No, No Drama, No, No, No, No Drama

Well, Fergie might not like drama (did you catch the Black Eye Peas "My Humps" allusion in my title?), but I sure do...but only when it's used as an educational tool.  So, let's talk drama in the classroom:

Using drama in the classroom is authentic, meaningful, relevant, engaging.  While I used to think having students act in class wasn't something to take seriously, my mind has since changed.  Due to the literature I have read on using drama in the classroom, graduate classes I have taken, and actually imparting drama in my own classroom, I can confidently say that drama is an essential tool that all teachers should use.  

I recently had a discussion with my Scholar Sophomore English students about the seven deadly sins to help prepare students for a character analysis of Prince Prospero in "The Masque of the Red Death".  I enjoy discussing the deadly sins with my students because we find out that there is a gray area for each sin, and they all seem to bleed into each other with regard to meaning.  To help students to better understand the meaning of each word, I had them apply a sin to a real world example, and to do that, students had to act.  Since there are seven deadly sins, I had seven groups of students.  I especially liked that students worked in a group because that gave the shier students a mode of comfort; not one individual was acting alone in front of the class.  

I gave students roughly ten minutes to come up with a non-scripted (or scripted if that made students feel comfortable) skit to perform in front of the class.  After each performed skit, we had a brief description about how their skit embodied the sin and why it is considered to be a dark side of human nature.  We even applied students skits to other real world examples.  Students were active participants in their learning, and they facilitated a discussion on and an application of real world examples. 

The acting and the discussions were a complete success; students got to momentarily live the sin and really explore the meaning both in their acting and in our discussing.  Additionally, this drama activity was authentic in that students took ownership over their learning and made it their own, which is what teachers ultimately seek to achieve in their classrooms.  

I urge you all try to try incorporate drama into your lessons.  Students really do appreciate it because they are having fun while they are learning.  The day after I had my students do the drama skit, I had a student exclaim in class, "Guess what!  I was watching [insert TV show] last night, and they were talking about envy, and I knew exactly what they were talking about because of what we did in class the other day!"  Wahhhhoooo!  I call that a success!