Teach Reading and Writing Issue 19

60 | www.teachwire.net SAMANTHA MARSDEN even inspiring a love of reading for life. Here are some ideas to help you apply this approach in your classroom... Acting activities for literature Yes, Let’s Yes Let’s is a simple, well-known drama game that can also be adapted to help students connect with a book or script. To play, explain that everyone acts out what the idea-caller (you, the teacher) calls out. For example, if you are studying Matilda , you might say, “Let’s all be Bruce and eat a chocolate cake,” and the class would reply, “Yes, let’s!” Then everyone pretends to eat chocolate cake. Give it about a minute before you call out the next idea. Next you might say, “Let’s all copy sums from the board, Ms Trunchbull is watching!” and the class would reply, “Yes, let’s!” before pretending to do this. S ometimes, thinking about the study of literature can conjure images of quiet libraries, filled with students poring over books. However, reading and writing both involve the study of people, relationships, and what it means to be human – just as with acting. It’s no coincidence, then, that there are many actor-writers; Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Matt Damon, Tina Fey, Spike Lee and William Shakespeare, to name just a few. Bringing drama games and acting techniques into your classroom is a great way to make the study of literature more active, and inspire pupils to engage with literature in a practical, and character-driven way. Larraine S Harrison, author of Drama and Reading for Meaning Ages 4-11 (Routledge 2022), explains how this can work. She says, “Stepping into an imaginary context encourages children to view texts through the lens of different perspectives. It fosters an emotional engagement that can motivate and inspire children to peel back the layers of a text and dig a little deeper.” Acting techniques can build a bridge between text and imagination, maybe Once you’ve shared a few ideas, you can ask pupils to volunteer to share their ideas for things that everyone can do related to the text. Yes, Let’s can work with any text. For example, if you’re studying The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe , students are likely to love it if you say, “Let’s all walk through the wardrobe into Narnia!” To extend this, you might like to read out a description of Narnia from the text as students walk around, imagining the world you’ve called out. Character studies One way to study literature is to help students get inside the characters’ minds and worlds. Konstantin Stanislavski is one of the most influential acting teachers in the world, and he coined the term ‘given circumstances’. This refers to the environmental, historical, and situational conditions in which a character finds themselves. If you’re studying a book or script, you can ask pupils to choose one of the characters, and a particular point in the book, and to write out their given circumstances at that time. For Stanislavski, six questions make up a character’s given circumstances: •Who? •When? •Where? •Why? •For what reason? •How? You can reassure the children that for some of the answers, different people will have different interpretations, and that’s great. See the panel on the right for a character sheet template that I like to use with pupils. You can ask them to choose a character from the text that’s being studied, and then they answer the questionnaire in first person. Encourage them to draw the answers from the text when possible, and to fill in blanks with their imaginations. Objectives Actors and directors spend a lot of time thinking and talking about objectives (the character’s wants). You can ask pupils to write down, discuss, or improvise ACTOR’S STUDIO Inside the From pretending to eat chocolate cake to navigating Narnia in their imaginations, exploring literature as performers will fuel pupils’ creativity and inspire deeper textual understanding “Bringing drama games and acting techniques into your classroom is a great way to make literacy more active”

RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTgwNDE2