Exploring Books and Themes Using Drama

If you work with your group in out-of-school time or another setting that allows some flexibility, you have many options for creating activities that are fun, lively, and support literacy development. Harvard University’s Reviewing Education and the Arts Project (REAP) study clearly establishes a causal link between dramatic activities and improvement of a variety of literacy skills: oral understanding, oral language, recall of stories, reading readiness, reading achievement, writing, and written understanding (Winner & Hetland, 2000). Best of all, drama is a stand-up-and-do activity that offers release to students who are tired of sitting still.

Reader’s theater. As an effective way to build reading fluency, have children act out a story that you have read together. Each child takes on the role of a different character while you act as narrator. Remember that children are reading in this activity and don’t need to memorize their lines.

Finger puppets. Finger puppets are especially fun for younger readers. Using paper, cloth, and other materials, you and your group can create the entire cast of your favorite fairy tale or nursery rhyme. Encourage children to create their own stories for finger plays as well as acting out familiar favorites.

Freeze frames. For a powerful technique to express and reflect on any story, simply ask children to create a picture, frozen in time, of what an event from a story might look like. Ask each group member to take a part in the picture and say, "Ready, action—one, two, three, FREEZE!” Then ask the observing students to report and interpret what they see. If the group who created the picture has details to add, they can fill them in.

Story building. Drama can be used to build stories, exploring exciting themes and inspiring students to create written versions of their work as a follow-up. Students work together to construct events, shaping a beginning, middle, and end, using many literacy-rich activities (conversations, letters, mime, etc.). One excellent resource, packed with thematic play ideas and assessment strategies, is Dramathemes by Larry Swartz (1995).

Reflection: How can I encourage reflection in small-group learning?

Asking students to reflect on their learning reinforces new skills they have acquired and may help identify changes that will make the group run more smoothly. Reflection questions can be simple or complex, depending on the age and level of students, and may fall into the following categories (Gibbs, 1995):

• Content/thinking questions focus on the content of the lesson and the thinking skills that students used: Remember when we all felt confused about the crystal? How did we figure out what it was? What gave us a clue?
• Collaborative/social questions address the quality of the group interaction: What went really well in our group work today? What can you do to make our group work better next time?
• Personal learning questions explore what the individual student learned or felt during group work: What did you learn today? What did our work today make you think about?