On Monday morning we had a great opportunity to work on drama. It was a really fun experience and we learnt some techniques and activities that we can play in the classroom with our students.

I think that is good for kids to work on drama because it has great benefits. First of all, working on drama can help those students who are shy and it is a really big obstacle for them when it comes to speaking in front of the classmates. Every child deserves the opportunity to express themselves using body language. It is important for them to think about how to transmit different ideas without talking or just thinking how to represent an image with the help of the classmates working in groups.

It also helps students to make their relationships better between themselves. They have to communicate and agree on what is the most accurate way to reproduce what they want to do, taking into account every single voice as they are all part of a big group.

On the other hand, working on drama improves your capacity to concentrate and to focus on something easily. It transmits different values and makes children think. That’s why drama is used by teachers to work misbehavior in the class. It helps a lot as I could see this with my own eyes during my second work placement. The potential that empathy plays during this process using drama can improve certain situations and reactions of the students.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2pW5SZw3Dk

I highly recommend you to watch this video. It is about the University of Sydney and the way they work with drama in a primary education school. Among the people who appears in the video is Australian actress Cate Blanchett, who explains the importance of working with drama for the personality and the attitude of children. It is amazing how, through feelings and emotions, children engage with the learning process with ease, which shows you that, as teachers, we must work with drama in a cross-curricular way in order to offer our students the experience to learn, have fun and build their personality at the same time.

Lourdes