This summarizing task is to fulfill  Micro-teaching subject

Name:Avionica Diar Aisya

Class: TBI-6C

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SPEAKING AND LISTENING THROUGH DRAMA 7-11

How to Approach Speaking and Listening Through Drama

1. How to Begin with Teacher in Role

Why use teacher in role?

One of the best ways to do that in drama work is to be inside the drama. Therefore, at the centre of the dramas that we include in this book, is the key teaching technique that is used, namely teacher in role . Many times we have watched trainee teachers with a class of children struggling to get attention when giving instructions in traditional teacher mode. Yet, as soon as they move into role, they obtain that attention more effectively.

For example, a trainee was talking out of role to a class to explain that they were about to meet a girl who was having trouble with her father and needed their help . She picked up a ribbon with a ring threaded on it and put it round her neck as the role signifier. The trainee was not doing anything different apart from using role and committing to it very strongly. The trainee was using the simplest form of TiR, hot-seating the role, where the class meets the role sitting in front of them and can ask questions.

You are not effective as a teacher if you do not at some point engage fully with the drama yourself by using TiR. Remaining as teacher, intervening as teacher, side-coaching, structuring the drama from the outside, and/or sending the class off in groups to create their own drama must at best restrict and at worst negate any opportunity for the teacher to teach effectively. It is far more effective for the teacher to engage with the drama form as artist and be part of the creative act. It is very useful in a Literacy lesson for the teacher to use roles from the text.

The very fact that you take on a key role can provide important ways of defining and exploring the text. Let us look more closely at the Hermia role.
This extreme social expectation and law makes the fiction like their reality but also different from it, something that helps drama create a useful distance, which helps the class reflect on their own beliefs and look at the drama world in a more balanced and thoughtful way. All of this introduces an interesting set of issues which children at this age are beginning to experience and understand about their relationship with parents and about their relationship with the opposite sex. Even if the main aim of the work is not a study of the Shakespeare play, the role can be used to open up very important areas for personal and social education that the children can identify with.

Teacher as storyteller                                             

The teacher as a storyteller is something all primary school teachers will recognise. The teacher’s role will be to communicate the text in a lively and interesting manner, holding their attention and engaging their imagination. In making judgements about the quality of this method of teaching, the critical questions will be around whether the content of the story interests the class and holds their attention, whether the delivery of the teacher, i. The connection between the teacher as storyteller and the teacher using drama, lies in the fact that they both use the generation of imagined realities in order to teach.

The relationship between story and drama in education is a complex and dynamic one. It means a known narrative can still be used, the knowledge of the narrative is not a barrier to its usage. However, if the pupils are locked into the original narrative it is problematic. It is the negotiable and dynamic elements of the relationship between drama and narrative that liberate the pupils and the teacher from merely retelling the known story.A class can take part in a drama where all of them know the story, where none of them knows the story, or a mixture of both. As long as some fundamental planning strategies are observed, knowledge of the story is not a barrier to participation. 2 A willingness to move away from the fixed narrative to an exploration of the narrative. The use of drama strategies to explore events and their consequences, to look at alternatives and test them.3 If narrative consists of roles, fictional contexts, the use of symbols and events then the teacher needs to hold some of those elements true and consistent with the story so far. How the class respond to this event is not known and it is at this point that they become the writers of the narrative. Let us illustrate these ideas with an example from ‘The Pied Piper’ drama .

Preparation for the role

In preparing to be this kind of storyteller the teacher must have made particular decisions about this child. Begin by asking the class out of role what they want to ask the child and the order of those questions. This not only provides the teacher with some security in knowing what is going to be asked, at least initially, but also allows some minutes to refine the planning, so that the teacher can be specific in answering their questions. The questions will, to a certain extent, be predictable because they are largely generated by the circumstances of the drama so far and the role the class has taken, which will be that of anxious parents.

You are going to be telling them a story but it will be as if they had just met you and it will not be the voice of the narrator re-telling someone else’s story but in the present tense as if it is happening now.

It’s just not fair!

They are questioning from within the story, as if they were there. Next we consider this key skill of moving in and out of role.

Teaching from within

Moving in and out of role – managing the drama and reflecting on it

We are describing using role as ‘teaching from within’ because the teacher enters the drama world, but it is very important to step out of the fiction often and not let it run away with itself. When using TiR, the teacher is operating as a manager as well as participant and must spend as much time stopping the drama and moving out of role to reflect on what is happening and give the pupils a chance to think through what they know and what they want to do. This OoR working is as important as the role itself. Let us look at an example to see how you as the teacher have the opportu-nity to negotiate how the role behaves with the class.

This also shows a step from hot-seating to role-playing as a demonstration with a small group. As with all of this section of the book, we are using an example from drama based upon ‘The Pied Piper’ . You set up going into role with one of the groups that you know will handle the situation well. The whole class is involved in defining the role and can use their imaginations, their ‘drama eyes’, to help create the appropriate appearance/behaviour and their own understanding.

This is in contrast to an actor who has to use acting skills to create the role in its entirety for an audience. We are making a distinction between role behaviour and acting. Both depend on appropriate signing, but whereas the actor must give the non-participant audience the bulk of the signing, a teacher using role can get away with a committed minimum. The class will see the Rat-catcher as overworked and probably needing help to put his/her case to the Mayor.

When you have discussed enough you can move back into role and take their stories about the problems the rats are causing. Give the groups time to prepare their evidence before you go into role to receive the input. 
The person who playing the role can then simply walk for-ward adopting a serious tone, holding the blanket, without having to pretend any of those outward signs an actor would have to portray if it were a play being performed to an audience.

 When the drama is stopped they can describe, recap, interpret, think through, consider next moves and understand what is the significance of their work. It is very important to get the participants to look at and interpret what is going on, frequently by stepping out of the drama. Depth in drama depends on the very clear and regular use of OoR negotiation so that the awareness of the co-existence of two worlds.

The requirements of working in role

This will help us shape up the TiR elements particularly according to how the audience is seeing things. Here are two responses to considering the ‘audience’ position. In drama the pupils are making sense actively, knowing their meaning can be acted upon. They have to switch from operating as audience to participant and back again often and suddenly.
An example of responding to the critical incident occurred in a session on the drama based on Macbeth. When considering the way of showing the over-throw of Macbeth, one of the class of 10-year-olds said, I want to sit on the throne and stop him sitting on it. The teacher took this up and put two of the servants on the thrones of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, with the rest of the servants gathered behind the thrones. He then set up the entry of Macbeth to the throne room.

TiR as Macbeth entered slowly and stopped as though taking in the situation. Of course, the pupils sat firm and outfaced him. He froze and one of the servants, picking up the idea of the situation, strode up to Macbeth, ordered him to kneel and took the crown from Macbeth to carefully and ceremoniously place it on the head of the usurping servant. The class cheered as Macbeth bowed his head and the two pupils stood up, triumphant.
When they are given opportunities to influence the outcomes, to make decisions, the drama becomes partly theirs.The drama is developed through a set of activities that build the class role, which is usually a corporate role. We have to help them into the drama, making them comfortable, and then disturb that comfort productively.

In setting up the drama we are doing what Heathcote calls ‘trapping

The key is how children are given information. They can be handed it on a plate or they can be given opportunities to uncover/discover/be surprised by information. In this last case there is much more involvement and ownership, especially if they have to work to get the information from someone who is reluctant to give it , someone who only gives clues as to what is really going on , someone who does not realise the importance of the information . Hence the skill of the teacher lies in the art of the unexpected.The class are in role as a village community helping a woman with a baby, who, unbeknownst to them, has fled a revolution.

Responding to your class

The community is made most effective by the teacher participating in role. If a teacher runs drama without using TiR there tends to be a lack of dialectic because the teacher produces the structure that the children engage with, but the teacher can only manipulate it from outside that structure. The more we observe the use of TiR and the more we use it, we have come to the conclusion that if it is set up correctly, it does not require the person playing the role to have the same skills needed by the aesthetic actor. We are making the distinction here between the aesthetic actor and the social actor.

The aesthetic actor will have learned skills related to voice, gesture and physicality that are not required by the teacher using TiR. The teacher in role will already have the skills of the social actor that are used in everyday life. The class will use their creativity to see the role in a particular way that has been indicated as long as it has been properly signed to them. Whereas the actor defines for the audience the message of the play within the circumstances of the plot, the teacher uses signing as an indication to the audience to join in the encounter, effecting and affecting the enterprise.

As a result of this difference, an actor, using lines written as a script, behaves in a very different way from a teacher improvising within a planned structure, who has to take account of what the class will say in response to the moves he or she makes. The audience in the theatre waits for something to happen, but the partici-pants in a drama session make it happen. As the class feed back their responses and make possible development of the role’s importance the teacher must respond appropriately and therein lies the skill of the ‘subtle tongue’ and the possibility for authentic dialogue. The teacher must respond to these responses in an authentic way, honouring how the class see the role

The teacher–taught relationship

In all teaching situations there exists a power relationship between the learners and the teacher. The learners are bound together as a group merely by being the learners and, of course, as there are more of them than there are of you, they hold the power. The power in the classroom lies with the class. Of course, it does not look like this when the class are responding and contracting into the tasks set by the teacher but should some or all decide not to, the cohesion can be broken.In drama this power relationship is made overt. We must start from the point of view that if the class do not want the drama to work then it will not.

2. How to Begin Planning Drama

There is even an intermediate stage in planning and that is to take parts of different dramas and remake them as new ones. Clearly the teaching/learning objective will drive the shape of the drama, but the engine that drives the drama needs fuel and that fuel is a piece of strong material, a creative idea, and that is more inspirational than an objectives-led design. This material – a book, a piece of literature, a picture or some other subject matter, fiction or non-fiction – will give us one or more of the elements of a good drama, a role or roles, an interesting context or a dilemma.

The ingredients of planning

Let us take the elements of a drama we have been referring to above and look

at them separately with other examples.

Creating a drama is very much like cooking. It is easy to serve up a fast food meal, which has very little quality and goodness, but it is a more detailed, careful and thorough process to create a quality meal from scratch with goodningredients. Our ingredients include the following.

Learning objectives 

Learning is often focused through a key problem or issue for the children to tackle (Dorothy Heathcote’s ‘man in a mess’). This helps hand responsibility for learning to the pupils themselves.

The learning can be in any of five areas:

~Language Development – the medium of drama and hence the key impetus to Speaking and Listening (see ‘How to Generate Quality Speaking and Listening’ p. 41).

~Spiritual, Social, Moral, Cultural, Personal – there is usually this capability in any drama.

~Content – the curriculum, focused on any subject – we have highlighted possibilities in our examples for English, History, Technology, Art, Geography.

~Art Form drama – the more the class do drama the more they understand the form and the more they can manipulate and help shape the work.

~Thinking Skills – drama models the mental moves that underpin our thought processes: actions and consequences, being logical about decisions,giving reasons and arguing positions. The very reflective nature of the work,going out of role to examine the meaning of situations and events in the drama, promotes metacognition.

If you look at the sample dramas we give you, you will see a range of objectives in these areas specifically related to the material of the drama, for example, in ‘Daedalus and Icarus’ the following are all possible:

Objectives

Pupils will understand:

~the significance of legends as a focus for literacy work

~legend as part of historical understanding

PSHE

~consequences of actions (on taking the folder of drawings)

~father/child relationship and disobedience

~the consequences of keeping secrets

The first two could be further refined to:

~How the story of Daedalus and Icarus is related to Greek ideas about technology.

~Comparing the drama version of the story and the original myth.

Likewise, the first PSHE general objective could be focused more as the

consequences of:

~taking what is not yours and

~finding out about something that represents knowledge dangerous to yourself.

Clearly the contact points have learning areas related to them.

Strong Material.Let us again look at our drama ‘The Wild Thing’ from Where the Wild Things Are. Sendak shows us Max, a boy who is very imaginative, but whose behaviour is very wild. In addition, no other family members appear in the story. This is a gift for drama because we have a number of PSHE issues implied through the story but not dealt with and we can add key roles to look at these issues and embody in them their attitudes to Max.

Roles for the pupils.They can be an expert community, the ‘Mantle of the Expert’ role. The ‘Mantle of the Expert’ role gives the pupils status and an objective view-point to consider situations often fraught with emotions and opposing attitudes. We use this sort of communal role as they also invest the pupils with the skills and attributes that we would want them to exhibit – they have to be analytical, compassionate, communicative, thoughtful, creative, listeners.

Building context.Usually having one main location helps the drama to be properly focused. It started with the tomb and we planned to spend time creating it and its wall paintings as the early belief building activity. The tomb could focus all the activity of the drama. That planning decision reinforced the importance of the depictions on the walls so that they can also then be used more at other stages of the drama.That consolidation of the context strengthened the integrity of the drama and helped structure it, as you will see from the full plan.
Building belief.Only if you create the belief that there is something in it for them. Use of TiR can interest and build belief. The right choice of pupil roles helps that, especially if meaningful activity can be given to them to establish the roles, or the situation and place is properly realised and created for the imagination, as indicated in the previous paragraph.

In delivering the drama we have to.We have to remove ideas that may get in the way of the drama working , but doing it in such a way that the pupil offering the idea genuinely does not feel rejected in the process and is willing to continue to make suggestions.

Decision-making – key developments in the drama which provide the class with challenges

There are teacher decisions and pupil decisions and we have to be clear about the timing and nature of both, why one should be the teacher’s and why another should be the pupils’. Many teacher decisions are built into the plan as givens, otherwise there will be no clear direction for the learning. As with many art forms, the constraints of the piece are critical to the quality of the product. What we embed as non-negotiable in the planning of a drama tightens the focus and ensures a concentration on the particularity of the main event.

The success of the lesson will be how closely the pupils follow my plan and deliver what I have planned. It has to be recognised that in drama lessons the dynamic of teacher planning and pupil response must have fluidity. The teacher may plan for little space for pupils’ decisions in some parts of the lesson and more in other parts. Highly constrained planning is often a feature of the early phases of the drama lesson where common agreements are necessary in order to build the context.

In these early phases of the drama lesson the pupils do not have enough information to make key decisions. Later in the drama there can be more space and more possibilities for pupil contribution. It may be better to use a drama where tight planning is the norm throughout because the class are inexperienced and not ready to take on the responsibility of key decisions. Here are examples of the difference between a closed access and open access approach to drama.

‘The Governor’s Child’ drama. The issue at this point is one of informing the villagers. We may get their reactions, but these viewpoints are not going to change this decision. This is because at this point we are building context, a context where Maria will be hidden by the villagers and that will provide the major challenge and decisions later.The major decision is about whether to continue to hide her after the Soldier has visited and the villagers know she represents a danger to them. The class should always have the opportunity to make choices, to see alternatives in the way we approach situations, to look at the consequences of actions, but they have to be far enough into the drama to have belief in the situation, knowledge of their position and the understanding of the roles before they can properly make decisions. These three elements are directly influenced by the constraints or givens planned into the drama by the teacher.

The drama conventions, strategies and techniques

There are many techniques for structuring the stages of a drama. Variety of activity for the class is important but each chosen technique must fit the moment and do a particular job. They may:

Ø  create context

Ø  build belief in the roles and therefore the drama

Ø  focus learning

Ø  help explore a situation and deepen understanding

Ø  help to reflect on the meaning of the event.

There are two main types of this sort of classroom drama that have evolved
‘living through drama’, where the pupils face the events at a sort of life rate in the here and now, and ‘episodic drama’, or strategy-based drama, where the class are led by the teacher in creating situations and events through specific techniques or strategies and where chronology is more broken.Example:

Here are some beginnings of ideas for dramas that can be used to provide short TiR events or can be developed more fully as dramas by taking the approaches suggested in this chapter. In each case we have supplied a ‘learning intention’, a starter role and the situation to be set up. The ‘key moment later’ shows potential for further development. 

1.An idea from ‘Romeo and Juliet’ 

Learning intention Parental control over children.

Contact role A teenage boy discovered writing a letter.

Context The pupils are all in role as workers on a rich family’s estate. They have been ordered to patrol the estate and gardens for their employers, in advance of the important forthcoming wedding of the daughter to a cousin of the Prince’s. Their job is to ensure that all the area inside the estate walls is secure, all the gates locked and that there are no strangers around. They question the boy about what he is doing and why he is here. He ini- tially refuses to speak, but asks them to take the letter secretly to the daughter of the family. 

Key moment later Depending on what the pupils decide to do, the daughter of the family approaches them either to attack them for siding with her father or to thank them for the letter and seek their help to escape that night.

3. How to Generate Quality Speaking and Listening Authentic dialogue-teacher and pupil talk with a difference

Authentic dialogue – teacher and pupil talk with a difference

What is speaking and listening ?

Speaking and listening is the most important communication form that human beings use. Really effective oracy, developmental speaking and listening, will help pupils build their language, their understanding, their ability to handle their own world, making sense of it and who they are in it.It has to be an interaction with others where both sides are contributing.When a pupil is speaking and listening properly, he or she is able to see how each contribution arises from what has already been said.Reading and writing come later in language learning and should not come until the child’s head is full of the words that reading and writing will demand.True speaking and listening for learning is effective ‘talk’, not two separateactivities, as the phrase ‘speaking and listening’ suggests; it is an oral language interaction, which, at its best, is complex, demanding and truly creative.Learning is a social activity and thus talk is its real source. Writing is a solo activity, which allows the individual to distil ideas already learned; it comes later.

Dialogic teaching

English pupils, in this characterisation at least, are individuals struggling to survive in the crowd. The context within which mistakes are admissible, as in the Russian classrooms, greatly reduces this element of gamesmanship. This explains the apparent paradox of why, although the climate of Russian classrooms tends to be viewed by Western observers as authoritarian, even oppressive, Russian pupils are eager to answer questions while in the supposedly more democratic climate of English classrooms they may be reluctant to do so.

From his own and others’ research, he summarise the picture of classrooms’

In schools too often speaking and listening is seen as question and answer, usually the teacher questioning and the pupils answering. What we see in classrooms is very often the IRF approach, where the teacher initiates, a child responds and a teacher gives feedback. This approach limits the pupil’s speaking and listening engagement with the teacher, as well as preventing engaging with, and listening to, other pupils. We need to see pupils initiating the talk much more with pupils asking questions rather than the teacher.

Too often talk is this ‘recitation’ where teacher speaks most and pupils listen or only answer questions.Talk, being central to the development of the brain, must be a priority for teachers. Alexander promotes dialogic teaching as the most powerful form of talk in the classroom. He identifies its key elements as:

~Collective: teachers and pupils address learning tasks together, as a group or as a class;

~Reciprocal: teachers and pupils listen to each other, share ideas and consider alternative viewpoints;

~Supportive: pupils articulate their ideas freely, without fear of embarrassment over ‘wrong’ answers; and they help each other to reach common understandings;

~Cumulative: teachers and pupils build on their own and each other’s ideas and chain them into coherent lines of thinking and inquiry;

~Purposeful: teachers plan and steer classroom talk with specific educational goals.

4. How to Use Drama for Inclusion and Citizenship

    This chapter is concerned with the relationship between inclusion and drama as a pedagogical approach. We look at the expectations for schools to be inclusive and the demands made upon them to fulfil these expectations. We look at how drama, through its idiosyncratic approach, facilitates inclusion. We then make the link to the Citizenship curriculum and how drama’s approach to inclusion is an intrinsic part of this area. The drama lesson is not the only place in the life of a school where inclusion can be promoted; pupil mentoring, links with parents, links with the wider community, promoting good race relations, promoting good standards of behaviour and attendance, pastoral care and study support are venues of inclusivity. We would argue that drama has, by its nature, a distinctive role and it is this role we wish to explore further.

What can drama offer in terms of inclusion?

~Drama offers ‘new opportunities to pupils who may have experienced previous difficulties’ (Ofsted, 2006, p. 7).

~Drama takes account of pupils’ varied life experiences and needs by using fictional contexts and roles which enable pupils to explore the underlying issues safely.

~For some pupils drama may offer experiences that are different to those they experience in the real world, for example taking the role of the outsider or the role of the one in charge.

The relationship between inclusion and citizenship

If drama by its very operational values is an inclusive way of working and if the contents of some dramas are in themselves examining the nature of the outsider, then Citizenship and PSHE are an integral part of the drama experience.The QCA booklet on Citizenship for the primary age groups defines the area as follows:

The PSHE and Citizenship framework comprises four interrelated strands which support children’s personal and social development. The strands are:

~developing confidence and responsibility and making the most of their abilities;

~preparing to play an active role as citizens;

~developing a healthy, safer lifestyle; and

~developing good relationships and respecting the differences between people.(QCA, 2002, p. 4)

Drama as citizenship in action

How does the drama method promote this learning? The process of drama itself is democratic in nature. The underlying rules of drama embody key democratic values. These are:

~that the class work as a whole group, dividing into sub-groups for some tasks, but experiencing their class as a democratic community;

~that every member of the group may speak and contribute to the development of the drama;

~that all members of the group must respect the other members – their opinions and viewpoints;

~that we stop the drama at any point to consider and discuss what is happening and what it means so that everyone may clarify their understanding and therefore have a greater chance to make a contribution;

~that when group decisions are to be made, debate may happen, but it is the majority view of the group that will be taken;

~that we reflect together on the meanings we are forging and that together we are stronger in that creative act.

Class drama carried out in the methodology represented in the model of democracy, corporate learning, responsibility and tolerance.

5. How to Generate Empathy in a Drama

Drama is often promoted as a teaching and learning methodology that generates empathy in pupils, yet there is little debate about exactly what is meant by this idea. The word empathy is sprinkled liberally throughout education documentation and literature. These attitudes and feelings are key to children developing the right social skills, to be able to relate to others. Drama makes one of its greatest contributions in modelling and generating this sort of learning. For drama to operate most effectively we need to understand what is happening and how we most effectively create the conditions for empathy to thrive.

The componnent of empathy:

1. Component one- the cognitive component: understanding the other’s feelings and the ability to take their perspective’ (2003, p. 28).

2.Component two- the affective component: Having recognised the emotional state of the person, the observer is moved to ‘alleviate their distress’ (Baron-Cohen, 2003, p. 28).

The role of the pupils

   While placing the pupils in a positive, problem-solving and high status role (government commissioners) gives them the power to make judgements about people’s circumstances from a positive point of view, it is also possible to generate empathy for the dispossessed. The inmates form a sociogram that describes their feelings towards the accused by how close or far away from her they stand. They are then thought-tracked. Despite their low status roles empathy is still generated as they confront the fact ‘that could be me’.

The role of the teacher

      The teacher of roles who are unable to empathise enables the pupils to witness their shortcomings and therefore have a sense of how disabled they are without these skills. All this sounds very manipulative and it is! We are deliberately structuring drama to engage with issues of empathy and our learning objective is that in this process pupils will ‘learn ways to identify and label these feelings ... they will have opportunities to develop empathy and work out what others are feeling’.

6. How to Link History and Drama

For drama there is a fatal attraction with history as a source for its content.Drama as a medium with which to engage with the past is established in theatre, film, literature, radio and television. In fact one of the Key Elements in the History National Curriculum is the interpretation of history,People represent and interpret the past in many different ways, including: in pictures, plays, films, reconstructions, museum displays, and fictional and nonfiction accounts. Interpretations reflect the circumstances in which they are made, the available evidence, and the intentions of those who make them (for example, writers, archaeologists, historians, filmmakers).(QCA/DfES, 2000)

So it is not surprising that the teacher using drama should engage the class through the use of roles, contexts and symbols from the past.

Using drama to make meaning of the past

Let us begin by looking at three elements of historical enquiry:

1. A concern with facts

2. A concern with reasons

3. A concern with meanings

Historians are interested in making deductions and inferences about sources and then selecting and combining sources to create accounts of the past.Historical imagination is filling the gaps when sources are incomplete. In drama we are particularly interested in the last element. It is here that drama synthesises story and past events.As a teacher planning a history-related drama this does not mean abandoning facts and reasons. In striving to accommodate the potentially un-reconcilable dimensions of fact and fiction, we need to balance imagined realities with authenticated realities. In other words, we need to research our history and bring the fruits of that research to the lesson.

Much of drama in education operates from creating fictions and telling stories. Of course this is not necessarily in conflict with history as we can approach individuals’ viewpoints in history as their stories of the past. We are going to use a drama about Victorian street children to illustrate how drama and history can be structured to work in harmony. In using drama we are using a dense form of teaching, because the currency of drama is language, listening and speaking, and we have a cross-curricular approach that will touch upon learning objectives from several areas of the curriculum.

It is important that we make the connections between issues in history where they remain issues for us over time. The issue of street children is an example of one of these. In Life on the Streets: Children’s Stories the BBC published stories of homeless or underprivileged children from St Petersburg, La Paz and Delhi.Their stories echo the issues that are raised in the history drama – exclusion,poverty and survival. Here is an extract from one of them:

I came to Delhi with my mother and her second husband. I was seven then.I am thirteen now. My mother abandoned me at the bus terminal while I was fast asleep and I have not seen her since. Suddenly, I was an orphan. I met some boys who used to beg at the station and I joined them in begging to feed myself. I did not have a name, so friends started calling me Rajan,which means the king. I started wiping cars when they stopped at a red light. After a while we moved to Connaught Place, the main shopping area in the capital, where we started picking rag. I also worked in a roadside eatery for a while.

While working there I met people working for a charity that help destitute children, called Jamghat. I work for them now.I am quite happy here. Even if I find out where my mother is I will not return to her.

I am studying. I am also learning sewing, not neatly but now I can write letters to some extent. I like cricket. I went to Pakistan recently to play. It was an event called Cricket for Peace.

Police have beaten me several times. They beat me once while I was sleeping. I do mime for the Jamghat in which I portray what the police do.Whenever I feel like rambling I go to my old hangouts. I still see my old friends. I take a bus but do not pay the fare.

I have seen the whole capital without paying any fare. I have travelled to many cities without a ticket. I have been to Mumbai, Haridwar and Dehradun.I am living with kids like myself and I am very happy. I think I will study well and then help children like myself. (BBC, 2004, online)

We can see from this that the ‘Street Children’ drama acts as a metaphor for now and enables us to open up issues that may be hindered by prejudice in a way that uses history as a prism through which to view global issues.

7. How to Begin Using Assessment of Speaking and Listening (and Other Skills) through Drama

Drama is not just about speaking and listening, but the creation of a fiction,where the art form of drama is essential and the success of that enterprise depends on valuable interaction between all participants. However, we must stress we are primarily looking at assessing speaking and listening, and we are not providing in  chapter a framework for the assessment of theatre skills, the art form of drama, for personal and social development, nor other learning areas that drama can address.

The currency of drama is speaking and listening and in its nature it is swift,fleeting and ephemeral. Where speaking and listening is assessed, there is a tendency to assess it not as an interactive situation, but as a very narrow construct, something that is not actually speaking and listening at all – the class talk. A talk by one pupil to the rest of the class does not usually involve dialogue, except, perhaps, at the end when there might be questions.Jim Clark and Tony Goode identify key ways that drama promotes speaking and listening:

Drama as a context for speaking and listening

~Negotiating and co-operating with others in the creation of drama work and the roles within it

~Expressing imaginative ideas when contributing to the drama work development

~Taking and using effectively the opportunities within the drama that require oral and aural communication

~Modifying, selecting and relating language and vocabulary to the changing roles, moods and situations in the drama work

~Controlling effectively oral and aural communication particularly in challenging sequences of drama work, e.g. questioning, dilemmas, unfair or emotional situations

~Responding with enjoyment and enthusiasm to the exploration of speech, gesture and sound

~Contributing effectively to critical evaluation of their own work and that of others

The purpose of assessment:

1. give feedback to the pupil

2. report to another teacher

3. report to a parent

       We have to manage the exchanges in a drama so that the naturally dominant voices in the classroom learn to listen and we allow others space to talk.However, there is an unhelpful myth about speaking and listening that speaking is the major partner, with the accompanying vain aim for classroom talk that all must contribute equally. It is important to remember that not all class members are ever going to contribute in the same way; some members will listen more and make one key observation that needs to be noted for what it shows. Such pupils may distil ideas in a way that frequent contributors fail to do because they do not listen as well. Other class members are naturally quiet and we will not change people’s personalities so we should not expect them to be as vociferous.