drama

Breakout Session: Drama Response to Text by Susan Pattison and Shalene Herron
**DRAMA AND LITERACY**
 * .Thank you, Ma'am by Langston Hughes (available in Friends anthology)


 * Drama is an active or expressive strategy which can be used to assess reading comprehension. However, it must be recognized that drama is also a strand of arts education and must be honoured that way as well.
 * We will be discussing the uses of drama to reinforce literacy and specifically assessment in reading comprehension.
 * We will also discuss the arts education strand of drama and will relate the two different aspects of drama to each other venn diagram.

**ENACTMENT STRATEGIES (Wilhelm, 2002)**

Creating situations in which we imagine to learn. Happening in the Now of time. Helps to get to deeper meanings – artistic, aesthetic and metaphorical.

Benefits


 * Highly engaging for students
 * Make reading a transformative experience
 * Flexible
 * Assist students before, during and after reading
 * Use the social nature of learning.
 * Students think and imagine
 * Motivating
 * Help learning conditions flow

Think Vygotsky and zone of proximal development – you have to assist so students can do it on their own. Learning is situational – you cannot separate what is learned from how it is learned and used.


 * RESERVATIONS**


 * My students won’t do this
 * I can’t act
 * I’ll lose control of the class
 * What if things take a direction that I don’t like
 * How does this fit into the curriculum?
 * This is too much fun to be good learning.
 * Best way to learn about this is to simply do it!

**ACTIVITIES:**

//__Before Reading:__// How many of you have ever done something and have been caught? I want you to think of one word for what you felt. Write that word down on a piece of paper and hide it somewhere in your desk.

How many of you have had something stolen from you? I want you to think of one word for what you felt. Write that word down on a piece of paper and hide it somewhere in your desk.

//__During Reading__//

By yourself, I would like you to read the first page of “Friends”. When you have finished reading the story, please take out your papers and think about how the papers relate to the story.

What we’re going to do today is examine the first page of this story as a drama. When we finish our drama today, we will have a better understanding of the two main characters in the novel.

First activity: Tableaux


 * Into pairs
 * A and B
 * A’s are the lady, B’s the boy

__Choose one line from the first paragraph and make it into a tableaux.__


 * Are there any clues about you physically in that paragraph?

Use the information you can find to enact what is happening. You have three minutes. I will ask you to form a tableaux about the situation and while you are in the situation, I would like you to think about what you would say when you are in that situation.

Call into tableaux. Have them tableaux in two or three groups so all can see what the others are doing. Ask them why they have chosen certain postures, etc.

Now, in this next section of the drama, you are going to reform your tableau and then I will ask you to tell me what you’re thinking.

Tableaux. Each group presents individually. Tap and talk.

Now, I am going to ask you to do the tableau that would have happened at 10:45 -- before this incident took place. (Why do I say 10:45? Simple comprehension question) Here are some questions you might have to consider.


 * Do you have to be in the same place?
 * Are the two of you connected somehow? Physically? Emotionally?
 * What are you planning to do? Where are you going?
 * What are you thinking as you get ready to do this?

Have each group show their tableaux. Tap in to get the students to explain.

Regroup into groups of three. (A,B,C)

We are going to use Mantle of the Expert for our next activity. Each of you is an expert in what has happened in this situation. Using all the information that you have generated from the previous activities, you as your character will participate in a meeting with a counselor who is trying to make peace between the older lady and the boy. You will have a five minute meeting. At the end of the meeting, the counselor will summarize what has happened in the meeting in a brief report. The counselor will report to the rest of us. Here is the outline for the report.

In groups and report.

Into the Future I want you to write the next page of the story. Let’s review what has happened so far:

Here is what you have to consider:


 * Where are the two going?
 * What will happen to the boy? To the woman?
 * Who else will be involved?
 * Where will all these characters be in five years? What will their relationship look like?

**Framing:** Wilhelm defines framing as “the students understand how the work will proceed and what is expected of them” The students need to know: · What they are learning and why · What set of circumstances or context will motivate and support the learning · Who the students and teacher will be in the enactment · The viewpoint or role they will take · What is expected of them – what they need to achieve in the time allotted and how they will know they are done.

You provide a situation and roles and require the students to find out, establish, or make something during the enactment.

Macro frame: the purpose of the whole unit e.g. an inquiry question Micro frame: a smaller bit of the macro.

//Resources to Support Further Inquiry Into This Question//

 * .Wilhelm, J. (2004). //Reading is seeing: Learning to visualize scenes, characters, ideas, and text worlds to improve comprehension and reflective reading//. Scholastic.
 * Wilhelm, J. and Edmiston, B. (1998). Imagining to learn: Inquiry, ethics and integration through drama. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.