Drama, as outlined in Section 1, has a particular contribution to make to the child’s development. However, if this contribution is to be effective it is important that the principal and staff plan carefully for the implementation of the drama curriculum. In doing this they will need to take account of a number of considerations:
- ensuring that the importance of drama as a part of the curriculum is recognised and that the staff is committed to this
- recognising the importance of the integrity of the drama as part of the learning experience
- guaranteeing the continuity of drama in the child’s school experience
- providing for the integration of drama with other areas of the curriculum
- allocating time for drama.
The importance of drama in the curriculum
The true importance of drama lies in the nature of the learning experience it affords the child. Through the imaginative engagement of the child’s intellectual, emotional and physical capacities he/she can be brought to new perceptions and new understanding. This is done through the experience of creating a drama text. It is in this act of creating the story that the educationally liberating power of the drama resides. The endless possibilities of fiction allow for the exploration of the unbounded range of human experience. Furthermore, the improvisational nature of the exploration can give a spontaneous release to the child’s intuitions and a context that enables him/her to clarify and to express them. Through the enactment and the reflection on it— through adopting a character and empathising with it, and through interaction with other characters in the drama—the child finds a gateway to new experience, knowledge and understanding that no other learning experience provides.
The importance of the integrity of the drama in the child’s learning experience
Although the child learns through drama in a different way than through any other subject, that unique learning experience depends entirely on how successful the drama is. It is the quality of the drama that will determine the sort of learning that will take place. This applies whether the drama is done for its own sake or as an integrated element of another subject. In planning, the principal and staff should always think of the nature of the learning experience that drama can provide. To consider drama merely as a methodology is to risk diminishing both the drama process and the learning experience it can uniquely afford. It is important that, whatever the circumstances in which it takes place, the integrity of the drama is preserved. For example, drama as part of a history lesson or an SPHE lesson will only yield up its full learning benefits to the child if, whatever the content, the drama experience is as successful as it can be. The better the drama the greater the quality of the learning.
The continuity of drama in the child’s school experience
A continuous and consistent experience of drama is central to the successful implementation of the drama curriculum and should be a major consideration in the planning process at school level. The backbone of a successful approach to process drama in school is the fostering of continuity from make-believe play to drama. At infant level much classroom drama will be indistinguishable from make-believe play. It will be easy for the teacher, at this stage, to use this impulse to begin to lead the children towards drama. As the impulse to make believe wanes with the children’s growing maturity it is crucial that they have an experience of drama that will enable them to use the essential characteristics of make-believe play in a way that is natural and relevant to them. This will only be fully achieved if children have a consistent experience of drama from year to year throughout their school lives.
In this way drama can become an accepted and normal part of their school experience with which they can engage without any self-consciousness. They will come to appreciate the importance of drama rather than see it as something silly or irrelevant or, indeed, as merely a break from lessons. Furthermore, it is only through a continuous experience of drama that children will develop drama skills and achieve a facility with them. The quality of the drama experience and, of course, the learning that results will be greatly dependent on the extent to which the drama skills have been mastered and the ‘drama rules’ learned.
Integrating drama with other areas of the curriculum
The content of drama is life experience itself. This may come from children’s own general experience or from the content of one of the other curriculum areas. Drama provides the child with a unique and potent means of learning, whatever the content. The effectiveness of the learning experience, however, will depend on how good the drama experience is. This means that even when content from another curriculum area becomes the content of drama it should be regarded as a basic principle that the resultant activity will retain the integrity of the drama itself.
Drama should not be used as a more attractive way of presenting some piece of knowledge but as a means by which that knowledge (or a particular facet of it) becomes accessible to the child in a way that is not possible in any other learning context. In this way drama can become an essential learning experience in any curriculum area, and at the same time the quality of that experience will be a factor in the success of the drama itself.
Drama can also be integrated with other parts of the curriculum by using drama itself as the starting point. An approach to learning about the Great Famine, for example, might begin with a drama about a family in famine times. Through it the child could not only ‘live through’ and come to know what it was like to live then but, as a series of drama activities develops, he/she would be led to research factual material and internalise it by incorporating it into the drama world and refracting it through the drama experience. Whatever the starting point the child will not only benefit from the unique learning mode that drama affords in the particular curriculum area but will gain in his/her general development as well.
An Ghaeilge agus drámaíocht
The language of communication in drama will be determined largely by the particular medium of instruction in the school and teachers will refer to the appropriate language version of the documents. It will be noted that some content objectives in Irish are included in the English version. Where English is the normal medium of instruction it is important to consider the relationship between drama and the teaching and learning of Gaeilge.
The greatest benefit of drama in Irish is that it can bring fluency in the language to the speed of life. Drama activity in Irish should not, therefore, be inhibited by continued interruption from the teacher to ensure accuracy. Any common mistakes can be referred to later and corrected. More than anything else, a lack of vocabulary can inhibit the success of the drama. To counteract this the child should be encouraged to use whatever language is most effective and appropriate in order to retain the spontaneity of the drama. For example, the creation of gibberish is often used by drama teachers and actortrainers to create the necessity for the actor-pupil to express thought physically, thereby extending the range of physical language. Similarly, the child’s lack of the appropriate word can be used to force him/her to express a thought physically. As before, the word can be supplied later, or a ‘What was she trying to say?’ game could be devised for the purpose.
In an English drama it is easy to introduce a character who speaks only Irish, thus encouraging its use. For example, the boatman speaks only Irish and they can’t go to the island without making known the reason why they have to go. Similarly, in a situation where language differences emerge, as for example between an alien and an earthman, either English or Irish can be used to signal a lack of communication. The teacher can also go into role in the drama in order to prompt and extend the use of Irish. This can happen spontaneously in an Irish class or as part of a drama class. With practice, both approaches can become useful elements in the teacher’s strategies.
The content of drama in Irish sometimes needs to be simpler than that used in English drama and is often slightly restricted to allow the child to create freely within a language range with which he/she is reasonably comfortable. A pleasant drama game is to ask the children to create playlets around groups of words supplied by the teacher. This can form the tréimhse réamhchumarsáide (pre-communicative phase) and lead to the teaching of the vocabulary.
Using different short improvisations in Irish to build up a day in the life of a certain character is another useful strategy. The pre-text for this activity can be four six-line scripts supplied by either the pupils or the teacher.
The integration of Irish and drama in ways like these will assist the child’s drama education and at the same time help him/her to achieve greater fluency and expressiveness in Irish.
Allocating time for drama
The contribution that drama has to make to the child’s development and learning in school underlines the importance of planning for it when allocating time to the different curriculum areas and to the subjects within them. The allocation of time to drama will have two sources:
- in the time allocation given to Arts education
- in its integration with other subjects and curriculum areas.
As was discussed in a previous section, ‘Integrating drama with other areas of the curriculum’, these two sources are interrelated. They will be complementary to each other and will often overlap.
Children with special needs
Because of its nature and the unique learning experience it has to offer, drama is particularly relevant to children with special needs. It can be of enormous benefit both in terms of affective and cognitive development. General guidelines for teachers, however, can only give a broad indication of the contribution that drama can make in this area.
The drama experience in general and the activities in the strand unit ‘Co-operating and communicating in making drama’ provide learning opportunities that are crucial to children with special needs. It can, in particular, contribute to the child’s language development in extending vocabulary and expressive ability. The physical dimension of drama will also assist non-verbal expression. In developing the child’s concepts of drama, elements such as place and time, spatial awareness and more accurate perceptions of time relationships are cultivated. Furthermore, the story base of process drama will help to develop the child’s ability to understand and express the sequential nature of events, and the importance of focusing on different aspects of a drama activity will foster powers of concentration.
Because drama is a co-operative activity, it provides a valuable experience in turn-taking and in working with others in order to achieve particular goals. One of the essential learning benefits of drama is that it provides the opportunity to deal with questions of choice and conflict by distancing them in the fictional context, thus helping to provide a safe environment in which to explore them. Above all, because it gives such scope for self-expression and selfrealisation, the contribution drama can make to the child’s self-esteem is incalculable.