Plays

To use or not to use? That is the question. But really it’s not a questions. The obvious answer is USE them!! When students put themselves into a role they are making connections with that role. This is a way to get them invested in the subject that they doing a play about.

You don’t just have to act out plays that have already been written, there are many different ways to incorporate acting into your classroom. You can have the students choose a book to write a script with.

They would go through the book to decide which parts are important and should be in the play. They could discuss what the actors should be doing during certain parts of the play as well. For example, should they be happy, sad, angry, sitting, standing, yelling, whispering, laughing, jumping, etc.

Another option would be for the teacher to show the students a significant picture and either have the students act it out what they think is happening in the picture or even what they think would happen right before or after the picture was taken. This is something we did in my class today. We all helped to reenact the picture of Washington crossing the Delaware. We all represented one person and then our professor asked us what our character was doing and what we think our character was feeling. Even just sitting in the same position as the people really made us think about who these people really were.