Teach Primary Issue 18.6

If you’re looking to inspire your students to write creatively, drama can be used as tool to prompt ideas, develop characters and awaken imaginations. Charles Dickens is said to have acted out his characters as he wrote; when one reads his work, that’s not hard to imagine, as he clearly knew his characters inside and out. Bringing drama exercises into your creative writing classroom can move pupils from staring at a blank page and onto creating powerful stories with believable characters. Letting pupils be a little silly is no bad thing either, when it comes to being creative. 1 | CREATING A STORY WITH PROPS Gather between eight and 20 props. Some of my favourites include: books, scarves, crystals, wooden spoons, snow globes, pens, handbags, pieces of jewellery, perfume bottles, pebbles, keys and magic wands. Place all the props in the centre of the room and ask students to sit in a circle around them. Explain that one pupil at a time will be the storyteller and become any character they wish to play, for example, a witch, historian, teacher, astronaut, or singer. In character, the ‘storyteller’ will walk into the centre of the circle, select one prop, show this prop to the rest of the group, and tell a story about it. Ask the storyteller to think about why this prop means something to their character. For example, the witch could pick up the magic wand, explaining that his grandmother gave it to him on his eighteenth birthday. Or the astronaut might pick up the pebble and tell the group that it is a piece of moon rock, then tell a story about how frightened she was when there was a problem with one of the engines on her way back from the moon. Explain that both short and long stories are welcome (although not too long—you might need to stop someone if their story goes on for more than two minutes!). If students are nervous, they can say just one sentence. “This is my scarf that keeps me warm in the winter” is enough. For some pupils, START HERE MAIN LESSON WHAT THEY’LL LEARN l How to use props as stimuli for a new story l How to trust their intuition and story ideas l How to use acting techniques to develop a character for creative writing l How to use their body to portray a character English, Drama Before any drama activity, it’s a good idea to play a quick warm-up game to get everyone in the creative mindset. One fun warm-up game is a variation of musical statues. Play some music and encourage everyone to dance. Then stop the music and call out something that all the children should pretend to be a statue of. This could be, for example, a witch, banana, monkey, frog, tower, rainbow or monster. As you move on to the next activity, remind the children that drama class is a judgement-free zone, and there’s no such thing as a wrong idea. Encourage pupils to observe the two rules of ‘be kind’ and ‘good listening’. Lively ways to develop new characters SamMarsden shows how you can use a sequence of drama exercises to invigorate pupils’ creative writing KS2 LESSON PLAN @SamMarsdenDrama marsdensam.com © Rosalind Hobley 88 | www.teachwire.net