How to Approach Speaking and Listening through Drama

 How to Approach Speaking and Listening through Drama

Why use teacher in role?

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).

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. 

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.

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.

Teaching from within

Moving in and out of role – managing the drama and reflecting on it

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.

The class in groups of five have created tableaux as families taking part in bread-making in the kitchen. They then adapt the picture when a rat invades the space. You set up going into role with one of the groups that you know will handle the situation well. OoR you gather the rest of the class round: You will be able to influence what happens when we stop the action. Otherwise you watch and the members of this family group can role-play. You will find out who I am from what I do and say.

The requirements of working in role

It is not necessary to use role throughout the piece of work. It can be used judi- ciously to focus work at strategic points or to challenge particular aspects of the children’s perceptions whilst other techniques and conventions are used to support the work and develop it.

In order to make the TiR most effective, we need to look at educational drama from the point of view of the ‘audience’, an audience who in this instance are participants at the same time. 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.

Audiences are people who make sense of what they see in front of them. (Year One drama student)

In drama the pupils are making sense actively, knowing their meaning can be acted upon. 

You’re asking a very complex thing of the group of children. They have to switch from operating as audience to participant and back again often and suddenly. It could be that they find this difficult or, my hunch is, they’re very good at it. (Experienced teacher watching a video of a class in a drama)

Disturbing the class productively 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 

Teacher structure———Class’s ideas and response to the structure ——--Teacher input as teacher ——Outcomes, which might take some notice of teacher input but might not. (Figure 1.1)

On the other hand, if the teacher participates through TiR then there can be a meeting point at which creation takes place because, in addition to planning the structure, the teacher's ideas can operate within the drama and challenge and engage with the children's ideas in a dialectic. The teacher can fully manipulate the structure from within and the resulting activity can be shown diagrammatically as in Figure 1.2.

          Resultant creation – a combination of the two inputs but set to         achieve the desired learning outcomes (DLOs)

Teacher structure including input through TiR.     Class ideas and         responses in and out of role

The second diagram shows the two inputs as equal, but that is not the case in practice. The teacher gives the impression of handing over the power and does so in a way that allows him or her to teach properly and yet empower the participants significantly. A TiR has to be properly planned and thought through so that the class are presented with an entity to respond to that embodies possibilities for learning.

The teacher–taught relationship

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.

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. 

So what are the possibilities in terms of power and choosing a role? 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 organization and has the class in a role subordinate to him/her. 

-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. 

-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. 

-The ordinary person This role is in the same position as the role given to the class.