Zooming In on Learning Through Drama in the Elementary Classroom

In this episode, we're bringing learning to life through drama! From tableaus to role plays to monologues or even full-length plays, I'll share how drama can transform your classroom. Discover how drama fits in with what you are already doing and helps students become more fluent readers, boosts confidence, deepens comprehension, and makes learning stick long after the lesson ends. I share some great resources that the site Drama Notebook has compiled that you can use in your classroom to make learning come to life.

Major Choice is a career mentorship program for students with and without disabilities. The program emphasizes personalized mentorship, self-exploration, and career exploration, aiming to help students find fulfilling careers. Educators and professionals are encouraged to become mentors or volunteers. https://www.majorchoice.com/home-page5pdqllzu62926234

Check out Drama Notebook: https://www.dramanotebook.com/

Transcript

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Welcome to the Teacher Ads Podcast. I'm your host, Melissa Milner, a teacher who is painfully curious and very easily inspired. This podcast is ever-changing, and I hope with each season you find episodes that speak to you in your work as an educator. This is the seventh season of the Teacher Ads, and it's exciting to see the growth in how many educators are listening. Episodes are released every other week. If you enjoy the Teacher Ads, please rate it on Apple Podcasts and leave a review. It helps the podcast reach more educators. I'm happy to share that the career mentorship program Major Choice is now sponsoring the Teacher Ads Podcast. I'm thrilled about the partnership. You can learn more about becoming a mentor at MajorChoice.com slash mentor. Thanks for listening. Hi, it's been a while since I've done a solo episode like this. I think it was the end of last season. This is the first one of the season that I've done. And it's the last one because it's the last episode of the season. We will continue in the fall, The Teacher As lives on. But this season has been epic with amazing guests. So I'm just going to list the guests and make sure to get back in and listen if you've missed any of them. So we started with Ed Goyette from Major Choice, and Major Choice sponsors the Teacher As podcast. That was a great interview. I had music teacher Mel Emmerich. I had A.J. Cullen talking about animal-assisted interventions. Holly Britton was talking about foundational writing. John Rand and Thomas Turner from The Failing Writers Pod. They were hysterical. Phil Geneswski and Jessica Werner in separate episodes. They both talked about teacher burnout. Matt Sagreski talked about neurodiversity. I had a chat about dyslexia with Faye Bankler Castle. I also had on investigative reporter Chris Pabst talking about Baltimore City's failing schools. Debbie Hattery was on and she talked about ways to improve the job for substitute teachers. Faya Creed, a very creative, fun, and successful author, came on and it was nice to find out that she was local. So we actually hung out. And then there was Chris Mukebe, who talked about behavior and the nervous system. It was a really interesting episode. In addition, I did two episodes with the incredible Leah Crawford about literacy, and I did three episodes of What About This with Andrea Calvin in preparation to have our own podcast about creativity and technology in education. This season had variety and was a unique one. So why this episode to end the season? Why didn't I just end with Chris McKeeby? He was amazing, and you know, summer has started. Why am I bothering to do this? Well, my topic is learning through drama in the elementary classroom. And I happen to be very inspired and very jazzed about this topic for the next school year. I have an exciting change this coming school year, and I'm already planning for it. I'm going back to teaching third grade this fall. I ended third grade on March 17th, 2020. And when we came back, I chose to move to fourth grade so I would be able to work with the amazing Trisha Piacetini. It's a fun age, a really fun age. And I really want to make use of my drama background and incorporate drama into learning. One of the things I love most about drama in the classroom is the kids don't even realize how much they're learning while they're having fun. When students step into a role, act out a story, or do like an improv game, they're building important skills across the curriculum. Drama helps bring reading to life as well. It allows students to explore characters, settings, and conflicts in a hands-on way. It strengthens speaking and listening skills, it boosts vocabulary, and it gives students authentic reasons to communicate. Drama develops confidence, creativity, and empathy. When students imagine themselves in someone else's shoes, they can begin to see the world from different perspectives. They learn to collaborate, they learn to work together, solve problems, and take risks in a positive, safe way. The best part about it is that every child can find a way to shine. In the past, when I've done this, some students love being center stage. Other students have talents in other areas, like writing the scripts, directing, creating the props or the background. It creates opportunities for all learners to be successful, connected, and excited. Also, drama gives students a chance to move, create, and express themselves while staying engaged in the learning process. A quick role play during social studies or doing a reader's theater performance or even a full classroom production. Drama belongs in the classroom. So where do you start if you've never used drama in the classroom? I'm going to talk about a resource that I've been using for over a year now for my afterschool drama club, but I have been recently perusing for ideas about using drama in the classroom. It's called Drama Notebook, and I had Jane Adoll on last season. And Drama Notebook is a sponsor for the Teacher As podcast. This resource is invaluable for any teacher trying to incorporate drama lessons, role-playing, et cetera, into the school day. If you want to know more about how the website got started, you can listen to my episode with its founder, Jayna Dahl, that I did on January 10th, 2025. So with Drama Notebook, there are three different plans. There's the monthly plan, a three-month plan, and a yearly plan. I find them all very, very reasonably priced, and the amount of resources you have in the website is well worth the price. The ideas I'm going to share with you are on the drama notebook website in the How to Use Drama to Teach English section, but they're fantastic tips for all learners. They were contributed by drama teacher Elainey Dujku, the founder of the English drama method, and the owner of an award-winning English language school in Greece. First of all, Elena shares her thoughts on the question why drama? Drama offers active and interactive learning experiences. Students are not sitting down. They are up on their feet, moving and communicating with each other. Drama builds confidence, concentration, and memory. Students become confident communicators. Drama offers opportunities for a lot of language production. Students improve their speaking, listening, and writing skills. Drama develops creativity, imagination, and empathy. Students are asked to create scenes, to put themselves in the characters' shoes, and to use their imagination and see, touch, smell, and taste things that are not there. Drama encourages critical thinking, collaboration, and communication. Students work together, they try to find a solution to the problem, and they care for and support each other. She then wrote about tips for using drama to help students learn a language. But again, these tips help with all students, especially at the beginning of the year. When she talks about a warm-up or a drama game or a drama breaker, she's talking about the short engaging activities that are in the How to Teach Drama to ELL students resource on Drama Notebook. What I love about these is they highlight when during the day you can add some drama fun for a break or related to what they're learning. So here they are. Start your lesson with a warm-up to wake your students up and make sure they're listening and ready to take part. Use a drama breaker at the beginning of your lesson to release energy, get your students up on their feet, and start your lesson on a high note. Use drama games in the middle of a lesson to teach and review language. Use a drama breaker when you see your students are a little bit bored or distracted. Use drama activities to give the opportunity to take part in role-playing, communicate with other people, improvise, and use the language. Make sure you have enough space to move around. Have your students help you. If necessary, put all the desks and chairs at the back of the room. But if you have a carpet area, that usually does fine, by the way. Have a lot of props, costumes, and realia. A box full of props that match the lesson's objectives can bring magic to the classroom. And obviously there's some prep there, but especially if you're an English language learner teacher, those are great to have. Most of all, be enthusiastic. Transfer your enthusiasm and be playful. Pay attention to the pace, pitch, and volume of your voice, and smile often. So thank you, Elena, for those amazing tips. So where do you get started? Drama Notebook has so many amazing resources. I'll explain what I'm envisioning for my third graders starting in the fall and share when Drama Notebook has a resource to support it. So clearly, social emotional learning and getting to know you beginning of the year activities are fantastic. In that English language learners resource that I was just talking about, it has a lot of those types of activities for beginning of year. So honestly, I've not had a chance to really look at the third grade curriculum yet. It's brand new curriculum. The math and the reading writing program are brand new. When I was teaching 2017 to 2020, we did not have these programs yet. So it's brand new to me. But I know that in our first ARC unit, that's American Reading Company, we read Magic Treehouse books, and at the end of the unit, students write their old Magic Treehouse book. So while reading the book, students could pick a favorite part and act it out. When it's time to write, students could role-play scenes with a partner to get ideas for dialogue and action. I know that third grade ARC, again, American Reading Company, also has a fairy tale unit, I think, later in the year. There are many resources for fairy tales on drama notebook, from short scenes to full-length plays. This is a natural match to the curriculum being taught. Also during silent reading, along with students getting into their just right chapter books or choice books, they could pick a monologue to read for fluency work. They can then record it or read it to the teacher or a partner or the whole class. You can even have all the students memorize a monologue and invite parents or other classes to hear them. The sky's the limit. A natural option here would be podcasting. Students record once they have gotten feedback from the teacher and a partner about their fluency, including their expression. The monologues can be put together as an episode as well as acted out in front of a partner, the class, or invited guests. My focus here would be improving students' phrasing. One goal would be for there to be no word-by-word reading, and that students read in longer and longer phrases as their fluency improves. Another goal would be for students to read expressively. If they read in a monotone, this is where they can hear others and learn how to read with expression. Drama Notebook has simple and short monologues for just this kind of reading work. In addition, just generally I know that third grade learns about the American Revolution. Drama Notebook has two plays that have a lot of characters and they're short, 10 to 15 minutes. One is called America's Secrets and is about the women of the American Revolution. And the other one is called 13 Colonies Game Show. This is kind of fun because each colony has to explain why they were the most important colony in helping during the revolution. If you're a teacher who likes to take on something a bit more challenging, you could read the How to Create a Historical Piece resource. It includes a way for students to plan how to create and perform a play based on a historical event. If it sounds good to you, if you read it and it sounds good to you, there's a few ways you could use this resource. One is you could put it up on the smartboard and the students and you could together create the play. Or you as the teacher, if you're creative and love writing, you could go through the process. There's a lot of great, um, it's like a really cool graphic organizer that asks you the important things about this event. You could go through the forms, create the play yourself, and then present it to the kids. If you do that, which I don't recommend, because it's a lot of work, if you do that, um, I would definitely get feedback from other people on your team about whether it's even good or not. Uh, because I know, you know, I write stuff and then I read it later and I'm like, wow, that is really bad. I'm being honest. So, I mean, I recommend going with something that's already written that's cute and funny, and the kids will love it, and the parents will love it if you want to invite parents. So, again, you could keep it as simple as performing for the class or make it as big as having parents come and all that. It's just, it just makes the learning fun. I'm not sure what science topics the third grade learns about, since it may have changed since 2020 when I taught third, but I do know one of their ARC units, the reading-writing unit, is about ocean life. And I think they end up creating a book about an ocean animal. So students could use the animal characters worksheet from Drama Notebook to plan and create a short monologue or play about their ocean animal. It's a really great little organizer. Ocean animal charades would really be fun. That could happen anytime. You could also collect poems about sea animals for students to read and practice and perform. Again, building fluency, but directly related to your science unit. I did find one resource with some animal poems on Drama Notebook. There are two poems about sea life. One is about otters and the other about crayfish, which I thought was very specific. I could keep going, but I'm sure you get the idea of how to incorporate drama into your everyday curriculum. So now I want to address the elephant in the room. I know many listeners are thinking, drama sounds great, but who has time for one more thing? Believe me, I get it. I have let entire years go by realizing I missed drama opportunities because I hadn't been purposeful about planning authentic drama activities related to what we are already learning. We juggle so much curriculum and assessment, demands and deadlines, behavior management, meetings, technology, etc. But drama isn't one more thing you have to do. It's a way of doing what you're already doing, but with some flair and fun. And it's more memorable to the kids. I have to tell you, I put this into Chat GPT. And I said, why is drama not just one more thing? And I have to share what it came up with. It was actually really good. So I want to share it right now. It said, first of all, drama is learning in action. Think about how children naturally learn. They pretend. A cardboard box becomes a spaceship, a pencil becomes a magic wand. Drama taps into that natural instinct. When students act out a scene from a book, become historical figures, or interview a character from a story, they're not stepping away from learning. They're stepping deeper into it. I'm like, uh, you go, Chat GPT. I thought that sounded pretty cool. It builds essential skills. I'm just going to share the list it came up with communication, collaboration, creativity, problem solving, confidence, and empathy. When students work together to create a frozen tableau or improvise a conversation between historical figures, they're practicing listening, negotiating ideas, taking risks, and thinking on their feet. Clearly that's a life skill. And it said classroom drama can be as simple as a quick role play, a freeze-frame scene, hot seating a character from a book, a pair, share a conversation in character, acting out a vocabulary word. I thought that was really cute, or creating a living timeline. These activities can take five minutes or they can take 50 minutes. The goal isn't performance, it's engagement and understanding. And then it finishes. Think of drama as a powerful teaching tool. Drama isn't an extra, it's a way to bring learning to life. So that's kind of the whole point of wanting to do this, especially with third grade. I think they're going to have a blast. And my lesson planning, along with trying to plug in differentiation, SEL concerns and behavior concerns and seating and all the things we think about when we plan. Oh, this is better as a whole class, this is better as a small group, along with all those considerations, planning materials, et cetera. I am going to add to that wonderful list of things to consider. Is there a place in this lesson or mini-lesson or activity where I can put some drama? Where I can have kids role-play something, where I can have we're learning about American Revolution, and I have kids come up and do a frozen tableau where they get into a position that they feel maybe it looked like when they were, you know, Lexington and Concord or whatever. So there's all these different ways that we can incorporate this into our lessons and make it just a regular thing. I love that idea about like having a box with props in it. So think about like indoor recess, you know, free play during your SEL block. They can be playing with those things and dramatizing and writing plays and role-playing things. And this year I did have students during their free play choose to like have a store. And that's drama. So I hope everybody has an amazing summer. You know I will relax. You know I'll get to the beach and go to some concerts, uh, spend time with family, but you also know me well enough, if you've been listening, that I'll be doing planning over the over the over the break, and you know, thinking about what I want my classroom to look like and thinking about all the ways I can make my lessons better and make my room more engaging and um safe and supportive to students. So have a great summer and uh see you in the fall. For my blog, transcripts of this episode, and links to any resources mentioned, visit my website at www.teteachure.com. You can reach me on Twitter and Instagram at Melissa B. Milner, and I hope you check out the Teacher As Facebook page for episode updates. This podcast is sponsored by the career mentorship program Major Choice. You can learn more about becoming a mentor at majorchoice.comslash mentor. Thanks for listening, and that's a wrap.