SHARE CONVENTION: "Teaching English through Educational Drama"

Teaching English through Educational Drama

By Susan Hillyard

This workshop was in charge of Susan Hillyar. I had already attended one of her seminar but on this occasion she made a presentation with other women that belong to the group “English in action”. They explained what the purposes of the group are and they also showed us the way in which they normally work.

  They presented a “Human PowerPoint” of an original idea based on The Talking Statues of Rome. The programme English in action was designed to teach English through Educational Drama in twenty Special Schools under the auspices of the Ministry of Education, in Buenos Aires. It also emphasizes the use of stories and Action Sacks(bags full of different objects to tell a story, sing a song ,etc.) as a motivational force in the teaching of values in English to students with some form of challenge. They explained both the theory and the practice of the approach they use.

 They work mainly with children who need special education but their ideas can be applied to any classroom context. They defined Special Education as a variety of educational establishments such as special schools which deal with students with learning difficulties, from emotional disorders to ADHD students to selective mutes and they also work in hospital schools with students who are waiting for transplants, or who are suffering from medical conditions which keep them absent from school for long periods of time.

  They consider drama as the best way of teaching English to those students because it is an extension of childhood play which uses the whole body and mind, the heart , the soul and the emotions in a social context so that students can collaborate with each other and learn the social skills necessary for effective learning. Drama as Education is considered to be a holistic discipline covering all the processes of education, often summarized in the word SPICE. The five developmental processes are:

·         Social

·         Physical

·         Intellectual (cognitive)

·         Creative

·         Emotional

   Finally they mentioned the advantages of drama for all students:

 

·         Drama for transformation

·         Drama as empowerment

·         Drama for fluency ( speaking)

·         Drama as culture (play and storytelling)

·         Drama for thinking ( all types)

·         Drama for literacy (reading and writing)

    In my opinion, this workshop was very useful to see language teaching from a different perspective. The work that the English in Action group carries out is really admirable and their ideas are really creative. I think that we should not highlight the differences among students every time we have a student with special need, we should integrate them. Some of the activities presented by Susan seem to be really effective and motivating. Sometimes we are limited by the curriculum to cover a lot of contents within the year. However, we should try to implement some of those techniques to reach students in different ways.