Importance of Drama Skills

The role of Drama in modern education often needs defending in an age where increasing demands are placed upon school systems, teachers, students, and parents to produce more and more results. It is often incorrectly thought that if one subject is of little value in the educational process, it would be the dramatic reading and acting experienced in this subject. But to artisans, teaching drama goes beyond just memorizing lines, character study, and learning how to act. As with any other form of art, creativity is the craft and cultivating creativity in children from early ages is pivotal to our future society.

Drama education offers preparation for real life scenarios as well as historical understanding. It encourages deductive reasoning and fosters creative problem-solving. Consider that students can explore places, scenarios, and other people; they become another person and experience real situations, often troubling ones, that allows them to try out solutions in a safe environment. Resulting consequences can be discussed, studied, and experienced free from the real-world repercussions. In this way, adult costumes are �tried on� before adulthood is reached, offering insight into and preparation for living in the real world

Another realm of dramatic instruction is found in the art of communication skills. Public speaking, debate, and persuasive speeches are accepted foundations of language education, yet they are all a part of drama skills. Through their usage in the classroom, children become self-confident orators. Additionally, the patience and self-control required in preparation of a production or in the classroom produces workforce qualities such as teamwork, mentoring, multi-tasking, and the ability to focus on the task at hand.

In becoming a character, specifically one whose point of view is foreign or different from their own, student perception is challenged and both empathy and tolerance are developed; highly necessary life skills in our multi-cultural society.

Most importantly, drama supports the rest of educational studies. As learning is best experienced in three parts, consider the Chinese proverb: Tell me, and I will forget. Show me, and I will remember. Involve me, and I will understand. Classroom lectures, textbook readings, worksheets, and essays are all a part of show and tell. But to immerse the student in the actual subjects is the best teaching method.

Lesson Plans

Having a lesson plan is no less important in the drama classroom than any other one. The internet has a vast amount of lesson plans for teachers, though finding sites with an entire drama category is not as common. Sometimes it helps to view these plans to help improve your own and to gather new materials and ideas for a particular topic being introduced. Theatre Lesson Plans offers ready-made lesson ideas with links to major drama and theatre sites across the web.

If needing a mini-unit for late high school students, performing badly in reading and underachieving in other areas, Drama from Yale New-Haven Teacher�s Institute has a thorough guide with lesson plans, visual aids, reading lists, and everything necessary to teach it.

Instructional Games for Classroom

One of the greatest assets a teacher can provide is to engage students with games that teach the multiple facets of drama. The list of those available is immense and includes both well-known, tried-and-true, and teacher-written activities. Lesson Plan Central has over 80 games available to use in the classroom as well as links to brainstorm or connect with other drama teachers and schools. Creative Drama gives instructions for the games authored by the site owner, as well as links to other game sites found useful in drama class. Improv Games offers a listing of the websites with theater and improv games, how many each site has, the level of details provided to play them, and the host site.

Backstage and Technical Resources

There is more to drama education than acting. While those on the front stage might be what the audience sees and hears, without the technical expertise and adequate stage hands, the show would not go on. Students can work on set design, prop building, children�s costumes, lighting and special effects, and the list goes on. There are even a few internet resources to help students implement their gifts in these areas. Theatre Design is mini-unit for seniors that teaches students to analyze the script and visualize the floor plan; from a rough draft to a rough sketch, students learn to model to scale; from the scale model to the 3-D model; and, since this area of drama has its own vocabulary, students learn the terms associated with their tools and trade. Discovery Education offers a lesson plan for younger students on all the careers and vocabulary of theater and drama. An especially helpful guide offers backstage and technical criteria for a successful production.

Additional Resources

Drama Workshop Guidelines � primarily for K-6^th grade, this guide provides detailed information on how to conduct a workshop for elementary students in the creative drama arts. Specific schedule and format, links to necessary resources used in the workshop, and teacher-directed activities are thoroughly explained.

AATA � the American Alliance for Theater & Education has a member-based website for teachers, directors, college students entering the field, and playwrights. This enormous resource offers networking with peers throughout the industry, lesson plans, conferences, publications, and discounts on several new drama texts and plays, to name a few.