Drama at Key Stages 1 and 2

The Diversity of Drama Practice

Improvisational process drama

It is important to help student teachers appreciate the relative importance of imaginative whole class process drama and the priority given to this is in the National Curriculum and the National Strategies. This could be highlighted through running a process drama workshop with children whilst the student teachers watch or through providing video vignettes. The former can be arranged by convening a session in a local primary school. Offer the student teachers an observational sheet explaining the objectives of the session and contextual information, and encouraging them to focus on learning and the teacher's role. You might want to use the assessment headings noted in looking at learning in drama.

Alternatively, go to Teachers TV English-Drama in the classroom to watch an example of a Year 6 teacher in Medway teaching a process drama lesson based on Kevin Crossley Holland's The Green Children. Louise Blakemore uses a range of different drama conventions and the children themselves comment upon their learning.

You could watch it together and discuss the student teachers' reactions and how Louise and her class make use of drama conventions as a way of exploring some of the key themes within the text. Do they think the children have begun to discover the subtext and are in a position to make connections with contemporary issues?

You could focus in particular on their own experience of improvisational process drama and the critical convention teacher in role (TIR) which is not merely another convention but a central part of process drama and one which they may initially find challenging.

The opportunity to adopt roles themselves in the activities in Planning for Role Play Areas will help the student teachers gain more assurance and realise that they are not being asked to act, but to believe, and to respond to one another/the children in role.