How to Approach Speaking and Listening through Drama

Assalamualaikum. Wr. Wb.

This article is the summary of the book on the title "SPEAKING AND LISTENING THROUGH DRAMA 7-11" By : FRANCIS PRENDIVILLE AND NIGEL TOYE"

By : Rani Irawati (171230095)TBI 6-C

Microteaching summary

How to Approach Speaking and Listening through Drama

How to Begin with Teacher in Role

a.      Why use teacher in role?

Teacher has to give the explanation or knowledge interactively and have to understand easily. So, one of the technique is as a role of the text. For example, the teacher begin to role with explain about drama. 

b.      Teacher as Storyteller

Teacher must be a storyteller to explain the text of drama clearly. It will helps students imagine and understand how the story contained in the text. Then, students also must be involve themselves to role a play agree with the text. Whether, the student ask some question base on teacher explanation.

c.       Preparation for the Role

Begin by asking the class out of role what they want to ask the child and the order of those questions. This not only provides the teacher with some security in knowing what is going to be asked, at least initially, but also allows some minutes to refine the planning, so that the teacher can be specific in answering their questions.

d.      Teaching from within. Moving in and out of role – managing the drama and reflecting on it.

We are describing using role as ‘teaching from within’ because the teacher enters the drama world, but it is very important to step out of the fiction often and not let it run away with itself. When using TiR, the teacher is operating as a manager as well as participant and must spend as much time stopping the drama and moving out of role (OoR) to reflect on what is happening and give the pupils a chance to think through what they know and what they want to do.  It provides time and space for the teacher to assess and re-assess the learning possibilities.

e.       The requirements of working in role

The teacher, working in this way, is an important stimulus for the learning. It is not necessary to use role throughout the piece of work. It can be used judiciously to focus work at strategic points or to challenge particular aspects of the children’s perceptions whilst other techniques and conventions are used to support the work and develop it.

f.       Disturbing the class productively

The teacher’s function is to provide challenge and stimulus, to give problems and issues for the class to have to deal with. The drama is developed through a set of activities that build the class role, which is usually a corporate role. We have to help them into the drama, making them comfortable, and then disturb that comfort productively. The fact that, as in any good play, the class discover things as they go along provides the possibility of productive tension.

g.       Responding to your class

The art of authentic dialogue – needing to listen – two-way Responses. The class working as a community is the key to the use of drama as a teaching method. This is another reason that the class have more ownership.

h.      The teacher–taught relationship

In all teaching situations there exists a power relationship between the learners and the teacher. The learners are bound together as a group merely by being the learners and, of course, as there are more of them than there are of you, they hold the power.

How to Begin Planning Drama

a.      How to planning drama

In planning a drama we have to write the main frame, the scenario, in a way that indicates the relationship of the component parts and how the interactions provide tension and potential. For example, the frame of ‘The Governor’s Child.

b.      The ingredients of planning

Creating a drama is very much like cooking. It is easy to serve up a fast food meal, which has very little quality and goodness, but it is a more detailed, careful and thorough process to create a quality meal from scratch with good ingredients. Our ingredients include the following.

c.       Learning objectives

Learning is often focused through a key problem or issue for the children to tackle (Dorothy Heathcote’s ‘man in a mess’). This helps hand responsibility for learning to the pupils themselves. The learning can be in any of five areas: (language development, (spiritual,social,moral,cultural,personal), content, art form drama, thinking skills).

d.      Strong material

We need a stimulus to learning, to focus the exploration. This my be a piece of writing with key learning points, that are usually unresolved by the writer of the original material.

e.       Roles for the pupils

The class need to be framed up as a community, where the class work together supporting each other and working for the same aims. This builds their ability to communicate with and understand each other, the best basis for all learning.

f.       Tension points – risks – theater moments

Tension provides the momentum that pushes the class, demands a response, engages them. It involves taking calculated risks.

g.      Building context and belief

    Use of TiR can interest and build belief. The right choice of pupil roles helps that, especially if meaningful activity can be given to them to establish the roles, or the situation and place is properly realized and created for the imagination, as indicated in the previous paragraph.

h.     Decision-making – key developments in the drama which provide the class with challenges.

Many teacher decisions are built into the plan as givens, otherwise there will be no clear direction for the learning. As with many art forms, the constraints of the piece are critical to the quality of the product. 

i.        The drama conventions, strategies and techniques

There are many techniques for structuring the stages of a drama. Variety of activity for the class is important but each chosen technique must fit the moment and do a particular job.

j.        Planning as a collaborative activity

Planning for true learning is a social activity and needs to have more than one mind brought in to develop its full potential. In our team, one member may have the beginning of an idea and sketch that idea out, but usually turns to another member of the team for feedback and a planning discussion.

k.      Road testing the first version

Participants in dramas offer us as the teachers insights into ways of using an established structure. Once we have the beginnings of a drama we need to try ideas out.

l.        Types of drama

There are two main types of this sort of classroom drama that have evolved: ‘living through drama’, where the pupils face the events at a sort of life rate in the here and now, and ‘episodic drama’, or strategy-based drama, where the class are led by the teacher in creating situations and events through specific techniques or strategies and where chronology is more broken.

m.    What about endings to dramas?

The class must always go away feeling they have achieved something. They need to have solved the problem. If a final resolution is possible, for example, as a result of the forum, Max realizes he must think of other people, then let them win, but the class must have worked hard for it in putting the case across to him. You, in role as Max, will feel the pressure if they apply it well and can begin to signal that you do see you might be wrong always to think of yourself, that you are listening for the first time.

How to Generate Quality Speaking and Listening

a.      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.

b.      Dialogic teaching

Drama gives the pupils plenty of opportunities to think through speaking and listening. It promotes speech from the pupils because they want to speak, not because they are being asked to speak. Drama sets up more fluid situations with more possibilities. 

c.       What does dialogic teaching demand of the teacher?

Drama certainly demands these as well. One of the key changes that drama brings is a different position for the teacher. When the teacher uses role herself she is able to dialogue in a very different way with the pupils; she leaves teacher talk behind. 

d.      How is listening of high quality taught through drama?

In drama we can get new levels of listening because of the pupils’ interest in the problem-solving of the drama itself. The focus of the problem or dilemma that the pupils face embodies the nature of the language.

How to Use Drama for Inclusion and Citizenship

a.      What can drama offer in terms of inclusion?

Drama offers ‘new opportunities to pupils who may have experienced previous difficulties. For some pupils drama may offer experiences that are different to those they experience in the real world, for example taking the role of the outsider or the role of the one in charge.

b.      The concept of drama and keeping pupils safe

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. I

c.       Having a voice in society

If we plan for pupils’ ideas to be part of the drama lesson and we are creating a safe environment for this to happen, we are in effect giving them a voice to express their understandings and perspective on the world in which they live.

d.      Having no voice in society

What these pupils think, say and do often bears no relation to each other. They come into the drama lesson wary of saying what they think and reluctant to express a view or make suggestions that may be challenged by the majority or dominant group.

e.       The relationship between inclusion and citizenship

If drama by its very operational values is an inclusive way of working and if the contents of some dramas are in themselves examining the nature of the outsider, then Citizenship and PSHE are an integral part of the drama experience.

f.       How to approach Citizenship and PSHE through drama: practising being part of a society

Drama’s relationship to citizenship works on two levels, as a methodology that demonstrates aspects of citizenship in action and when the content is specifically focused upon issues of citizenship. 

g.      Drama as citizenship in action

The class work as a whole group, dividing into sub-groups for some  tasks, but experiencing their class as a democratic community.

h.      A drama for teaching about citizenship

We can see from a summary of the drama that a number of citizenship issues are immediately contextualized and presented to the children. Drama ensures that they have to explore them and get involved in them, to challenge and seek solutions in a number of ways.

How to Generate Empathy in a Drama

a.      What is empathy?

The word empathy is sprinkled liberally throughout education documentation and literature.

b.      A working definition of empathy

The connection between empathy, learning and drama, for if we can through the acting out of imagined realities generate empathetic behavior in pupils, they can not only learn from each other but also examine and refine their empathetic skills. 

c.       The components of empathy

     Components of the empathy, there are two : the cognitive component   and the effective component.

d.      Can we plan for generating empathy?

We can generate empathy through structuring roles and creating a drama frame where it is likely to happen. There are three parts to this process: the role of the teacher, the role of the pupils and the frame in which they are placed.

·         The role of the pupils

·         The role of the teacher

 How to Link History and Drama

a.      A problematic alliance

For drama there is a fatal attraction with history as a source for its content. Drama as a medium with which to engage with the past is established in theater, film, literature, radio and television.

b.      Dressing up to go back in time

One popular method of ‘empathizing’ in the teaching of history takes the form of dressing up in costumes from the past. Schools across the country plan days of ‘visiting the past’ by dressing up and sometimes actually going to historic sites in their costumes. 

c.       Using drama to make meaning of the past

As a teacher planning a history-related drama this does not mean abandoning facts and reasons. We need to research our history and bring the fruits of that research to the lesson.

Three elements of historical inquiry:

·         A concern with facts

·         A concern with reasons

·         A concern with meanings

d.      Balancing the tensions – stories and history

Much of drama in education operates from creating fictions and telling stories. Of course this is not necessarily in conflict with history as we can approach individuals’ viewpoints in history as their stories of the past. Essentially history is story; it began as oral history and is a shared story of society.

e.       Setting up a historian’s frame

The drama begins as a history lesson, with the idea of taking on roles in the lesson introduced from the beginning. The pupils’ first role is of high status and expertise:

In the drama you will have several roles, one of them will be historians and at other times you will be the people we are concerned with in this drama – that is, the poor street children of the 1870s in London.

*Let’s start with your role as historians. Before we do, you need to tell me:

What is a historian?

What do historians do?

What skills do they need?

f.       Meetings with teacher in role

It is important to find out what the class will ask you; by doing it this way you can get a sense of what they are interested in and at the same time feel prepared for the initial couple of questions.

g.      Meeting the boys in the photograph

Part of the process of setting this up is the modelling of roles by the teacher before asking pupils to take on this responsibility. They will have seen you taking the work seriously and you need to make clear the demands that will be made upon those who decide to do it.

h.      Setting up the boys

Away from the rest of the class (you might do this at a break time or lunchtime), those who have decided to be the boys meet with you.

i.        Whole class participation – a sculpture of children living on the streets

In this drama each frame takes the class closer to the children who are the subject of our historical investigations. The next task is to engage the whole class as a sculpture of the children living on the streets.

j.        Whole class improvisation

We can use the sculpture and thought-tracking work as a starting point for a whole class improvisation or ‘living through’ part of the drama. The class remake the sculpture and this time TiR enters into the work which now takes on a ‘living through’ mode of working. 

k.      History as a metaphor for now – the global dimension

It is important that we make the connections between issues in history where they remain issues for us over time. The issue of street children is an example of one of these. In Life on the Streets: Children’s Stories the BBC published stories of homeless or underprivileged children from St Petersburg, La Paz and Delhi. Their stories echo the issues that are raised in the history drama – exclusion, poverty and survival.

How to Begin Using Assessment of Speaking and Listening (and Other English Skills) through Drama?

a.      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.

b.      Drama as a context for speaking and listening

     Negotiating and co-operating with others in the creation of drama work and the roles within it. Expressing imaginative ideas when contributing to the drama work development. Taking and using effectively the opportunities within the drama that require oral and aural communication. Modifying, selecting and relating language and vocabulary to the changing roles, moods and situations in the drama work. 

c.        What is the purpose of the assessment?

To: give feedback to the pupil, report to another teacher, and report to a parent.

d.      Formative assessment – honoring what children can do

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.

e.       How do we collect data more formally?

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.

f.       Other issues to consider

We have to manage the exchanges in a drama so that the naturally dominant voices in the classroom learn to listen and we allow others space to talk. However, there is an unhelpful myth about speaking and listening that speaking is the major partner, with the accompanying vain aim for classroom talk that all must contribute equally.

g.      Capturing the samples of speaking and listening

There is readily available technology that can record work and allow us to consider it at greater length after the event, particularly video recording. This is an approach we have been taking for a long time now; it provides evidence that we use to assess our own performance as teachers working in drama. Again, if teachers are paired to do the assessment, one can handle the camera while the other teaches.

h.      Talk for writing – the wholeness of communication

In a school with a strong policy on speaking and listening there will be major gains in other areas. We can get clear evidence for assessment of the effectiveness of speaking and listening, particularly the latter, from other forms of communication like writing or art work. In addition the writing itself can benefit.