On the book speaking and listening through drama 7-11
francis prendiville and Nigel Toye by Gavin Bolton in the first chapter about How to Approach Speaking and
Listening through Drama explained is in this book, is the key teaching
technique that is used, namely teacher in role (TiR). This chapter will set out
approaches to TiR and give examples of how it works. The class were calling out
and not listening properly. She was talking over them and trying to teach
without getting their full attention. Then she explained that they could ask
questions of one of the roles from the story and that she was going to become
that role when she sat down. She picked up a ribbon with a ring threaded on it
and put it round her neck as the role signifier. When she sat down as Hermia,
they were focused entirely on her and were listening very closely, putting
hands up to ask questions and taking turns in a very orderly way. They were
interested in her problem, which was her father’s insistence on deciding whom
she should marry. The trainee was not doing anything different apart from using
role and committing to it very strongly. She looked far more comfortable. The
teacher as a storyteller is something all primary school teachers will
recognise. Good teachers slip easily into it and use it frequently. In its most
observable guise it occurs when teaching the whole class and engaging them with
a piece of fiction. The pupil’s role will be dominated by listening and this
will be interlaced with questioning, responding and interpreting the meaning
and sense of the fiction. The teacher’s role will be to communicate the text in
a lively and interesting manner, holding their attention and engaging their
imagination. In making judgements about the quality of this method of teaching,
the critical questions will be around whether the content of the story
interests the class and holds their attention, whether the delivery of the
teacher, i.e. voice, intonation and interpretive skills, are good and, where
relevant, whether accompanying illustrations have impact and resonance. For
many pupils the times spent listening to their teacher as storyteller will
remain as significant moments in their education. The connection between the
teacher as storyteller and the teacher using drama, lies in the fact that they
both use the generation of imagined realities in order to teach. We are
describing using role as ‘teaching from within’ because the teacher enters the
drama world, but it is very important to step out of the fiction often and not
let it run away with itself. When using TiR, the teacher is operating as a
manager as well as participant and must spend as much time stopping the drama
and moving out of role (OoR) to reflect on what is happening and give the
pupils a chance to think through what they know and what they want to do. This
OoR working is as important as the role itself. It manages the role and
therefore the drama; it manages the risk, establishes where the class is and
helps pupils believe in the drama. It provides time and space for the teacher
to assess and re-assess the learning possibilities. Let us look at an example
to see how you as the teacher have the opportunity to negotiate how the role
behaves with the class. This also shows a step from hot-seating to role-playing
as a demonstration with a small group. As with all of this section of the book,
we are using an example from drama based upon ‘The Pied Piper’ (see Toye and
Prendiville, 2000, p. 225). In setting up the drama we are doing what Heathcote
calls ‘trapping [them] within a life situation’ (Johnson and O’Neill, 1984, p.
119). The result of constructing the situation thus is that they can then
discover what it all means. There, and in the resulting choices and decisions,
lies the learning potential, borne out in an exciting challenge. The key is how
children are given information. They can be handed it on a plate or they can be
given opportunities to uncover/discover/be surprised by information. In this
last case there is much more involvement and ownership, especially if they have
to work to get the information from someone who is reluctant to give it (as
with Tim the Ostler in ‘The Highwayman’), someone who only gives clues as to
what is really going on (the central TiR in the ‘Macbeth’ drama), someone who
does not realise the importance of the information (Icarus in the ‘Daedalus and
Icarus’ drama). Hence the skill of the teacher lies in the art of the
unexpected. If pupils acquire knowledge and understanding by working for it,
stumbling upon it or having it sprung upon them such that their expectations
are challenged, their learning experiences will be more dynamic than simply
being told. An example of this occurs in ‘The Governor’s Child’, a drama based
on Brecht’s Caucasian Chalk Circle. The class are in role as a village
community helping a woman with a baby, who, unbeknownst to them, has fled a
revolution. The villagers discover later who she really is and then have to
deal with the consequences. Why we use teacher in role – pupils listen to
teachers in role, How we expand the possibilities of story and explore story,
Operating the two worlds of drama, inside and outside the fiction, Moving
in and out of role – managing the drama and reflecting on it, Building the
teacher role with the support of the class, What, when and how to give
information for maximum influence and effect, How to dialogue with the class –
teachers learning to listen well, How we work with the class as collaborators,
Choosing the role – the low status roles offer more learning possibilities,
Handling drama – structuring for control – imposing shape and constraint.
The
second chapter about is how to begin planning drama explanation is We are
using the idea of a frame as a way of seeing key decisions in planning. It is
originally defined by Erving Goffman (Goffman, 1975) as the way a situation
develops, or in our case is constructed, to give particular viewpoints and ways
of understanding the meaning of that situation. The drama has now taken shape.
The aim of the drama is now clearly focused, to have the children explore and
consider a boy’s unacceptable behavior and look at a parent–child relationship,
to give advice and solve problems. The resolution of the issues is the final
stage of the drama. How will we make that happen? Usually we use forum theatre to
set up the class taking over the wronged role, against the role who most needs
to learn to change, to see and understand something important about themselves.
In this case that is Max, who will always remain a TiR. The pupils have to show
him the error of his ways and how other people, his mother, his sister, really
feel about him. Other techniques and roles are used along the way to build the
class’s understanding of Max so that they can best see how to help him see his
responsibility to others, to change from his totally self- centred way. There
are many techniques for structuring the stages of a drama. Variety of activity
for the class is important but each chosen technique must fit the moment and do
a particular job. They may
create
context, build belief in the roles and therefore the drama, focus
learning, help explore a situation and deepen understanding, help to reflect on
the meaning of the event. There are two main types of this sort of classroom
drama that have evolved: ‘living through drama’, where the pupils face the
events at a sort of life rate in the here and now, and ‘episodic drama’, or
strategy-based drama, where the class are led by the teacher in creating
situations and events through specific techniques or strategies and where
chronology is more broken. Of course, most dramas have a mixture of the styles,
but the younger or more inexperienced a class, the more ‘living through’ will
dominate to create the tensions and challenges more directly. The more
sophisticated the group, the more they will look in a more abstract, artistic
and less realistic way. With all plans you need to ensure that a tension moment
comes early to spur the interest of the group and that a TiR features early to
model the commitment and seriousness of the drama. How to begin a plan – facing
the problems of starting from scratch, The frame – the way the elements link
together to provide viewpoint for the class, The elements of planning
including: learning objectives, a stimulus to learning, roles for the teacher
and for the children, how to create tension points, building context and belief
in the drama, the decision-making for the class, the choice of strategies and
techniques, Planning with someone else, Road testing the first version.
The
third chapter about how to generate quality speaking and listening explanation
is This is one of the most interesting, potentially powerful and new concepts
being promoted in educational circles in the UK. It is the result of extensive
work by Robin Alexander and others (Alexander, 2000, Alexander, 2005). This
approach to oracy in the classroom raises the profile of talk, speaking and
listening, from the poor relation of English in the National Curriculum, to
become the central focus, the pivot of learning across the curriculum. As the
drama develops the pupils develop as a community on the basis of the shared
experience. That in itself provides a cumulative language world which is very
rich and where the pupils, if the drama engages properly, care in a way that
promotes collective, reciprocal and supportive talk. So drama is a more
coherent approach to teaching talk. Drama gives the pupils plenty of
opportunities to think through speaking and listening. It promotes speech from
the pupils because they want to speak, not because they are being asked to
speak. Drama sets up more fluid situations with more possibilities. Mistakes
can be made and looked at because any particular stage of the drama can be
reworked to make it work better for us. In fact the making of mistakes is seen
as part of the learning, a major part of helping to negotiate the meaning and
to create the drama itself. The teacher working through drama is intervening as
teacher but also as other roles within the drama, roles that are models and
anti-models to promote the pupils’ language in ways that teacher language
cannot. In his or her roles the teacher will model, through positive roles, all
of the positive aspects for the pupils and can also portray, through negative
roles, many negative aspects of behaviour and language; roles can be
aggressive, thoughtless, self-centred, silly, anti-social, etc. The pupils will
not adopt these because the context tells them that the negative aspects are
not what they want to see or hear; in fact the drama requires that they have to
oppose these behaviours and deal with them. In the dual world of drama, pupils
find that they have to engage in a language where they are: responding,
initiating, sharing, encouraging, questioning, speculating, probing,
challenging, exploring, creating, arguing, examining viewpoints, enquiring,
evaluating, interrogating In drama we can get new levels of listening because
of the pupils’ interest in the problem-solving of the drama itself. The focus
of the problem or dilemma that the pupils face embodies the nature of the
language. In order to carry out all of these speaking activities they are, of
course, inevitably developing their listening and we see this in all its
powerful and active modes, listening that is: open, sensitive, reflective,
receptive, supportive, attentive, collective, creative. This is because each
pupil has to make sense of what the teacher and the rest of the pupils are
gradually building up around them. Pupils feel valued in drama and consequently
have more confidence in what they want to say and show more respect to what
other contributors to the drama say. In order for drama to work the teacher has
to listen very closely as well, to see where the pupils are, to pick up what
the pupils are offering and use it within the drama. So the consequences for
the father and son could be catastrophic as the plan to escape may be in
jeopardy. Lucy has taken the drama on and helped the teacher explore this
important area. The class have paid very close attention, listening not only to
the teacher but also their peers, their representatives in the hot-seat. This
forum theatre piece lasted all of 40 minutes and there was never any hint of a
lack of concentration. Their feeling of involvement shows clearly by the way
they shriek when Daedalus talks of having to speak to the servants about either
the throwing away of the folder, or in version 2, their knowledge of the plan.
Obviously the teacher stopped to talk this through with them after Lucy’s final
pronouncement but they did not need the implications interpreting at the moment
of revelation in the drama. All of them knew. The importance of speaking and
listening in the teaching/learning process, How to dialogue with a class so
that it is collective, reciprocal, supportive, cumulative, purposeful, The
teacher intervening as teacher, but also as other roles within the drama, How
drama produces listening of high quality, Do the Speaking and Listening levels
in the National Curriculum do justice to the levels of talk pupils can achieve
here?
The
fourth about is how to use drama for inclusion and citizenship explanation
is In drama we are dealing with the ‘as if’ world. In this fictional world we
can behave ‘as if’ events are taking place and ‘as if’ we are there. It is a
world that the teacher and the class create and fill with people and events
that do not exist but are analogous to the real world. The dramas we include in
this book cover some challenging ideas. We need to disturb the class
productively. For example, in the Christopher Boone drama (based upon The
Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon), the first
meeting tableau of Christopher and the dead dog can be seen as disturbing,
especially the albeit mistaken idea that he might have killed it, that it is
‘still warm’. However, the use of the art form, the way the class is accessed
to the event with signs and labels round the TiR, distance it and make it a
managed moment. The classroom-based drama world that we create can happen much
more frequently and in a more focused manner. It is less problematic and costly
to organise and to supervise, and with much less immediate risk. The
opportunity to explore situations, to consider attitudes, values and other
points of view is exactly where we can see drama working for children in the
age group we are considering. Drama’s relationship to citizenship works on two
levels, as a methodology that demonstrates aspects of citizenship in action and
when the content is specifically focused upon issues of citizenship. When we
consider that drama can link citizenship with personal and social education,
and spiritual, moral, social and cultural education, then we can begin to
understand the importance of drama as a teaching method. Drama is an inclusive way of
working because it is structured on the principle of ‘respect for persons’ It
makes demands upon the teacher to adopt a teaching and learning style that
generates positive social health in the group The teacher models an attitude
that protects pupils from humiliation and Derision Dramas themselves may
examine the concept of the outsider and the inclusive solutions to problems
Drama protects pupils through the roles they are given, the roles teachers take
and its analogous way of working Drama is a method of delivering the
Citizenship curriculum that embodies an inclusive approach
The
fifth about is how to generate empathy in a drama explanation is Drama is
often promoted as a teaching and learning methodology that generates empathy in
pupils, yet there is little debate about exactly what is meant by this idea. To
do this we need to move from the general to the particular. Empathy, like
drama, is framed in the particular and so we need to move from broad-brush
emotions to their demonstrable particularity. Drama works by focusing upon the
particular and moving from the particular to the general. To understand drama’s
relationship with empathy we need to deconstruct the process of empathetic
behaviour and see how this is replicated in drama. In the next part of the
drama the pupils are told that a new inmate is expected and that they are to
witness her induction to the workhouse. First, they look at the Workhouse
Master (TiR) as he watches the girl walking towards the gates. They tell the
teacher how they want him to stand and how they want him to look. He holds a
stick. One of the girls in the class is enrolled as Martha, the new inmate. She
carries a rolled up cardigan to signify she is carrying a baby. Like the role
of the pupils, the role of the teacher is also important in the generation of
empathy; the relationship is co-dependent. The role of the pupils needs in the
first place to be a community one so that they see the situation from one point
of view and are not divided in their attitude. Just as the role of the pupils
gives them a perspective from which they can empathise, the role(s) you plan
for the teacher is also part of structuring for an empathetic response. Empathy
is often misconstrued The components of empathy Component One – the cognitive
component. Component Two – the affective component How to structure drama for
empathetic response Building the cognitive component Framing the affective
component Planning the role of the teacher and of the pupils for generating
empathy.
The
sixth about is how to link history and drama explanation is Historians are
interested in making deductions and inferences about sources and then selecting
and combining sources to create accounts of the past. Historical imagination is
filling the gaps when sources are incomplete. In drama we are particularly interested
in the last element. It is here that drama synthesises story and past events.
This approach allows us to focus the pupils’ attention upon the interpretation
of the photograph and how this might be structured. It also underlines the need
for research questions and exposes how little we can be certain of at this
early stage of the enquiry. From that moment we can incorporate it into the
drama. We can tell the pupils in their planning of the boys that if Fitzgerald
leaves they can ask for food and money. They can beg and see what response they
get. This is a good example of how ideas from students and pupils can become
embedded in the planning for the future. In this drama each frame takes the
class closer to the children who are the subject of our historical
investigations. The next task is to engage the whole class as a sculpture of
the children living on the streets. The use of still image is important here
because it constrains the action and forces the class into a holding moment
which, like a painting or a photograph, allows us to examine the detail and
what it means for us. This slowing down of the drama and looking in detail at a
particular moment is important and a feature of how drama in education works.
Unlike performance and product-orientated drama, the purpose here is to
negotiate meanings and consider implications of particular issues. The pupils
have been moved frame by frame to make sense of the world of the street
children by a gradual edging towards their perspective. Drama teaches about history
by creating carefully researched historical contexts and roles. These roles
will generate the need to do something about a particular issue, however this
debate about the particular is really a means to make sense of larger more
general themes. The drama approach must be seen as a particular pedagogical
approach to the subject. Its particularity lies in the use of TiR as a means to
generate other kinds of dialogue beyond the usual teacher–pupil one. It should
be supported by the more traditional approaches to history teaching which are
effective in ways that drama is not, for example, the searching and retrieval
of information. Drama needs to be recognised for what it does best, which is to
negotiate meanings through engagement with imagined realities. There are
tensions between history and drama but they can be resolved by adopting a
conceptual framework that is clear about the learning intentions Research is a
key element in planning roles from history Using a variety of sources helps to
support the validity of the work It is important to be clear about what you
mean when you use the word empathy in relation to drama and history teaching
Using signifiers, not full costume, when taking on a role allows you to come in
and out of role Reference to modern day parallels allows you to make the
connections between then and now
And
the last chapter is how to begin using assessment of speaking and listening and
other wngliah skills) through drama explanation is Drama is not just about
speaking and listening, but the creation of a fiction, where the art form of
drama is essential and the success of that enterprise depends on valuable
interaction between all participants. However, we must stress we are primarily
looking at assessing speaking and listening, the focus of this book, and we are
not providing in this chapter a framework for the assessment of theatre
skills, the art form of drama, for personal and social development, nor other
learning areas that drama can address. Give feedback to the pupil, report
to another teacher, report to a parent. As we have indicated, the first is
vital. Pupils need to know what they are doing, how they can improve and to be
encouraged in speaking and listening, after all it is the primary communication
skill. In the formative role of assessment we need to be feeding back to the
pupils during and after the drama. Assessment in this context is the detailed
study of episodes of speaking and listening. We need to describe what we see
and teachers need to operate as researchers of the dialogue in their
classrooms. Educational research is becoming more encouraging of detailed
description of events, particularly when looking at classrooms in the action
research method we are advocating. For the development of speaking and
listening, we need to regard the class as colleagues. The class is creating the
work with us and they will only develop their skills if they are provided with
rich environments in the dramas by the teacher, especially working in role. If
you consider the example later in this chapter, the teacher’s responses and
management of the language opportunities are key in generating good quality
contributions from the class. In conclusion, we know that assessing and
recording speaking and listening is a demanding task, but we would contend that
is no more demanding than other assessment if it is approached in the right
way. Furthermore, we would maintain that the absence of evidence of pupils’
speaking and listening in a school limits their progress in all areas of
literacy and is depriving them of a key entitlement. The nature of assessment
of Speaking and Listening, Taking account of the context and the interactions,
The purpose of the assessment, Formative assessment – feeding back to the
pupils, Recording and analysing what we see, Talk as the basis for writing
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar