Drama

Techniques

Prepared by Mydhili Muniandy, Michelle Elaine, Png Xiao Yen, Masliza David, Nor Syamimi binti Ali, Nurfazilah binti Nursyam, Frecylla May Gidor, Mohamad Rozainizam Usnie, and Mohd Zyarfan Hakim Mohd Rasid

Credits to

Content of The Booklet

a) ! b) ! ! c) ! ! d) " " Types of Drama Activities and Techniques How and When Drama Activities Can Be Used In the KBSR and KSSR Classrooms The Advantages of Using Drama to Develop Multiple Intelligence, Creativity, Critical Thinking and Language Collection of Suggested Activities a Teacher Can Use In His/Her Classroom#

Basom, J. (2005). The Benets of Drama Education. Retrieved from!http://www.dramaed.net/benets.pdf! Boudreault, C. (2010). The Benets of Using Drama in the ESL/ EFL Classroom. The Internet TESL Journal. 16(1). Retrieved from!http://iteslj.org/Articles/Boudreault-Drama.html! Buchanan, M. (n.d). Why Teach Drama? A Defense of the Craft. Retrived from!http://www.childdrama.com/why.html! Dougill, J. (1987). Drama Activities for Language Learning. London: Macmillan.! Maley, A., & Duff, A.( 2005). Drama Techniques: A resource book of communication activities for language teachers (3rd ed.).New York: Cambridge University Press. Vani Chauhan. (2004). Drama Techniques for Teaching English. The Internet TESL Journal. 10(10). Retrieved from!http:// iteslj.org/Techniques/Chauhan-Drama.html!
Images are credited to : www.volunteerscotland.org.uk www.aoehome.com dramagames.wordpress.com Teachingtheatricks.blogspot.com www.emotional-intelligence-education.com www.dramaforkids.net

Creating a Make-Believe Space Whether it's a big empty box, a tent, or a tree house, designated "pretend" spaces encourage kids to create make-believe worlds. In these magical spaces, children feel free to be anyoneto leave the everyday world behind and let imagination soar.

Performing for an Audience Does your child love performing in front of the family? Encourage it! Acting out skits, singing, playing an instrument, dancing, performing a comedy routineall these activities help kids develop talent and selfesteem. There are many benets to "putting on a show"writing a script requires creativity, working with a "troupe" calls on cooperative skills, and facing an audience builds public speaking skills. And the sweet sound of applause that follows a successful production is a terric condencebuilder. What child doesn't benet from that?

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The team would like to express our gratitude and appreciation to all those who help us to complete this booklet. A special thanks to our lecturer, Mdm Angelia Lee Sor Geek, whose help, stimulating suggestions and encouragement, helped us to coordinate our project especially in writing this booklet. We would also like to acknowledge with much appreciation the crucial role of the team members, Mydhili Muniandy, Michelle Elaine, Png Xiao Yen, Masliza David, Nor Syamimi binti Ali, Nurfazilah binti Nursyam, Frecylla May Gidor, Mohd Zyarfan Hakim Mohd Rasid and Mohamad Rozainizam Usnie, who gave all the commitment and hard works to complete this booklet.

Playing Dress-Up In the wink of an eye, most kids can turn a towel into a superhero cape, a

Types of Drama Activities and Techniques

ACTIVITY 1: Pairs on Chairs (Mime) This is a pair activity. Each pair needs to improvise a scene where one person would be sitting in a chair and the other offering them a service (hairdresser and dentist). While portraying the scene, they are not allowed to speak to each other. They may pretend to speak without sound. The teacher may set the time limit for each pair to perform. When the time ends, the teacher could ask the class to describe the situation being portrayed by the pairs. This activity could be adapted for larger number of pupils where the teacher could design a scene that involves many characters (scene in a moving bus or in a market) This activity is suitable for pupils who do not have the condence to speaking the language. As they act and perform in front of their classmates without speaking, they will slowly gain the condence to stand in front of an audience. Once they are comfortable, the teacher could move to the next stage when she could provide structure for the pupils to speak in front of an audience. This activity also creates room for discussion which gives the opportunity to pupils to speak out their thoughts by guessing what the scene is about. Pupils could use their imagination and creativity to predict what the situation is about. The teacher needs to guide the pupils through the discussion as different pupils might interpret a situation differently. The teacher should also acknowledge the pupils idea.

royal robe or a cloak of invisibility. Playing dress up instantly transports kids into the role of someone elsereal or imaginary. Most children love dressing up in grown-up clothes, and this is terric. In addition, providing your child with dress-up quality costumes is a great way to encourage these role play adventures.

Acting Out Real-Life Situations What child doesn't enjoy playing school, store, or doctor? One way to learn about the people in the childrens world is by recreating real-life people, places and situations. As they play, they reinforce what they have learned about appropriate behavior in different situation. More likely than not, when kids explore this type of role play, they're not alone, they are playing with a friend or two . And that's even better! Cooperative role play teaches kids how to negotiate, take turns, work as part of a team, and play leader. These are all necessary to developing social skills.

Re-enacting Stories When children re-enact stories, it helps them appreciate other people's perspectives and feelings. How did Cinderella feel about missing the ball? Was Harry Potter afraid before he opened the secret door? This encourages feelings of empathy. In addition, repeating dialogue whether written in a book or spoken in a moviehelps kids build language skills and vocabulary.

ACTIVITY 2: Pantomimes

A collection of Suggested Activities

Role Play

Solo pantomimes: each actor goes up and chooses an activity out of the box. They have 30 seconds to act out that activity. Audience player guess the activity.

This is a common technique used in ESL classroom. Role play is short scenes where learners can practice actual language use. All role plays have dened roles/ character. Essentially lines are scripted. It is an effective means for the teacher to introduce oral practice to reinforce the teaching of certain structures and functions. They are short and manageable for classroom use. Play gives children many learning opportunities :

Group: students are grouped into fours. They must create a stage picture that represents that activity chosen from the box. The audience guesses the activity.

Examples: Lifting weights, taking picture, jumping rope, bowling, playing drums, driving a race car, practicing karate, rowing a boat, tying your shoes ACTIVITY 3: The Wind Blows Put chairs in a circle. Choose someone to stand in the middle. That person will have to say: The wind blows for.. everyone wearing a watch everyone who supports Arsenal everyone who can swim a length everyone who had breakfast today everyone who likes ice cream

Acting out and making sense of real-life situations Exploring, investigating and experimenting Collaborating with others Expressing ideas and feelings condently Developing an awareness of themselves and others
If the role-play environment includes research for problem solving, children are more likely to retain knowledge that they have constructed themselves, than that simply handed to them in other classroom activities.

If the statement applies to a pupil, they must get up and change places. The caller nds a seat. The last pupil left standing becomes the new caller. No one can change places with the person sitting next to them.

Dramatizing also allows children to add an emotion or personality

Drama in KSSR and KBSR

Drama + Educational emphases The Educational Emphases reect current developments in education. These emphases are infused and woven into classroom lessons to prepare pupils for the challenges of the real world. Using drama end drama activities has clear advantages for language learning. These educational emphases can be incorporated in the ESL classroom where drama or plays are carried out. Drama / Plays are a powerful language teaching tool that involves all of the students interactively all of the class period. Drama can also provide the means for connecting students emotions and cognition as it enables students to take risks with language and experience the connection between thought and action. Thinking Skills Critical and creative thinking skills are incorporated in the learning standards to enable pupils to solve simple problems, make decisions, and express themselves creatively in simple language. Drama for second language learners can provide an opportunity to develop the imagination and the thinking skills of the students. The students can go beyond the here and now and even 'walk in the shoes' of another. It provides an opportunity for independent thinking where students are encouraged to express their own ideas and contribute to the whole.! In a role play, each student is encourages to develop their own ideas to solve certain situation or making certain decision. For example, roles play on the story of Sleeping Beauty. Each group has to act out the situation when the Sleeping Beauty could not wake up even

to a text that they have read or listened to. In the classroom, we often expose children to small bit of language such as individual words, rather than whole process or chunks. When speaking, children are not often asked to combine the different structures they are learning. Drama is an ideal way to encourage children to guess the meaning of unknown language in a context which often makes meaning clear. Apart from that, drama can add a change of pace or mood to the classroom. Dramatizing is learner-centred so that the teacher can use it to contrast with the more teachercentred parts of the lesson. It is active and so the teacher can use it to make a class livelier after quieter or individual work. More than often students feel engaged when a drama takes place in the class because it is more interesting and enables them to take part in the process. Another advantage of using drama is that dramatizing a text is very motivating and its fun. In addition, the same activity can be done at different levels at the same time, which means that all the children can do it successfully. The end product, the performance, is clear and so children feel safe, and have a goal to work towards. Children are motivated if they know that one or two groups will be asked to show what they have done, or if they are being videoed or putting on a public performance. Using drama and drama activities has clear advantages for language learning. It encourages children to speak and gives them the chances to communicate, even with limited language.

The Advantages of Using Drama to Develop Multiple Intelligence, Creativity, Critical Thinking and Language
Using drama in classrooms brings many benets to young children. These advantages can be used to develop Multiple Intelligence, creativity, critical thinking and language among young children. Stories and drama provide opportunities for children to use different combinations of their Multiple Intelligences. Through engaging different intelligences in storytelling and drama activities, individual children have opportunities to build on their personal strengths in order to consolidate, extend and deepen their learning. This also provides for variety and helps to broaden and maximise the appeal of activities and activity cycles within lessons. Drama also helps to develop creativity among young children. Events that happen in both stories and drama are playful. Even very young children quickly learn to become adept at distinguishing between the conventions and boundaries of stories and drama on the one hand, and real, everyday life on the other. As well as being fascinating and pleasurable for children, exploring the differences between stories, drama and real life develops their potential for creativity and imagination in a similar way to when they are engaged in play. Stories and drama provide a wide appeal to children with predominantly different learning styles, whether visual, auditory, kinaesthetic, or a combination of these. Through the use of a wide range of storytelling and drama techniques, children can also be helped to develop and discover their own individual learning styles and preferences. When children dramatize they use all the channels, and each child will draw on the one that suits them best.

with a kiss from the prince. It prompts each member to think of the solving. Constructivism Constructivism will enable pupils to build new knowledge and concepts based on existing knowledge or schema that they have. Drama can give children an experience of using the language for communication and reallife purposes and by generating a need to speak. Most of the students in our classroom are exposed to limited amount of English, usually individual words and phrases. Therefore, drama is an ideal way to encourage learners to guess the meaning of unknown language in a context based on their schemata. Learners will need to use a mixture of language structures and functions if they want to communicate successfully. For example, in the story The rooster who went to his uncles birthday party, there are lots of repetitive chants which provide plenty opportunities for the students to learn the language. Contextual Learning Contextual Learning is an approach to learning which connects the contents being learnt to the pupils daily lives, the community around them and the working world. Learning takes place when a pupil is able to relate the new knowledge acquired in a meaningful manner in their lives. Drama can bring the real world into the classroom. Teacher can use topics from other subjects to integrate into drama. In the classroom, the children can act out scenes from history. Pupils not only understand the information better, it also promotes some values to the students.

! Preparation for the real world For example, pupils act out the scene of 13rd May 1963. In fact, elements of patriotism and citizenship is also emphasised in the drama / play in order to cultivate a love for the nation and produce patriotic citizens. Creativity Creativity is the ability to produce something new in an imaginative and fun-lled way. Pupils in Year 1 and 2 will display interest, condence and self-esteem through performance and producing simple creative works. In a theatre class where they create and produce their own plays or just playing a role in a drama, pupils could feel the sense of achievement. Thus, the arts are a wonderful arena for fostering creativity, an important skill to have in a rapidly changing world. In drama, the teacher can foster critical and creative thinking by encouraging students to look for alternatives and give reasons for their decisions and encouraging imaginative responses. Therefore, when carry out a drama / play in the classroom, teacher needs to provide plenty of opportunity for the students to think, imagine, discuss, speak out and look for the solutions to a problem. For example, in the story The rooster who went to his uncles birthday party, the teacher can encourage the students to think of other solutions when the wavy grass unwilling to help the rooster. The application of knowledge must be able to bridge the theories learnt to the world outside in order for the pupils to see the use of those knowledge. One of the challenges in preparing the pupils for the real world is on language use in society. Deeper exploration of language will expose the pupils to more language aspects that they can use later in life. Drama gives away similar opportunity with extra package in which the pupils are not only expose to those language aspects but are able to experiment with it by applying them in drama. Drama provides real-life issues which encourages pupils to operate in real-life situation. Drama gives the opportunity for them to involve, face and solve these situations.

This method breaks the traditional view of learning as we have always been conned to theory alone without proper environment or situation where we can apply the knowledge. In the classroom, teacher can use script produced by the pupils in reading, speaking or listening lessons apart from the drama itself. Activities with different range such as individual, pair or group helps to promote opportunities of applying multiple intelligences.

How children's plays and drama can be used in the KBSR and KSSR classroom
! Learning how to learn skills
Learning how to learn skills helps in building independent learners. This is a way to inculcate some sense of responsibility towards their learning. Drama offers chances of exploring learning skills through different methods. Drama incorporates information skills, library skills as well as study skills among the pupils. These skills are applicable especially during early stage of drama preparation in which they have to study different aspects of drama such as script, characters, scenes, props and etc. This can be conducted in classroom as tasks on preparation the drama.

! Knowledge acquisition
Acquisition of knowledge in drama is vast as it is integrated with skills. For example, as pupils begin to write their script in the classroom, they will have to learn different purposes of writing, how to write in different voices and they are able to experiment with vocabulary, speech patterns, rhythm as well as registers. By exposing the pupils with different condition or criteria needed for writing, they will discover other methods or aspects of writing which is far different than the basic writing that they have learnt in classroom.

! Multiple intelligences
Multiple intelligences such as verbal linguistic, visual spatial, interpersonal and intrapersonal are some of the content of knowledge offered by drama. It helps in character building as to develop desirable personalities and able to expand their social interaction circle properly. Use of language, teamwork and communication are among the main focus of knowledge application and these are valuable chances of learning.