Improve your Primary School Through Drama

Rachel Dickinson, Jonothan Neelands

• Publisher: David Fulton Publishers
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781138148765
• eBook ISBN: 9781136610387
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Using drama right across the curriculum to improve and invigorate teaching and learning, this book provides whole school and individual class approaches underpinned by sound theory and implemented in a real primary school. Explanations and examples are given in a clear and accessible style, and links are made to The National Strategy.

The book illustrates a wide range of strategies that show how drama can help with:

• behavior
• inclusion and multicultural issues
• improving the whole school ethos
• involving parents and governors.

This user-friendly and comprehensive text is the perfect support tool for teachers and managers ready to improve their school regardless of whether they're approaching drama for the first time or are already passionate about it.

Improving Your Primary School Through Drama

This chapter:

• puts forward the case for drama as a means of improving your primary school;
• explores the meaning of ‘improvement’;
• emphasises the importance of a sense of ‘ownership’ of your school;
• considers the influence of the primary years in laying the foundations for each child’s growth as a healthy and positive individual;
• defines what we mean by ‘drama’ and how it can impact on the whole curriculum, including the social, spiritual and emotional needs of the children.

Local Context

First of all, we should put our claim in context. This book is the result of three years of work with the staff and children of Shenton Primary School in Leicester, who established drama as a vital school resource enjoyed by all pupils, staff and parents. This work was done during a particularly challenging period for this urban school with a predominantly Muslim intake from many different countries. The school has 450 pupils on roll. Ninety-seven per cent of the pupils have English as an additional language (EAL) and 18 per cent of pupils have been identified as having special educational needs (SEN). There is a nursery attached to the school.

As the work developed we were all aware that drama was beginning to have positive effects on the life of the school as a learning and teaching community as well as improving the quality of classroom learning for pupils. The advantages we saw are presented in the three bulleted lists below.

Advantages for Pupils

• Drama has successfully provided social learning in mixed ability settings for all pupils including those with English as an additional language (EAL), special educational needs (SEN) and those who are gifted and/or talented (G&T).
• Drama has increased empathy and tolerance of ‘difference’.
• Acting and performing in front of others has increased confidence and improved communication and self-presentation skills.
• The focus on differentiation and behaviour management in drama has helped pupils to feel that their cultural, emotional and personal needs are considered in planning and teaching.
• Learning to work positively together in the social learning context of drama has affected group and class work across the curriculum.
• Improvements in behaviour and pupil relationships means more time on tasks across the curriculum.
• The positive ‘can do’ climate in drama has encouraged children to find their voices and use them without fear of censure or ridicule.
• Pupils are more willing to take risks in terms of cross-gender and cross-cultural learning and working together; they are more open to influences beyond their home and faith cultures.

Advantages for Teachers and Other Staff

• Teachers feel a real sense of ownership because the drama initiative is in their control.
• The drama initiative has involved staff in openly taking risks together and the collegial approach has increased professional respect among teachers and others.
• Teachers have felt confident enough to discuss problems and concerns as well as successes.
• Teachers are more willing and likely to take informed risks in other areas of teaching and learning.
• Teachers have enjoyed ‘exploring’ stories and situations with their pupils in drama and learning from the pupils’ contributions and ideas.
• Teachers are supported and encouraged at every level to take informed risks and have more confidence in this as a result of their successes in drama.
• Increased confidence and skill in using questioning and learning through discovery allows teachers to give greater responsibility to pupils for the direction of their learning.

Advantages for Parents and the Community

• Because parents have discussed drama with their children and been involved in workshops, they feel involved in the aims and objectives of the programme.
• Parents report that pupils talk enthusiastically about their drama work at home.
• Mulannas and other community leaders have been actively involved in shaping and supporting the drama programme.
• Governors have taken an active role in the strategy and now understand more about creative approaches to teaching and learning.
• Pupils invite their parents into school to share in their achievements in drama.

Our claims for the power of drama are based on the real experiences of teachers, children and their communities. We are confident that the ideas, examples and schemes of work offered in this book will be effective, because they are all based on what actually happens in Shenton. An ordinary school just like yours; an extraordinary school just like yours.

Improving the Quality of Learning and the Quality of Life

So what exactly do we mean by ‘improvement’? School improvement often refers either to the restructuring of the school’s management and other systems to make teaching and learning more efficient and effective, or to the introduction of specific strategies for improving pupils’ success in the basics of literacy and numeracy in particular. Often, the pressure to ‘improve’ and the means of improvement are the result of external influences on the school from local or national inspectors and from national programmes and strategies.

Our approach is different. We believe that the focus of school improvement should be on developing the quality of teaching and learning, and the quality of life, for everyone involved in the community of the school. We believe that this is most likely to happen when teachers work together to reflect and act on the needs of their pupils, and their own desire to offer their pupils the best quality education in an inclusive curriculum that provides for the full range of human ability and abilities. In our experience, when teachers are inspired and supported to develop the classroom teaching and interpersonal skills needed for effective drama, they also transform the quality of life in the school. As we will see, there is a transferable pedagogy of drama which can also benefit teaching and learning in other subjects. We will show that drama can simultaneously address and enrich both the academic curriculum and the broader curriculum of pupils’ social, emotional and spiritual needs.

For us then, introducing drama into a school will focus teachers in developing a wider range of skills and techniques. In order to teach drama effectively, teachers need some knowledge and understanding of drama and how it works, but they also need to work out:

• how to organise group work effectively;
• how to lead discussion;
• how to use questioning skills;
• how to encourage boys and girls to work together;
• how to negotiate behaviour in open spaces like the school hall;
• how to expect and allow pupils to take responsibility for their own learning and assessment;
• how to take informed risks;
• how to integrate subjects meaningfully;
• how to find a broader range of assessment tools than the traditional test.

In developing their skills in response to these challenges, teachers are also given the confidence to use a wider range of teaching and learning styles in their classrooms and to put a greater emphasis on the quality of relationships with pupils and among pupils.

This holistic approach to school improvement through drama is reflected in our core objectives for drama:

1. to provide meaningful and relevant contexts for our pupils to learn in;
2. to encourage our pupils to become actively involved in their learning;
3. to provide opportunities for our pupils to express themselves in all aspects of their learning;
4. to build confidence and raise self-esteem;
5. to create opportunities for our pupils to work positively with difference.

Staff agreed these objectives after an extensive analysis of the needs of the pupils. None of them relate directly to drama as a discrete subject – they are all focused on using drama as a response to the broader academic and pastoral needs of the pupils.

The following example gives us a glimpse of drama in practice and begins to explain how these broad objectives can impact on the quality of ‘life’ in the classroom.

The Tudors at Sea

Azmat joined Year 4 a few weeks into the spring term. He was a new arrival from India and although he had relatives in the school, Azmat himself had extremely limited spoken and written English. At this time we were studying the lives of the Tudor sailors on board ship during the reign of Elizabeth I as part of our History curriculum. To support the children’s understanding of the sailor’s activities, living conditions and feelings, we were using drama as a tool to create empathy, develop historical language and to develop experience and ability to work in role.

In class the children had explored Tudor sailors using information books, pictures and simple artefacts. They had listened to readings of accounts by Tudor sailors and been encouraged to gather further information for homework. Azmat was able to look at the pictures in the classroom and handle the artefacts but was limited in his level of understanding, even when supported by a Gujarati speaker, as the whole concept was completely new for him.

We were at the stage in our drama activities where the children were creating still images in groups to suggest the different activities that happened on board ship. Azmat was placed into a group and was given some initial instructions by our learning support assistant (LSA) in his mother tongue. Despite being rather shy and no doubt overwhelmed by the activity, Azmat was moulded into the character of a Tudor sailor by the other children. Together they gave him dual language instructions and showed how to stand and hold his image. A fantastic example of teamwork! His facial expression took on a serious and determined look as he stood strong and proud, saluting the captain of the ship. His whole body image screamed out in the universal language of gesture and for the first time since his arrival Azmat was communicating with every single person in the room without the need to struggle to say a single word!

In this example, Helen, the class teacher, is working with multiple learning objectives. She is developing empathy across cultures and time, between the life worlds of migrant children like Azmat and the distant experiences of Elizabethan sailors. She is also introducing and using history-specific language and knowledge through physical and emotional engagement in drama situations that encourage pupils to think and feel authentically, imagining themselves into the shoes of Elizabethan sailors. She is also developing the pupils’ drama skills in creating, developing and maintaining the roles of the sailors and captain. But at the heart of this example is the image of Azmat finding and contributing at last to his new community of classmates. He finds a voice where there was silence, supported and encouraged by his classmates. He finds that through drama, he can imagine himself differently and in so doing, bridge the gulf between his own story, culture and heritage and the strangeness of his new school and his new ‘National Curriculum’.

The example shows that drama has provided a meaningful and relevant context for studying history; it has actively involved all the pupils, including Azmat; it has allowed for creative expression at an emotional level and it has built Azmat’s confidence and self-esteem in the class. It has also blurred the differences between cultures both at the level of the historical content and also at the level of the ‘difference’ between Azmat and his classmates. (See Resource 5: Tudors at Sea; on the publisher’s website, www.fultonpublishers.co.uk)

We don’t make any promises about raising standards in terms of levels of achievement in specific subjects. Like Azmat’s class teacher we are concerned with the quality of life and learning in the school in terms that may often be immeasurable by standard tests. We believe that this incident will have effects beyond the drama. Azmat has had a positive experience that he will remember and want to share with his family and friends. They will be reassured that Azmat is settling in to his new school, that he has been accepted by his classmates and is beginning to contribute to classwork despite his shaky grasp of English. The quality of life in and out of school will be improved for all pupils if the class can learn from this event to be as supportive of each other in the classroom, playgrounds and streets in which they live together as they were in the drama. In taking responsibility both for their own learning and in giving Azmat the tools and support he needed to be fully involved in the drama, the class have modelled the qualities of respect, tolerance and social responsibility which are essential to the success of our schools, and of urban schools in particular.

Your School and Professional Community

So far we have ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Improving Your Primary School Through Drama
• 2 From National Policy to Local Practice
• 3 Getting Ready for Drama
• 4 Beginning with Story
• 5 Acting to Learn
• 6 Making a Common Unity: Inclusion Through Differentiation
• 7 Measuring Success
• Appendix Ncsl Performance Indicators
• References
• Index