Being Dramatic

I was really interested to learn about using drama in the classroom. This is partly because I have already tried to teach drama in a grade one class in Canada. This was before I started my Graduate Diploma in Education or could even define the word pedagogy.

The lessons I planned were based on Maurice Sendak’s ‘Where The Whild Things Are’. Over the course of three days students planned and acted out a scene about what The Wild Things did the day after Max left. Students started by performing tableaux and progressed towards writing and performing a short scene with dialogue.

The day after the performances, I surprised the students by coming to school dressed as Max with a carved pumpkin I spent the entire night before creating that looked like one of the Wild Things. The students were delighted and it was a fun activity but I wondered whether it was pedagogically sound.

Chapter 5 of the text was very illuminating because it discussed the conflicting discourses of teaching drama. The article described one approach which focussed on dramatic play where students initiate their own dramatic experiences in open ended activities, such as the ‘home corner’. The other method prevalent in classroom is drama education where students are highly scaffolded and learn the language, conventions and engage in highly structured activities.

I found it really interesting that dramatic play did not have much status in the drama community because of the assumption that “work - serious whereas play = trivial’. Although I have a high regard for play based learning, I realise that I too had based my drama lessons on that assumption. In fact, the first lesson included a class discussion on the differences between ‘play’ and ‘a play’. As I read the chapter, I became increasingly concerned that I had done the wrong thing.

The chapter, however, went on to describe a ‘united approach’ to drama education that would offer opportunities for spontaneity and freedom while also being supported by the structure, scaffolding and range of fictional contexts that drama education offers.

I think that on reflection, my lessons did have elements of a united approach. The children had authorship of their work - I did not give them scripts or tell them what to do in their scenes, I just gave them an open ended concept for them to use. This was evident in the diversity of ideas that were shown between student groups. One group decided that the Wild Things would have another Wild Rumpus and acted that out. Another group thought that they would select another king. Two groups decided that they would go after Max although they differed in that one group thought they would build a boat to find Max and bring him back to be king and the other group swam, destroyed Max’s boat and ate him.

There are, however, things that I would change about the lessons now having the benefit of reading the text. I don’t know if I would emphasize so strongly the ‘work’ element in drama. I fear that I may have inadvertently subjugated dramatic play and sent the message that play is inappropriate. I hope that’s not the case. It is something that I will be sensitive too in the future, especially as I learn more about emergent curriculums and the power of play based learning.