Primary Schools

Drama and role-play

The role of drama

Drama requires impersonation, personification and role-play involvement. It is an ideal methodology for the teaching of history, as

  • the involvement of children in roleplaying means they will empathise with characters in the past and come to defend their actions against the arguments of others
  • drama aims to re-create human experience. The pupil-actor is personally affected by the experience and this motivates him/her to know and understand more
  • drama mitigates against a simplistic approach to a topic. All points of view are articulated so that situations are no longer viewed in ‘back or white’ terms.

Organising the drama lesson

Drama-based history lessons aim to enable the child to speak or act as their character would have done. Almost any topic, story or event can become the basis of a drama experience for children.

Two types of lesson structure are suited to the teaching of history:

  • the talk-through method, which is most suitable for younger classes. The onus is on the teacher to provide and present all the motivation and information for the action
  • the role-play method , in which pupils are furnished with information on their characters and they articulate this ‘in role’ to the rest of the classes
PDFEXEMPLAR 16 - A 'talk-through' lesson: 18th-century emigration from Ulster (fourth to sixth classes)
PDFEXEMPLAR 17 - The 'role-play' method: The Great Famine (fifth and sixth classes)
 
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