How to Approach Speaking and Listening through Drama

Chapter 1 

A. How to Begin with Teacher in Role

1. Why use 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. Many teachers see TiR as a difficult activity, particularly with older children in the primary school. However, it is our experience that when a teacher takes a role he or she becomes ‘interesting’ to the children, so that there are less control problems because they become engaged. 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 (see ‘The Dream’ drama based on A Midsummer Night’s Dream). The class were calling out and not listening properly. She was talking over them and

trying to teach without getting their full attention. Then she explained that they could ask questions of one of the roles from the story and that she was going to become that role when she sat down. She picked up a ribbon with a ring threaded on it and put it round her neck as the role signifier. When she sat down

as Hermia, they were focused entirely on her and were listening very closely, putting hands up to ask questions and taking turns in a very orderly way. They were interested in her problem, which was her father’s insistence on deciding whom she should marry. The trainee was not doing anything different apart from using role and committing to it very strongly. She looked far more comfortable.

2. Teacher as storyteller

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. 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. Broadly these pre-requisites are:

1) An awareness of those elements of the story that will not be changed – and agreements about these must be made with the class at the beginning or during

the drama, in other words, the non-negotiable elements of the narrative.

2) 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. In these periods the class develop hypotheses, test them and reflect upon them.

3) 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. For example, roles and contexts may already be decided but new events may be introduced, the delivery of a letter, for example. How the class respond to this event is not known and it is at this point

that they become the writers of the narrative.

3. Preparation for the role

 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. Before the drama session, decide what attitude you are going to take when questioned by the class. 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. There is

no book symbolising the re-telling of someone else’s words. This is your story re-told in a specific place (coming down the mountain path) at a specific time

(within minutes of a significant event) and from the child’s point of view, not a dispassionate onlooker or observer of events. 

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.

Teaching from within

1) 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. 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. 

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’ (see Toye and Prendiville, 2000, p. 225).

OoR is very important as a way of negotiating the intent and meaning of the role and is the way the teacher can best control and manage learning. For the

class are both an audience and observers of their own activities. When the drama is stopped they can describe, recap, interpret, think through, consider

next moves and understand what is the significance of their work. 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. Learning depends upon awareness, not total immersion. 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. That is also a protection.

Disturbing the class productively 

1) Discovery/uncovering – challenge and focus

The ownership also arises out of the way the teacher operates. 

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.In setting up the drama we are doing what Heathcote calls ‘trapping [them] within a life situation’ (Johnson and O’Neill, 1984, p. 119). The result of constructing the situation thus is that they can then discover what it all means.

There, and in the resulting choices and decisions, lies the learning potential, borne out in an exciting challenge.

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 (as with Tim the Ostler in ‘The Highwayman’), someone who only gives clues as to what is really going on (the central TiR in the

‘Macbeth’ drama), someone who does not realise the importance of the information (Icarus in the ‘Daedalus and Icarus’ drama). Hence the skill of the teacher lies in the art of the unexpected. If pupils acquire knowledge and under

Responding to your class 

1) 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. This community is made most effective by the teacher participating in role. The art of teaching and learning should be a synthesis from a dialectical approach. 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 engag ewith, but the teacher can only manipulate it from outside that structure. 

As the class feed back their responses and make possible development of the role’s importance the teacher must respond appropriately and therein lies the

skill of the ‘subtle tongue’ and the possibility for authentic dialogue. The teacher must respond to these responses in an authentic way, honouring how the class see the role. For example, when the servants discover that their king is a murderer in the ‘Macbeth’ drama, they can respond in two ways:

to want to tackle this problem and bring him to justice or to see themselves as powerless to do anything. The TiR as the Steward must honour the truth of both possibilities and, in the first case, be the weak and fearing servant who cannot see how this can be done or, in the second, begin to challenge whether doing nothing in such a situation is going to work in keeping them safe. TiR in both instances must make the problems of choice apparent whilst not taking

over the decision-making.

The teacher–taught relationship 

1) 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.  If the class decide as a group they do not want to learn and they wish to make your attempts to teach them impracticable, they can do it. The power in the classroom lies with the class. 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. What we have to counter this with is a methodology that, if set up right and handled judiciously, offers interest and engagement to hold the class’s attention. So much so that if a minority of the class start to undermine it, the

committed will demand they stop; the disrupters are seen as spoiling the enjoyment and it is not unusual to see the majority let them know this fact.

a) 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.

b) 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. This is a stimulating position for many pupils as the opposition of parents is something they have all experienced. The opposer role has to be used carefully because the response to it can be difficult to handle if it becomes too strong. We have to

know what response to expect and be able to channel it productively. 

c) 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. In the ‘The Dream’ it might be a servant to Egeus who is sympathetic to Hermia but does not know what best to do as she cannot just tell her employer what she thinks he should do. So she seeks the help of the class to solve her dilemma.

d) 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 an 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.

e) 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. He faces the same problem and danger as the other servants represented by the class. Even though he is in charge of them, he needs them to sort it out for him and make decisions.

Therefore this is a lower status role, the teacher being ‘the one who does not know’, a very powerful position of ignorance that teachers cannot ordinarily occupy. It is powerful because it shifts responsibility more to the pupil roles.

B. How to Begin Planning Drama

In this chapter we are going to describe and analyse the main components of planning in drama.

There is even an intermediate stage in planning and that is to take parts of different dramas and remake them as new ones. Clearly the teaching/learning objective will drive the shape of the drama, but the engine that drives the drama needs fuel and that fuel is a piece of strong material, a creative idea, and that is more inspirational than an objectives-led design. This material – a book, a piece of literature, a picture or some other subject matter, fiction or non-fiction – will give us one or more of the elements of a good drama, a role or roles, an interesting context or a dilemma.

The frame of a drama

Translated into terms of process drama as a genre of theatre, we could say that Goffman’s frame constitutes a means of laying in the dramatic tension by situating the participants in relation to the unfolding action. 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.

How did the ‘The Wild Thing’ drama evolve from initial ideas?

Looking at Maurice Sendak’s book Where the Wild Things Are led to ideas about possible roles and situations to explore with the pupils.

Mother sends Max to bed without supper because he has been naughty. Mother finds him gone and seeks help to find him. The next stage was to develop some sense of his mother, her handling of Max and her attitude to him. Learning resides in this, the parent–child relationship, something all children know about but is infinitely variable in levels of success and quality.

We considered the mother’s possible ambiguous signals, embodying ideas of softness and indulgence towards Max at the same time as being irritated by Max’s wildness and wanting to control him. Found’, an agency expert in finding lost children.

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.

The learning can be in any of five areas

● Language Development – the medium of drama and hence the key impetus to Speaking and Listening . 

● Spiritual, Social, Moral, Cultural, Personal – there is usually this capability in any drama. The very reflective nature of the work, going out of role to examine the meaning of situations and events in the drama, promotes metacognition. 

● Comparing the drama version of the story and the original myth.

Strong material

Let us again look at our drama ‘The Wild Thing’ from Where the Wild Things Are. Sendak shows us Max, a boy who is very imaginative, but whose behaviour is very wild. In addition, no other family members appear in the story. This is a gift for drama because we have a number of PSHE issues implied through the story but not dealt with and we can add key roles to look at these issues and embody in them their attitudes to Max.

the Expert’ role. The ‘Mantle of the Expert’ role gives the pupils status and an objective view�point to consider situations often fraught with emotions and opposing attitudes. We use this sort of communal role as they also invest the pupils with the skills and attributes that we would want them to exhibit – they have to be analytical, compassionate, communicative, thoughtful, creative, listeners.

‘Macbeth’ and ‘Daedalus and Icarus’, mountain villagers in ‘The Governor’s

Child’, park volunteers in ‘Charlie’. In all cases belief in the role is built and the learning focused through the problem they encounter. The pupils also have opportunities to take central roles, particularly from TiR at key stages in the dramas. They take it over at a crucial moment where the chance to change things, to challenge injustice or correct a wrong is paramount.

Tension points – risks – theatre moments

Tension provides the momentum that pushes the class, demands a response, engages them. This is a very demanding moment, but one that the children, after initial hesitation, tackled with great commitment. There is a bit of a risk on our part because we cannot ensure they will do it, but should they not do so we plan to go out of role and discuss how they see what is happening and what they think needs to be done. Tension can be planned in, but needs to be seized on according to how the class react.

One theatre moment happened this way. ‘The Governor’s Child’ is planned with the possibility of searching the village and the teacher will be look�ing for a chance to create a moment of near discovery. With a class of 10-year-olds the tension was created on the spur of the moment by the teacher’s use of the potential of the planned situ�ation itself. The tension at that point was palpable with all eyes on the class member whose job it was to handle the situation.

Building context

Usually having one main location helps the drama to be properly focused. It started with the tomb and we planned to spend time creating it and its wall paintings as the early belief building activity. The tomb could focus all the activity of the drama. That planning decision reinforced the importance of the depictions on the walls so that they can also then be used more at other stages of the drama.

That consolidation of the context strengthened the integrity of the drama and helped structure it, as you will see from the full plan.

Building belief

Only if you create the belief that there is something in it for them. 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 realised and created for the imagination, as indicated in the previous paragraph.

In delivering the drama we have to

We have to remove ideas that may get in the way of the drama working , but doing it in such a way that the pupil offering the idea genuinely does not feel rejected in the process and is willing to continue to make suggestions.

As such we have to plan the key moments for critical decisions for the class.

There are teacher decisions and pupil decisions and we have to be clear about the timing and nature of both, why one should be the teacher’s and why another should be the pupils’. Many teacher decisions are built into the plan as givens, otherwise there will be no clear direction for the learning. 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. When the plan is laid very close to expected responses, and even, in the worst case, when expected responses are laid on top of the plan, so that the plan is a predictor of the response, the correspondence of plan and responses leaves little or no room for a proper dialogue to develop.

The drama conventions, strategies and techniques

There are many techniques for structuring the stages of a drama.

Planning as a collaborative activity

In our team, one member may have the begin�ning 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. One of us, A, had ideas about the Witch arriving at the castle door, a vagrant, carrying something.

Road testing the first version

Once we have the beginnings of a drama we need to try ideas out. When a class are responding to strong moments in a drama they not only provide ideas for future use, but also show.

Their positive responses reveal new possibilities and can often become incorporated as ‘givens’ when the drama is used in future. He had to manage the situation carefully to avoid the drama deteriorat�ing. It was clear that whilst that attitude in Max might recreate ideas from the book, the entry needed to be more subtle and the context of Max’s adventure built more in order to work.

Another example of the class offering new ideas as to what to do and the form to use when you run the drama occurred in a run of ‘Daedalus and

This method of moving forward can then be taken as the planned pos�sibility for exploring the issue in future use of the drama. The group even took the drama further themselves. They moved immediately to spontaneously suggesting ideas as to how to avoid telling the truth of Daedalus’s plans – evolving a substitution of a decoy set of plans and drawings instead of the ones for flight. Even the minority who had opted to tell Minos began to contribute ideas to the decoy approach and we had the next stage of the drama, a group to produce the decoy drawings and two groups to work on building the wings for Daedalus and Icarus.

The quality of the drama develops in these ways. You can choose to incorpo�rate them in future versions of the drama. You will see other added ideas from work with classes highlighted in the dramas in Part Two, where the plans are outlined.

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.

Here are some beginnings of ideas for dramas that can be used to provide short

In each case we have supplied a ‘learning intention’, a starter role and the situation to be set up.

An idea from ‘Romeo and Juliet’

Contact role A teenage boy discovered writing a letter. Context The pupils are all in role as workers on a rich family’s estate. They have been ordered to patrol the estate and gardens for their employers, in advance of the important forthcoming wedding of the daughter to a cousin of the Prince’s. Their job is to ensure that all the area inside the estate walls is secure, all the gates locked and that there are no strangers around.

An idea from ‘Macbeth’

Contact role A maidservant to the Queen. Context The pupils are in role as physicians to the King. Key moment later The King calls the physicians to report on his wife’s condition.

An idea from ‘Danny Champion of the World’ by Roald Dahl

Contact role Danny is discovered upset on the steps of his gypsy caravan. Context The pupils are in role as estate workers on Lord Victor Hazell’s estate.

The map-makers meet Gollum and try out their riddle. Gollum struggles and eventually, reluctantly, gives them the map. He’s not very good at reading the map and Gollum told him the Dragon’s Lair is the best way out. Gollum is in fact directing him to the dragon Smaug’s lair.

C. How to Generate Quality Speaking

and Listening

Teachers are encouraged to generate this sort of work

Giving a higher status to talk in the classroom offers motivating and purposeful ways of learning to many pupils, and enables them and their teachers to make more appropriate choices between the uses of spoken and written language.

Conclusions

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. So we are explor�ing the meaning of the situation and the complex and demanding issues of truth or lies. 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. 

D. How to Use Drama for Inclusion

and Citizenship

What can drama offer in terms of inclusion?

● Drama offers ‘new opportunities to pupils who may have experienced previ�ous difficulties’ . 

● 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

There is a perception of drama dealing with issues in a safe way because it uses fictional contexts. It is almost as if by shifting to the fictional, a safe emotional distance is automatically created. 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 demon�strate respect for persons and awareness of their particular social and emotional circumstances in that learning situation.
On one level, the teacher must make the content interesting and appropriate for the pupils, that is, it should be related to their needs and structured in such a way as to grab and hold their attention.