approach speaking and listening through drama

Resume Part One: How  to Approach Speaking And Listening Through Drama

How to Begin with 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.

You are not effective as a teacher if you do not at some point engage fully with the drama yourself by using TiR. Remaining as teacher, intervening as teacher, side-coaching, structuring the drama from the outside, and/or sending the class off in groups to create their own drama must at best restrict and at worst negate any opportunity for the teacher to teach effectively. It is far more effective for the teacher to engage with the drama form as artist and be part of the creative act.

It is very useful in a Literacy lesson for the teacher to use roles from the text. The very fact that you take on a key role can provide important ways of defining and exploring the text. How does hot-seating open up the ideas and issues of a story to the children? Let us look more closely at the Hermia role. The teacher as a storyteller is something all primary school teachers will recognise. Good teachers slip easily into it and use it frequently. In its most observable guise it occurs when teaching the whole class and engaging them with a piece of fiction. 

The pupil’s role will be dominated by listening and this will be interlaced with questioning, responding and interpreting the meaning and sense of the fiction. The teacher’s role will be to communicate the text in a lively and interesting manner, holding their attention and engaging their imagination. In making judgements about the quality of this method of teaching, the critical questions will be around whether the content of the story interests the class and holds their attention, whether the delivery of the teacher, i.e. voice, intonation and interpretive skills, are good and, where relevant, whether accompanying illustrations have impact and resonance. For many pupils the times spent listening to their teacher as storyteller will remain as significant moments in their education. The connection between the teacher as storyteller and the teacher using drama, lies in the fact that they both use the generation of imagined realities in order to teach.

In preparing to be this kind of storyteller the teacher must have made particular decisions about this child. 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. The questions will, to a certain extent, be predictable because they are largely generated by the circumstances of the drama so far and the role the class has taken, which will be that of anxious parents.

Of course, all these things are possible from the text of a book; however, the pupils will be defining what is important, which are the most important questions to be asked and how to handle the mood of the storyteller, whose views on the events may be very different from those of the audience whom he addresses. Be clear about his attitude towards being left behind, what has happened and how he feels about it. Then run the hot-seating. The dialogue might go something like this:

Class member in role as parent: Where are the other children? TiR as the boy left behind: It’s not fair! Parent: What do you mean, it’s not fair? The boy: Them! They get to go into the fairground and I don’t! Some friends I’ve got. So much for Joe and Kerry. Why couldn’t they wait? They could see I had a stone in my shoe and had to take it out. I couldn’t keep up.

Stop and come out of role and discuss what they have found out. Negotiate what they need to ask next. At this point some questions about what the little boy saw will emerge. Then go back into role. 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. This OoR working is as important as the role itself. It manages the role and therefore the drama; it manages the risk, establishes where the class is and helps pupils believe in the drama. It provides time and space for the teacher to assess and re-assess the learning possibilities.

How to Begin Planning Drama

How to begin a plan – facing the problems of starting from scratch 

● The frame – the way the elements link together to provide viewpoint for the class 

● The elements of planning including: learning objectives, a stimulus to learning, roles for the teacher and for the children, how to create tension points, building context and belief in the drama, the decision-making for the class, the choice of strategies and techniques 

● Planning with someone else 

● Road testing the first version. 

Dramas develop through their usage, like the oral tradition of storytelling; they are tried and adjusted, refined and edited. Drama for learning has to be grown slowly.  With this organic nature lie the possibilities for the class to contribute to the way the drama turns out. We must plan gaps for pupils’ ideas, we must be careful not to plan the pupils out of the drama. There has to be a balance of freedom within the drama for new possibilities and decisions for the children and the teacher structure that provides the constraints and necessary dynamic of the piece, the scaffolding that holds it up.

The frame of a drama, we are using the idea of a frame as a way of seeing key decisions in planning. It is originally defined by Erving Goffman (Goffman, 1975) as the way a situation develops, or in our case is constructed, to give particular viewpoints and ways of understanding the meaning of that situation. The frame is a dynamic, interrelated and complex weaving of all the other ingredients. It has pre-text, which is derived from the stimulus material (see Figure 2.1). 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.

The drama has now taken shape. The aim of the drama is now clearly focused, to have the children explore and consider a boy’s unacceptable behaviour and look at a parent–child relationship, to give advice and solve problems. The resolution of the issues is the final stage of the drama. How will we make that happen? Usually we use forum theatre to set up the class taking over the wronged role, against the role who most needs to learn to change, to see and understand something important about themselves. In this case that is Max, who will always remain a TiR. The pupils have to show him the error of his ways and how other people, his mother, his sister, really feel about him. Other techniques and roles are used along the way to build the class’s understanding of Max so that they can best see how to help him see his responsibility to others, to change from his totally self-centred way.

In any drama there will only be one or two main decisions that have to be taken by the pupils; by main decisions we mean where the direction and outcome of the decision is crucial. 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. What we embed as non-negotiable in the planning of a drama tightens the focus and ensures a concentration on the particularity of the main event. As successful dramas move from the particular to the universal this makes certain the contexts and dilemmas are not nebulous or indistinct.

The lack of space gets in the way of quality learning and stifles commitment for many of the pupils if it is like that at all times in the drama; there are times when tight planning is necessary. It has to be recognised that in drama lessons the dynamic of teacher planning and pupil response must have fluidity. The teacher may plan for little space for pupils’ decisions in some parts of the lesson and more in other parts. Highly constrained planning is often a feature of the early phases of the drama lesson where common agreements are necessary in order to build the context. In these early phases of the drama lesson the pupils do not have enough information to make key decisions. Later in the drama there can be more space and more possibilities for pupil contribution. It may be better to use a drama where tight planning is the norm throughout because the class are inexperienced and not ready to take on the responsibility of key decisions.

Planning is about creating fictions to allow children to see the possibility of change in life. The class should always have the opportunity to make choices, to see alternatives in the way we approach situations, to look at the consequences of actions, but they have to be far enough into the drama to have belief in the situation, knowledge of their position and the understanding of the roles before they can properly make decisions. These three elements are directly influenced by the constraints or givens planned into the drama by the teacher. 

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. This functions as a means to bounce ideas, to see flaws and to provide insights into the potential for learning.

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. Of course, most dramas have a mixture of the styles, but the younger or more inexperienced a class, the more ‘living through’ will dominate to create the tensions and challenges more directly. The more sophisticated the group, the more they will look in a more abstract, artistic and less realistic way. 

How to Generate Quality Speaking and Listening

Authentic dialogue – teacher and pupil talk with a difference

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.

the low level of cognitive demand in many classroom questions; the continuing prevalence of questions which remain closed despite our claims to be interested in fostering more open forms of enquiry; the habitual and perhaps unthinking use of bland all purpose praise rather than feedback of the kind which diagnoses and informs; the seeming paradox of pupils working everywhere in groups but rarely as groups; the rarity of autonomous pupil-led discussion and problem-solving; and the tendency of classrooms to be places of risk and ambiguity rather than security and clarity, in which pupils devise strategies to cope and get by rather than engage. (Alexander, 2005, p. 14).

In schools too often speaking and listening is seen as question and answer, usually the teacher questioning and the pupils answering. What we see in classrooms is very often the IRF approach, where the teacher initiates, a child responds and a teacher gives feedback. Here’s one teacher describing how this limited exchange works: ‘A colleague, observing me, pointed out that I have a technique, which I was not aware of, where, if I ask a question and I do not get the right answer, I rephrase the question, making it simpler and can repeat that simplification until they do get it,’ describing this as if it were good practice. This approach limits the pupil’s speaking and listening engagement with the teacher, as well as preventing engaging with, and listening to, other pupils. We need to see pupils initiating the talk much more with pupils asking questions rather than the teacher. Too often talk is this ‘recitation’ (Alexander, 2005, p. 34) where teacher speaks most and pupils listen or only answer questions. The resulting classroom games include:

● guessing what is in the teacher’s head – pupils avoiding having to answer the question 

● linguistic tennis – where it is about getting rid of the ball quickly not about developing an exchange of ideas 

● point scoring –  getting the answers right or getting them wrong and feeling a failure.

What does dialogic teaching demand of the teacher? It demands changes – in the handling of classroom space and time; in the balance of talk, reading and writing; in the relationship between speaker and listeners; and in the content and dynamics of talk itself. (Alexander, 2004) 

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. 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.

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. In order to carry out all of these speaking activities they are, of course, inevitably developing their listening and we see this in all its powerful and active modes, listening that is: open, sensitive, reflective, receptive, supportive, attentive, collective, creative. This is because each pupil has to make sense of what the teacher and the rest of the pupils are gradually building up around them.

 How to Use Drama for Inclusion and Citizenship

Drama’s inclusion is embedded, first, in its dialogical approach to teaching and learning. This is reflected in two contracts that form part of its rubric. These are:

a) Everyone will take part, including the teacher both in and out of role.

b) We will treat members of the group with respect by listening to them and allowing them to express their views without fear of derision or humiliation.

Secondly, the subject content of dramas can have specific learning potential to give a voice to groups whose ideas may not be heard easily in the real world. More of this later. So inclusion will always be found in drama’s approach to learning and it may also be part of its subject content.

What can drama offer in terms of inclusion?

● Drama offers ‘new opportunities to pupils who may have experienced previous difficulties’ (Ofsted, 2006, p. 7). 

● Drama takes account of pupils’ varied life experiences and needs by using fictional contexts and roles which enable pupils to explore the underlying issues safely. 

● 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.

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. In teaching, whether working inside or outside fiction, we need to be constantly aware of the need to treat pupils in ways that demonstrate respect for persons and awareness of their particular social and emotional circumstances in that learning situation.

Having a voice in society. If we return to the central idea in drama of creating an ‘as if’ world we see that it is a world that is, at least in part, created by the participants through their ideas. As we have seen in the planning section, good planning creates gaps and spaces for pupils to input their ideas. the pupils who have the confidence to express an opinion in the drama lesson. There is a congruence between what we think, what we say and what we do and these factors have to be seen against the background of the society in which the pupil lives and the events of their lives; they bring these dimensions into the drama lesson. Their self-esteem will also be an important factor; the more confident pupil with a highly developed sense of self will be more willing to express their viewpoint.

Let us examine this more closely. In the drama lesson the individual’s responses have three components:

● What we think (thoughts) 

● What we say (utterances) 

● What we do (actions)

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. The QCA booklet on Citizenship for the primary age groups defines the area as follows:

The PSHE and Citizenship framework comprises four interrelated strands which support children’s personal and social development. The strands are:

● developing confidence and responsibility and making the most of their abilities; 

● preparing to play an active role as citizens; 

● developing a healthy, safer lifestyle; and 

● developing good relationships and respecting the differences between people.

How to approach Citizenship and PSHE through drama: practising being part of a society. To a limited extent they can have experience in the community as part of their school experience. They can make trips out or relevant visitors can be brought in to make pupils aware of the important structures and ideas that community involves. However, running a project like these, having trips out and visitors to school cannot happen every day. Indeed, if children get very committed to a real-world project there is a dilemma for the school. How can they enable the children to develop a real project very far? The curriculum restricts how far any project can go and if the political implications become too great the school would have to stop the work.

A drama for teaching about citizenship, If we want the pupils to experience a particular political idea or social situation, the fictional world of drama can provide that situation efficiently and with an immediacy that reality cannot provide. Whilst the fiction also protects the pupils into learning at the same time and allows all avenues to be explored without the real consequences that we indicated above. 

How to Generate Empathy in a Drama

Drama is often promoted as a teaching and learning methodology that generates empathy in pupils, yet there is little debate about exactly what is meant by this idea. The word empathy is sprinkled liberally throughout education documentation and literature. For example, the Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning (SEAL) documents that are, at the time of writing, being trialled in the UK make reference to empathy (SEAL, 2006). 

A working definition of empathy. We need a definition that not only belongs to the real world but can be replicated inside the drama lesson. Pupils will then be able to empathise without having to bear witness to or have the actual life experiences of those to whom they are directing their empathy. In this way we protect pupils from actual real life experiences and yet generate the opportunity to empathise with those caught up in these experiences.

The components of empathy :

The cognitive component. Understanding the other’s feelings and the ability to take their perspective

The affective component. This is an observer’s appropriate emotional response to another person’s emotional state

The Framing the affective component – thought-tracking and dealing with the Workhouse Master We return to the drama. The pupils voice the thoughts of Martha as she passes. They don’t have to speak but they must listen to each other and speak as if they were Martha as she approaches the workhouse and the Workhouse Master. This strategy of conscience alley will enable the class to sympathise with Martha’s circumstances.

Pupil 1: I’m frightened. Pupil 2: My baby will die if I don’t go here. Pupil 3: Must look like I can work hard. Pupil 4: I don’t want them to take my baby.is is an observer’s appropriate emotional response to another person’s emotional state. 

The cognitive stage The first stage of structuring for empathising is the cognitive stage. In the example given it has three components:

1 The role – Martha represented by a pupil walking down the conscience alley. 

2 The attitude of Martha as negotiated and agreed with by the class and teacher. 

Martha’s purpose – to enter the workhouse and save the baby.

The affective stage The second stage of structuring for empathising is the affective stage. The three components this time are the pupils’ role, the context in which they find themselves and their witnessing of Martha’s treatment by Mards, the Workhouse Master. 

6. How to Link History and Drama

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 theatre, film, literature, radio and television. People represent and interpret the past in many different ways, including: in pictures, plays, films, reconstructions, museum displays, and fictional and nonfiction accounts. Interpretations reflect the circumstances in which they are made, the available evidence, and the intentions of those who make them (for example, writers, archaeologists, historians, filmmakers). (QCA/DfES, 2000).

Dressing up to go back in time. One popular method of ‘empathising’ 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. Alternatively, schools will suspend the usual timetable and devote lessons and other activities to a particular period in time. Teachers may even be locked into roles from the past (one could almost say trapped in roles from the past), thinking, misguidedly in our view, this will generate ‘empathy’ in the pupils with people from history.

Using drama to make meaning of the past

Let us begin by looking at three elements of historical enquiry:

● A concern with facts 

● A concern with reasons 

● A concern with meaning

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

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. 

Whatever the difficulties, we must consider assessing speaking and listening for very good reasons: 

● How do we promote better speaking and listening unless we assess and reflect on the changes in pupils’ handling of the medium? 

● Are we being fair to those pupils who demonstrate ability in this area if we do not honour their abilities, especially if they lack success in other areas?

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)

What is the purpose of the assessment? 

To:

● give feedback to the pupil 

● report to another teacher 

● report to a parent

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. Some teachers object to the use of video recording on the grounds that it distorts the drama process. Our experience is contrary to that. If it is used frequently and if it is negotiated with the class, they soon forget the camera and the work continues in its spontaneity. In fact, if anything, we find that it helps raise the status of the work and aids concentration levels. 

Analysing video recordings of drama we need to look at issues relating to:

● the language used 

● the non-verbal communication

● proximity to the teacher – who are the invisible pupils, the outsiders of the drama who do not seem in any way engaged? 

● the empathetic and affective tendencies of pupils, their speech and their actions as they intervene.