DRAMA IDEAS
Summarized by
Wendy Arnold MAY 2004
ROUND UP
A wide range of ideas were suggested to this request for help. These ideas included:-
- double-casting
- pantomine style
- downloading scripts from the internet
- lesson plans on drama on the internet
- theatre amoeba
Wendy Arnold asked ' …. at this time every year I have to decide on the schools MAJOR drama production. I've been doing this for the past 12 years and for the past 6 years we have introduced Putonghua and Cantonese, alongside English.
Now this year despite asking ALL my colleagues for ideas, I'm coming up with a big fat zero and I have to put in my proposal by Friday!
So what has worked with you? Previously I've included YL from every yearband in one way or another, with character roles, narrations, dance, choir, choral speaking etc. usually around 100-150 YL. The time length is usually 20-30 minutes.
Dennis Newson suggested ' … A Polish colleague of my wife's has twice done a
bi-lingual play (Little Red Riding
Hood, Hansel and Gretel). The main characters were double-casted i.e. one
Polish speaking, the other German speaking - or bilingual. The format wasn't
followed slavishly, and there were two
chorus-like characters to give resumes at apprpriate times, before or after the events, in Polish and German. The
whole play was pantomime-like in that
various other acts - dancing, singing, whatever was built in.
Carol Adeney added ' … Envy you your vast quantity of talent out there (100-150 YL???) to work with!
I'm in a middle school, (re)write my own scripts (as Dennis says, TIME-intensive),
but this fall we're going to do The Lion King. Scripts can be downloaded from the internet and then rewritten. Since it's already in two languages, it might be easier to adapt. The possibilities for the animals are tremendous.
Cinnamon Nolan also suggested ' … Extensive searching has revealed a dearth of free drama for YL. In fact, there were a lot of workshops and conferences being given on the use of drama with YL, so it's obvious that interest is high, but it seems to be a case of D-I-Y or paying.
I did find some interesting sites:
Kinderart – primary theatre: great tips, some exercises
http://www.kinderart.com/drama/primarytheatre.shtml
Lesson
plans for drama-type activities, like the one below the link
http://www.byu.edu/tma/arts-ed/k-4/a-1/movement.htm
Movement grades K-8
Educational Objective: The students will experience creative movement in enacting winter activities.
Materials Needed: Copy of the folktale "Why the Evergreen Trees Keep Their Leaves in Winter" by Florence Holbrook.
Hook: Read and show pictures from the book, a narrative pantomime story about a small boy who has his first memorable experience in the snow.
Step 1: Divide class in half. One group performs a winter activity for the other group to guess. Depending on the maturity of the children, have activities written on a few cards and let them draw one card.
Step 2: End with a brief discussion of their reactions to the story and the various characters.
Step 3: Act out the sensory and motion pantomimes and some of the brief verbal interaction from the story (at desks or in a circle).
a. Children are various bird flying south from winter. (Side-coach their events in taking off).
b. Continue side-coaching. Now the little bird has broken its wing trying to fly.
c. Now you are the trees, and you see a bird coming towards you.
d. Children approach and start playing near the trees.
e. Children want to take some branches, etc. to build a nest.
f. Improvise the rest of the story, or have the children make up an ending and have them talk about all the ways the story ended.
And two commercial sites:
Lovely plays (synopsis/sample free) for $10 + $5 shipping (from IATEFL’s own YL SIG resource list)
http://www.kidsactiontheater.com/
Subscription site (6
months, $20): stories, plays, songs, chants + more
http://www.childrenonlyesl-efl.com/
A book I can recommend, which includes a section on drama:
YOUNG
LEARNERS
PHILLIPS,
SARAH / MALEY, ALAN
0194371956, OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS, Paperback, 188 pages,
illustrations, 245 x 175 mm., December
1993
A book I don’t know, but that's often recommended:
Grammar Games : Cognitive, Affective and Drama Activities for EFL Students
Mario Rinvolucri, Publisher: Cambridge University Press; (January 17, 1985) ISBN: 0521277736
http://www.childrenonlyesl-efl.com/
And some other interesting sites, the first two applicable to recent threads on this siglist, and a general one:
Lovely site, on poetry (not good for VYL, but older YL ok)
http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~leslieob/pizzaz.html#Fiction
http://www.webenglishteacher.com/
Online discussion forum for using technology in EFL/ESL teaching
http://www.ilc.cuhk.edu.hk/english/neteach/main.html
Great site, chock full of resources, thousands of links arranged by topics
http://www.webenglishteacher.com/
Lucy Mellersh responded with ' … Here's a site offering ideas and suggestions for writing or
modifying a panto.
http://www.cix.co.uk/~nickmel/panto.htm
Adeline Tham replied ' … I've recently stumbled on thedea of Avatars- YL use characters based on specific data created virtually and have to interact via these characters or "avatars" . Maybe this would be a way to go, and YLs love this becuase it is more interactive and more game-based. You could create adventure, fantasy and action tales or create a complete-the-story roundtable, where students can post ideas and interactline (realtime?)
For drama- have you tried theatre amoeba? I remember participating in big musical productions in school as a child for "Wizard of Oz" and "John and the technicolor dream coat" I'm sure you'll find some play scripts and can adapt. These were great because it used lots of casts (typical for a musical) Good luck!