Drama at Key Stages 1 and 2

Planning for Role Play Areas

Ideas for teacher in role

Role play areas benefit from regular involvement of the teacher or other adults in role, listening first and then choosing when and whether to intervene and with what purpose. Again a list of possibilities for TIR in specific areas is invaluable. This can build from the list of characters. The student teachers will be able to appreciate the range of roles which they might adopt and also the different ways in which a predicament might be seeded through their involvement in role.

They might for example, enter as a health inspector in a restaurant, a police officer responding to an urgent call from a museum curator or the lost mermaid in an undersea cave. These ideas could be added to a planning frame and the scope for involving teaching assistants and parents can be discussed. The list of possible TIR characters will assist student teachers in planning to intervene in role with a problem.

Planning for TIR in a circus

• Ring master, with news of a royal visitor
• Clown, close to retirement
• Owner, forced to sell
• Inspector, concerned about safety
• Mother, unable to pay
• Animal welfare campaigner, coming to complain

Planning for TIR in a jungle

• Chief, needs to move the tribe on
• Shaman, shares premonition of downfall
• Crop growers, want to negotiate purchase of land
• Biologist, wants local information about flora and fauna
• Journalist, wants to interview tribes folk