Drama with children

For young children it can be intimidating to speak a foreign language in front of other people. Even five-year-olds can be scared of making mistakes and looking silly or it may just be that they are shy and don’t want to talk in class. One way of reaching these children is through drama. By giving roles to your pupils they can ‘hide’ behind the character and lose some of their inhibitions. Before actually performing though there are several processes you can go through with the children to create a theatrical environment.

Here are a few suggestions on using a range of drama related activities and creating supporting tools like masks and theatres that will help you play with the language with your students and have lots of fun at the same time.

Warm up activities
For very young learners you can simply smile and ask them to copy you. Then show them a sad face and again ask them to copy you. Pretend to laugh, cry, sing, hide your face and each time ask them to copy you. This is a quick and effective way to focus the children on the lesson, get them calm and introduce them to pretending to be different people.

For slightly older children take any sort of object like a ball, book, paper clip or pen and pretend it’s something else. So pretend to brush your hair with the book and then pass it on and ask the next person to pretend it’s something else and so on. If the class know the word in English they can guess what the object is meant to be.

Making puppets and theatres
Take a shoe box and remove the lid. The lid can be used underneath to stabilize the theatre if need be. Cut out the bottom side of the box leaving a few centimetres around the edges. Then cut out both ends of the box (the shorter ends) again leaving a few centimetres around the edge. These ends will act as the wings from which the characters will make their entrances.

The children can decorate the box theatre themselves with card, paper, pens, glitter… Due to the size of the box it’s easier if each child decorates a separate piece of card to then be stuck onto the box. Out of the back of the box going away from the audience you should stick two long sticks or straws coming out horizontally.
For the scene changes in groups they can design back drops that can be attached to a long stick which in turn can be placed onto the protruding sticks coming out of the back of the box theatre.

Making masks and costumes
You don’t need to make elaborate costumes for children to feel like a different character. A symbolic paper crown can make someone a king, or a magic wand made out of card can transform someone into a witch. Concentrate on keeping it simple as the objective is to eventually perform a scene, practise some English, learn English instructions, arouse interest in drama and English alike, but not to spend three weeks making a spectacular Elizabethan costume.

Writing scripts
Two key points to think about: keep the stories short and simple and allow the children the possibility to use their imagination. These activities can be adapted for the younger learners by keeping the story reproduction an oral activity with the use of picture flashcards to prompt ideas and words they have at their disposal.

Split your class into small groups and allocate a scene to each group. They can then re-tell the scene from what they remember. Any changes they make will only make the story richer!

An alternative is that each group re-tells the whole story making two changes. They then practise saying their script and then tell it to the class who has to find the two changes that have been made. Give them a pre-prepared script. In their groups they have to change the end of the story.

Make your own puppet...click on Drama with children.