The National Curriculum for English and the National Literacy Strategy require schools to teach children about making, presenting and responding to drama in all four key stages. This means that children need to be taught how to read and write playscripts and understand how scripts can be interpreted when they are performed. Thankfully, far from being an onerous additional task for teachers and children, a practical approach results in a great deal of fun and opens up new possibilities for developing children's literacy.

A small scale research project at the University of Reading has been looking at how practical drama can help children develop reading and writing skills by appealing to a range of different 'learning styles'. The project involved groups of Year 5 and 6 children working on texts such as The Tempest and Hamlet to see if a practical approach would help the pupils understand the narrative, understand and use the language, create monologues and dialogues of their own and appreciate that the written script is open to interpretation when performed.

One of the reasons that children tend to enjoy and often excel in drama may be because it appeals to all of the senses. Reading, writing, speaking and listening are no more or less important than watching and doing. For some children who struggle with understanding the written word, the provision of a physical and visual context can help them make sense of language. In this way, practical drama can help children whose preferred learning style is auditory or kinaesthetic as opposed to verbal/visual.

As pupils discuss what they are seeing, hearing and doing they also become aware that meaning is far from fixed and that interpretation is, in itself, an exciting business.

One of the exercises we set up in the workshop required the children to work in small groups as Barnardo, Horatio and Marcellus to prepare how they would tell Hamlet about the appearance of his father's ghost. The task required careful consideration of their audience, i.e. Hamlet. What words should they choose and how should they deliver them so as to convince him of the authenticity of their tale without offending him? Two groups were recruited to show what they had prepared. The teacher took the role of Hamlet, newly returned from university, while the rest of the class watched and listened carefully to see which soldiers would have been able to persuade Hamlet to join them on the battlements to see the ghost for himself. The pupils concluded that Hamlet was likely to believe the soldiers' story, as depicted by their classmates, because of:

•  the details they gave about the ghost;
•  their use of repetition to reinforce their story;
•  their slow, serious delivery involving use of low tone and volume;
•  their unfaltering eye contact with Hamlet;
•  the way in which they kept a respectful distance from him, choosing to
• stand while he remained seated.

The project reinforced the fact that literacy involves a lot more than simply ascribing sound to marks on a page. Playing with the sounds helps in the understanding of the words they refer to and paying attention to what words do to you physically deepens and clarifies their potential meaning. Enacting words reinforces their relationship with context and underlines the fact that the marks on a page are incomplete notations of how humans communicate verbally.

Finally, the development of literacy is tied up with learning that your opinion counts. Reading and writing are not just individual practices but are frequently shared and social. It is easier to read, write, plan and talk about drama in groups than individually. By working together pupils can stimulate and draw on each other's ideas. Seen in this light, drama should not be regarded as a frill in the curriculum but a potent force in the development of literacy.
 
 

Contact Andy Kempe by email: A.J.Kempe@reading.ac.uk

 

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