How to Approach Speaking and Listening through Drama

How to Approach Speaking and Listening through Drama 

(Siti Kholifatunnisa 171230077)

1.      How to Begin with Teacher in Role

Why use teacher in role?

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. Many times, we have watched trainee teachers with a class of children struggling to get attention when giving instructions in traditional teacher mode. Yet, as soon as they move into role, they obtain that attention more effectively.

For example, a trainee was talking out of role to a class to explain that they were about to meet a girl who was having trouble with her father and needed their help. She picked up a ribbon with a ring threaded on it and put it round her neck as the role signifier. The trainee was not doing anything different apart from using role and committing to it very strongly. The trainee was using the simplest form of TiR, hot-seating the role, where the class meets the role sitting in front of them and can ask questions.

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. Let us look more closely at the Hermia role. Here is another way that the role could be introduced. This extreme social expectation and law makes the fiction like their reality but also different from it, something that helps drama create a useful distance, which helps the class reflect on their own beliefs and look at the drama world in a more balanced and thoughtful way.

Even if the main aim of the work is not a study of the Shakespeare play, the role can be used to open up very important areas for personal and social education that the children can identify with. 

Teacher as storyteller

The teacher as a storyteller is something all primary school teachers will recognise. 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. 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.

The relationship between story and drama in education is a complex and dynamic one. It means a known narrative can still be used, the knowledge of the narrative is not a barrier to its usage. However, if the pupils are locked into the original narrative it is problematic. It is the negotiable and dynamic elements of the relationship between drama and narrative that liberate the pupils and the teacher from merely retelling the known story.

A class can take part in a drama where all of them know the story, where none of them knows the story, or a mixture of both. As long as some fundamental planning strategies are observed, knowledge of the story is not a barrier to participation.

a.       A willingness to move away from the fixed narrative to an exploration of the narrative. The use of drama strategies to explore events and their consequences, to look at alternatives and test them.

b.      If narrative consists of roles, fictional contexts, the use of symbols and events then the teacher needs to hold some of those elements true and consistent with the story so far. How the class respond to this event is not known and it is at this point that they become the writers of the narrative. Let us illustrate these ideas with an example from ‘The Pied Piper’ drama.

Prepare for the Role

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. You are going to be telling them a story, but it will be as if they had just met you and it will not be the voice of the narrator re-telling someone else’s story but in the present tense as if it is happening now.

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 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. Let us look at an example to see how you as the teacher have the opportunity to negotiate how the role behaves with the class.

This also shows a step from hot-seating to role-playing as a demonstration with a small group. As with all of this section of the book, we are using an example from drama based upon ‘The Pied Piper’ You set up going into role with one of the groups that you know will handle the situation well. There are too many of them for me as the town rat-catcher to catch.

The whole class is involved in defining the role and can use their imaginations, their ‘drama eyes’, to help create the appropriate appearance/behaviour and their own understanding. This is in contrast to an actor who has to use acting skills to create the role in its entirety for an audience. We are making a distinction between role behaviour and acting. Both depend on appropriate signing, but whereas the actor must give the non-participant audience the bulk of the signing, a teacher using role can get away with a committed minimum.

The class will see the Rat-catcher as overworked and probably needing help to put his/her case to the Mayor. When you have discussed enough you can move back into role and take their stories about the problems the rats are causing. You can do this with all of the class or each family in turn. Give the groups time to prepare their evidence before you go into role to receive the input.

The Rat-catcher ‘writes down’ the points and then asks the class/family if they could come to the Mayor to help put the case. The person playing the role can then simply walk forward adopting a serious tone, holding the blanket, without having to pretend any of those outward signs an actor would have to portray if it were a play being performed to an audience. When the drama is stopped they can describe, recap, interpret, think through, consider next moves and understand what the significance of their work is. It is very important to get the participants to look at and interpret what is going on, frequently by stepping out of the drama.

Depth in drama depends on the very clear and regular use of OoR negotiation so that the awareness of the co-existence of two worlds is effective at all times. Children commit to the fictional world of the drama but need always to be aware that it is fiction and to step outside it often to look at what they are doing. Contrary to some opinions, depth is not dependent upon maintaining the fiction all of the time, nor does it depend upon the children losing themselves in the drama. In fact, if the latter takes over, children will get an experience but not understanding. In effective drama, children can actually feel the ‘as if’ world as real at certain points. The teacher must make sure that if the drama does engage in that way, the pupils know it is a fiction at all times, especially by stopping and coming out of role frequently.

            The requirements of working in role

This will help us shape up the TiR elements particularly according to how the audience is seeing things. Here are two responses to considering the ‘audience’ position. In drama the pupils are making sense actively, knowing their meaning can be acted upon. They have to switch from operating as audience to participant and back again often and suddenly.

An example of responding to the critical incident occurred in a session on the drama based on Macbeth. When considering the way of showing the overthrow of Macbeth, one of the class of 10-year-olds said, I want to sit on the throne and stop him sitting on it. The teacher took this up and put two of the servants on the thrones of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, with the rest of the servants gathered behind the thrones. He then set up the entry of Macbeth to the throne room.

TiR as Macbeth entered slowly and stopped as though taking in the situation. Of course, the pupils sat firm and outfaced him. He froze and one of the servants, picking up the idea of the situation, strode up to Macbeth, ordered him to kneel and took the crown from Macbeth to carefully and ceremoniously place it on the head of the usurping servant. The class cheered as Macbeth bowed his head and the two pupils stood up, triumphant. When they are given opportunities to influence the outcomes, to make decisions, the drama becomes partly theirs.

            Disturbing the class productively

Discovery/uncovering – challenge and focus

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. In setting up the drama we are doing what Heathcote calls ‘trapping within a life situation’

The key is how children are given information. They can be handed it on a plate or they can be given opportunities to uncover/discover/be surprised by information. In this last case there is much more involvement and ownership, especially if they have to work to get the information from someone who is reluctant to give it , someone who only gives clues as to what is really going on , someone who does not realise the importance of the information . Hence the skill of the teacher lies in the art of the unexpected. An example of this occurs in ‘The Governor’s Child’, a drama based on Brecht’s Caucasian Chalk Circle. The class are in role as a village community helping a woman with a baby, who, unbeknownst to them, has fled a revolution.

            Responding to your class

The art of authentic dialogue – needing to listen – two-way responses

This community is made most effective by the teacher participating in role. If a teacher runs drama without using TiR there tends to be a lack of dialectic because the teacher produces the structure that the children engage with, but the teacher can only manipulate it from outside that structure.

            The teacher–taught relationship

In all teaching situations there exists a power relationship between the learners and the teacher. Of course, it does not look like this when the class are responding and contracting into the tasks set by the teacher but should some or all decide not to, the cohesion can be broken. In drama this power relationship is made overt. We must start from the point of view that if the class do not want the drama to work then it will not.

The nature of drama makes the interest level a dynamic and flexible dimension. The pupils will, to a certain extent, define a level of interest in a drama by focusing upon the issues that interest them. In the classroom, the pupils enter into an agreement with you the teacher that you are in charge. This may be a tacit agreement, it may depend upon many factors but in it the teacher is in charge and there are certain rights and privileges attached to your role.

The power relationship is asymmetric. Of course, in drama we have the possibility of shifting the power when we are inside the fiction because we may choose a role that has low status and has little power. It can result in a different kind of dialogue from the usual teacher/pupil one and this can be very attractive to pupils. There are five basic types of role and mostly can be illustrated from the ‘The Dream’ drama.

The authority role This is a role like the Duke in the ‘The Dream’ drama, who is presented with Egeus’s problem and has to rule on it. This figure is usually in charge of an organisation and has the class in a role subordinate to him/her. The role is fair, applies rules and governs properly, but often does not know the full facts and issues and needs the class to investigate and enlighten him/her. It is very close to being teacher and can be reassuring for a class, but also has the negativity of not changing the teacher–taught relationship enough to allow more ownership for the class.

The opposer role This is a role that is often in authority but dangerous to and/or creating a problem for another role and, by extension, the class. Egeus is an opposer role who is against Hermia and therefore in opposition to the class role, as they take her side against his dictatorial treatment of her. The opposer role has to be used carefully because the response to it can be difficult to handle if it becomes too strong. The intermediate role This is often a messenger or go-between, as the servant role used in the ‘The Dream’ drama. This role is then caught between opposing sides and can appeal to the empathy in the class to help them out of the predicament. The needing help role This is a role like Hermia, who is in need of help to fight the injustice of her father’s decision. This role, like the servant described above, is the best way to get empathy from a class and most raises the status of the class, putting them in a position of responsibility and thus generating interest and learning possibility because the teacher is the one who does not know what to do for once. The ordinary person This role is in the same position as the role given to the class. We do not have this sort of role in our ‘The Dream’ drama but the Steward in the ‘Macbeth’ drama is like this. The three low status roles present more possibilities for the pupils’ learning because the teacher–pupil power relationship is shifted, and they have a semblance of power. We say ‘semblance’ because the pupil power only lies within the fiction and, as always, the teacher is running the class and can come out of role at any time to assume control. Related to issues of power and role is the issue of power and control in the classroom.

2.      How to Begin Planning Drama

The ingredients of planning

Let us take the elements of a drama we have been referring to above and look at them separately with other examples. 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.

a.         Language Development

b.         Spiritual, Social, Moral, Cultural, Personal

c.         Content the curriculum, focused on any subject.

d.         Art Form drama – the more the class do drama the more they understand the form and the more they can manipulate and help shape the work.

e.         Thinking Skills – drama models the mental moves that underpin our thought processes: actions and consequences, being logical about decisions, giving reasons and arguing positions. The very reflective nature of the work, going out of role to examine the meaning of situations and events in the drama, promotes metacognition.

Planning as a collaborative activity

We also recommend that you plan with at least one other person. 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. The complexity of drama means a multiplicity of possible learning outcomes. For example, when planning developments to the original ‘Macbeth’ drama, we wanted to add the ‘Witch’ section. We began with the idea of facing the class with the ambiguity and teasing language that the witches in the original demonstrate. How to do this? One of us, A, had ideas about the Witch arriving at the castle door, a vagrant, carrying something. This was developed further by B with the suggestion that the bundle should contain a mirror. The symbolism of this became obvious, considering some of the imagery in the play, appearance and reality, what is truth? etc. When searching out a mirror, A came across a cracked hand mirror and this was ideal. We can then use the mirror to get the class to look into the future for Macbeth. Another example happened with ‘The Wild Thing’. When sharing the planning so far with a group of trainee teachers and looking at the composition of Max’s room, it was suggested that Max would have a den, just like he’s making with a blanket hung over a rope in one of the pictures in the story. This not only parallels the storybook but also gives the teacher, as Max, a place to go and sulk when the class are trying to get him to see sense and gives a place for the Wild Thing, who comes to find Max, to hide and surprise the Lost & Found agents.

What about endings to dramas?

The most difficult thing can be resolving a drama satisfactorily in the time and to the satisfaction of the class. This is to some extent in the planning but mostly in the handling of the drama. They need to have solved the problem. If a final resolution is possible, for example, as a result of the forum, Max realises 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. We look to the class tackling the problem, the issue, the difficult role, the wrong attitude. However, the ending is not always a happy ending where all people become friends and the problem goes away. If the issue is not easy to solve in reality, then pupils will see through it if you give them too easy a change in the problem role and too soft a landing. Avoid that easy ending. The three teachers who were observing one of us teach this drama had discussed between the sessions what they thought the class would choose to do in the second session. 

3.       How to Generate Quality Speaking and Listening Authentic dialogue – teacher and pupil talk with a difference.

What is speaking and listening?

Speaking and listening is the most important communication form that human beings use. Really effective racy, 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.

What does dialogic teaching demand of the teacher?

One of the key changes that drama brings is a different position for the teacher. 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. The teacher working through drama is intervening as teacher but also as other roles within the drama, roles that are models and anti-models to promote the pupils’ language in ways that teacher language cannot.

They are framed within the drama context to oppose or sort out this behaviour, all the more motivated by the fact it is their teacher behaving in this way through the use of role. So, the teacher is able to talk and interact with the pupils in many ways and with many purposes. The teacher engages with the class and their contributions help build the fictional world. The magical world of the fiction and the parallel real-world that we exist in can help each other, so that the language the pupils use in the drama can be looked at from the real world when we stop the drama.

This ‘metaxis’ makes the language possibilities far richer than mere discussion can. When dropping out of role, the teacher promotes a different form of language, reflecting on what has just happened, examining it and defining what it means before planning what to do further. All of this ensures that the pupils are thinking about what they are part of, looking at actions and consequences and considering options, looking at what to do and why. This reflective mode is special to drama. It would be odd to stop a discussion and say, Let’s look at ourselves and what we said, how we were standing, what it meant. In drama we do that routinely and the learning from the elements of the drama becomes even more potent.

            How is listening of high quality taught through drama?

Drama is the creation of meanings in action and pupils have to struggle all the time to make sense of what is going on around them so that they can engage with it. Unless pupils listen, they do not know what is going on. 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.

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. Pupils feel valued in drama and consequently have more confidence in what they want to say and show more respect to what other contributors to the drama say. In order for drama to work the teacher has to listen very closely as well, to see where the pupils are, to pick up what the pupils are offering and use it within the drama.

Lucy, one of the brightest members of the class, who saw the implications of lying from the beginning, very shrewdly sees how the teacher is making the pupils face the consequences of Icarus’s taking of the folder. Centrally, the idea of actions and consequences is brought into very sharp relief, the teacher and the class together exploring the consequences of taking the folder in the first place. Lucy has taken the drama on and helped the teacher explore this important area. The class have paid very close attention, listening not only to the teacher but also their peers, their representatives in the hot-seat.

Their feeling of involvement shows clearly by the way they shriek when Daedalus talks of having to speak to the servants about either the throwing away of the folder, or in version 2, their knowledge of the plan. Obviously, the teacher stopped to talk this through with them after Lucy’s final pronouncement but they did not need the implications interpreting at the moment of revelation in the drama.

4.      How to Use Drama for Inclusion and Citizenship

What can drama offer in terms of inclusion?

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

b.      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.

c.       For some pupil’s 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.

In drama we are dealing with the ‘as if’ world. In this fictional world we can behave ‘as if’ events are taking place and ‘as if’ we are there.

            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:

a.      Developing confidence and responsibility and making the most of their abilities;

b.      Preparing to play an active role as citizens;

c.       Developing a healthy, safer lifestyle; and

d.      Developing good relationships and respecting the differences between people.

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

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. Indeed, if children get very committed to a real-world project there is a dilemma for the school. 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. When we consider that drama can link citizenship with personal and social education, and spiritual, moral, social and cultural education, then we can begin to understand the importance of drama as a teaching method.

5.      How to Generate Empathy in a Drama

What is empathy?

In this chapter we would like to examine the relationship between drama in education and the concept of empathy. 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 idea of a ‘cognitive’ stage and an ‘affective’ stage in the empathetic process is taken from the writings of Alan Leslie in his work at London University, as summarised by Simon Baron-Cohen. Component Two – the affective component ‘The second element to empathy is the affective component. This is an observer’s appropriate emotional response to another person’s emotional state’. Having recognised the emotional state of the person, the observer is moved to ‘alleviate their distress’.

There is here a desire to do something, to take action, and therefore empathy is not just about recognising the emotional state of someone but also doing something about it.

An example of structuring drama for empathetic response

Let us use these ideas to analyse how empathy might be generated using as an example ‘The Workhouse’ drama.

6.      How to Link History and Drama

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. We need to be clear about our learning objectives, about what we are trying to teach. We are going to use a drama about Victorian street children to illustrate how drama and history can be structured to work in harmony.

In using drama, we are using a dense form of teaching, because the currency of drama is language, listening and speaking, and we have a cross-curricular approach that will touch upon learning objectives from several areas of the curriculum. Let’s begin with the English and the History National Curriculum learning objectives.

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

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:

a.         Give feedback to the pupil

b.         Report to another teacher

c.         Report to a parent

As we have indicated, the first is vital. Pupils need to know what they are doing, how they can improve and to be encouraged in speaking and listening, after all it is the primary communication skill.

Formative assessment – honouring what children can do

Since the inception of the National Curriculum, assessment of Speaking and Listening has been formative and informal. We would not change that approach. Our approach is not to produce league tables, but to give a snapshot of pupils’ communication skills in order to recognise achievement and to chart possible development. The prime requirement on teachers when doing assessments is to listen to the pupils and to look carefully at the activity. 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 Anisa’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.