchment areas) throughout the country. The examples are given with the intention of providing a stimulus or a framework, as jumping-off points from which it should be easy to develop your own work. If initially, as you're building up your own confidence, you want to use these examples as they appear here, do so - but try not to see them as prescriptive; make them your own.

Part Three focuses on using drama with children in Key Stage One. Many of the ideas and approaches suggested throughout the book can be easily adapted for use with young children. This section picks out a number of activities which are particularly useful, and suggests ways of adapting some of the techniques and strategies suggested elsewhere which at first seem more appropriate for use with older children.

Part Four is concerned with performance and production. What do we mean by 'presentation' and 'production'? What place does this work have in school? How can we create a piece of theatre to be shared with others without losing the benefits of the more spontaneous and exploratory work we do in educational drama?

Performance work should be an educationally productive and exciting part of the work of a school. Whilst educational drama and theatrical presentation are not synonymous, they are usefully complementary.

These two chapters look at all aspects of drama presentation in the primary school - from small group work in the classroom, through Assemblies to the School Play. Good presentations and plays should feed into the work of the school, motivating work of real excellence in all curriculum areas, becoming both a celebration of the work of the school and a driving force behind that work. It is not, however, the intention of this book to suggest that high quality drama work necessarily culminates in presentation or production.

This part includes specific suggestions about scripts, lighting, masks and costumes. It also contains a detailed example of how a drama project could be developed into a major School Play involving every child in the school.

Part Five looks at planning and assessment. It attempts to tackle the 'I've run out of ideas' syndrome. It offers a way of planning drama work which enables you to think ahead whilst avoiding the pitfalls of making the work over-prescriptive; it suggests how to build in links with other curriculum areas at the planning stage. It contains a detailed account of the planning that might go into an extended drama-based project and a section on evaluation and assessment in drama including self-assessment.

Part Six - the Appendix - comprises a resource bank, offering General Advice.

It contains:

• suggestions of where to find useful resource materials
• suggestions about using video in drama work
• a set of policy guidelines which might be adopted by primary schools
• a list of useful story books
• a brief selection of poems which lend themselves to use in drama
• an annotated bibliography
• lists of useful addresses.

The National Curriculum

Drama - including role-play - is central in developing all major aspects of English in the primary school.¹

At the time of writing schools in England and Wales are in a state of considerable upheaval; the establishment of a National Curriculum is one of many changes occurring within the education system. The situation is similar in many countries all over the world where teachers are having to think hard about educational practices and the theory which underpins that practice.

There are some who have argued that drama is in danger of becoming marginalised. It appears neither as a core nor foundation subject in the National Curriculum for England and Wales. Some people have found this omission both worrying and demoralising.

There are, however, some grounds for optimism; the National Curriculum may not recognise drama as a core subject, but it does contain numerous references to it. Whereas before the advent of the National Curriculum it was possible (if not sensible) for a headteacher to argue that an individual teacher should not be teaching/using drama, it is now clear that any school which is genuinely delivering the whole of the National Curriculum would have to be using drama; and I would argue strongly that it should be taught both as a subject in its own right and used as a learning medium for teaching other subjects.

There is substantial evidence that active participation in drama can enhance learning in most curriculum areas.² The very fact that we have specific Attainment Targets for Speaking and Listening should encourage many hitherto reluctant teachers to make time and space for drama, or at least for drama-type activities. It is difficult to see how much of the work required by the Programmes of Study in the statutory Order for English can be achieved without using drama.

The great value of using drama to motivate and enhance work in other curriculum areas is underlined by the various curriculum documents - for Maths, Science, Technology, History, Religious Education, Geography - all of which refer directly or indirectly to the usefulness of role play or drama.

The National Curriculum Council has published a large poster entitled 'Drama in the National Curriculum'³ which identifies specific references to drama in the Statutory Orders for English, Science, Technology and History; it also indicates where these elements are explored further in the Non-Statutory Guidance documents for English, Science, Mathematics and Technology. So long as you don't view the poster as indicating that drama is primarily a service tool for these other subjects it can be useful.

Teachers who have used drama as a learning medium, a way of deepening understanding, as a means of delivering other aspects of the curriculum, will not need specific clauses in curriculum documents to encourage them in their work; but the clauses are there - and the National Curriculum Council poster referred to above points out some of the more interesting specific references.

Chapter 5 deals with drama and the whole curriculum in depth, offering specific examples of how drama can be used in the teaching of history, science, technology and maths.

Drama as a subject

Drama deals with fundamental questions of language, interpretation and meaning. These are central to the traditional aims and concerns of English teaching . . . We would stress, however, that the inclusion of drama methods in English should not in any way replace drama as a subject for special study.⁴

However successfully we can use drama in teaching other subjects we should never forget that it is also a subject in its own right.

Dramatic fiction is the form of fiction with which children are most familiar. Very few children arrive in school without a wealth of experience of drama on television; many act out simple, but important, dramas in their own play. A number of children come to school without having ever been read to; their vernacular knowledge of drama and dramatic fiction is far greater than of written forms - but it is also very uncritical. Drama, in one form or another, is an important part of their lives; we should give children opportunities to understand and make their own dramas as well as simply enjoying it passively.

Drama in schools is a practical artistic subject. It ranges from children's structured play, through classroom improvisations and performances of specially devised material to performance of Shakespeare.⁵

The Arts Council's Drama in Schools booklet⁶ offers some excellent advice on drama in the National Curriculum, including a curriculum model. The booklet includes suggested programmes of study and end of key stage statements. Every school in the country should have received a copy. If you would like your own copy the address to write to is given in the Appendix. The booklet asserts that 'the three activities which constitute the subject of drama in schools are making, performing and responding'. Although I have not used the same format in this book, the classification is a useful one and the suggestions in this book should be seen as complementary to the programmes of study suggested by the Arts Council.

Throughout the book I argue that presentation and performance work (of various kinds) is complementary to good classroom drama work, and indeed that drama and theatre are inextricably bound up with each other.

But all of this begs one vitally important question: What do we mean by drama?

What do we mean by drama?

For too long the subject has been surrounded by vagueness; attempts to evaluate drama have been shrouded in a veil of subjectivity. Of course there are extraordinary personal, subjective benefits to be had from being involved in good drama; but this should not invalidate attempts to look objectively at the skills involved which are unique to drama. Many of the claims made for drama have tended to be along the lines that

• it encourages self-expression
• it makes people more sensitive to others it promotes an awareness of the self
• it encourages co-operation and collaboration.

It may well do all these things, but many teachers would claim that similar intentions underlie all their work in the primary school. If we are to argue strongly for drama to be given its place in the curriculum, it is essential to ask the qu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Editor's perface
• PART ONE The Place of Drama in the Primary School
• PART TWO Drama in Practice
• PART THREE Early Years
• PART FOUR Performance and Production
• PART FIVE Planning and Assessment
• Appendix: General Advice
• Index