How to Approach Speaking and Listening through Drama

1. How to Begin with Teacher in Role

- Why use teacher in role?

Many teachers consider TiR as a difficult activity.  However, that when a teacher takes a role, he becomes 'attractive' to children, so there are fewer control problems because they are involved.  Many times we witness teachers trained with children's classes struggling to get attention when giving instructions in traditional teacher mode. However, once they begin to play a role, they get that attention more effectively.

All of this introduces a series of interesting problems that children begin to experience and understand about their relationships with parents and about their relationships with the opposite sex.  Even if the main purpose of this work is not the study of Shakespeare's play, that role can be used to open up areas that are very important for personal and social education that can be identified by children.  That will motivate them and produce a very strong involvement with Hermia and then, if you introduce them, Egeus, and Demetrius and Lysander, rivals for his love.  (See complete drama settings in Part Two of this book.)

- Teacher as storyteller

The teacher as a storyteller is something all primary school teachers will recognise. Good teachers slip easily into it and use it frequently. The teacher's role is to communicate the text in a way of life and interesting, hold their attention and involve their imagination.  In making an assessment of the quality of this teaching method, critical questions will be around whether the content of the story attracts class interest and attracts their attention, whether the delivery of the teacher, namely: voicing, intonation and interpretation skills, both and, if relevant, whether the accompanying illustrations have impact and resonance.  For many students, the time spent listening to their teacher as storyteller will remain an important moment in their education. The relationship between the teacher as storyteller and the teacher uses drama, lies in the fact that they both use the generation of imagined reality to teach.

- Preparation for the role

In preparing to be this kind of storyteller the teacher must have made particular decisions about this child. Begin by asking the class out of role what they want to ask the child and the order of those questions. This not only provides the teacher with some security in knowing what is going to be asked, at least initially, but also allows some minutes to refine the planning, so that the teacher can be specific in answering their questions. The questions will, to a certain extent, be predictable because

they are largely generated by the circumstances of the drama so far and the role the class has taken, which will be that of anxious parents.

- Teaching from within

Moving in and out of role managing the drama and reflecting on it. 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 todo. 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.
- The requirements of working in role
The teacher, working in this way, is an important stimulus for the learning. It is not necessary to use role throughout the piece of work. It can be used judiciously to focus work at strategic points or to challenge particular aspects of the children’s perceptions whilst other techniques and conventions are used to support the work and develop it.
- Disturbing the class productively
Discovery/uncovering – challenge and focus
- Responding to your class
The art of authentic dialogue – needing to listen – two-way responses The class working as a community is the key to the use of drama as a teaching method. This is another reason that the class have more ownership.
- The teacher–taught relationship
In all teaching situations there exists a power relationship between the learners and the teacher. The learners are bound together as a group merely by being the learners and, of course, as there are more of them than there are of you, they hold the power.
-The teacher–taught relationship
There are five basic types of role and mostly can be illustrated from the ‘The Dream’ drama.
1.The authority role
2.The opposer role
3.The intermediate  role
4.The needing help role
5.The ordinary role