Drama activities in classroom
Introduction
St. Joseph High School is a mixed school located at the outskirts of Baltimore city in Maryland. The school runs various activities both curricular and co curricular which are mostly financed by the parents. The curricula activities, in particular, are several with the tutors having formed clubs to enable students to increase their proficiency. However, the drama club is more established. St Joseph school has received $ 900 from the state government which the school intends to spend in improving the drama activities. As a member of the students’ committee, I am required to come up with three activities which should be implemented to enable the students to improve become more proficient of English. This essay is my proposal to the grant committee outlining the drama activities that should be implemented.
The first activity which should be implemented is the practice of Meme play. This involves the representation of a story or an idea through bodily movements, gestures or expressions without saying a single word (Qu, W. 2016). It helps to build the confidence of the student because he/she has to stand itinerant of others and do things without fear. It will also help students to develop the courage of performing in front of their peers without any concern for language (Qu, W. 2016). After the activity, the student is able to elicit and generate language with the meme acting as a catalyst though no language is used during the performance. Where the meme involves group work, teacher’s instructions and explanation of the key issues is required and this helps the students to generate language so as to accomplish the task during the activity. After a performance, the students are required to interpret what they saw and this helps to boost their concentration and to enhance their memory.
The second drama activity which needs to be implemented is Roleplay where the actor assumes the role of someone else (Davidson, 2018). Role play gives students an opportunity to interact with each other during a discussion and acting. This helps them have developed a good flow of English language when since they have to imitate the language of the real character (Davidson, 2018). This will help the student to make practice and prepare for future situations after schooling. During practice, the student can copy the role behavior of the character he is acting which will enable him/her to have the opportunity to practice the actual role they may need in the outside world. Examples of role play which should be implemented are social drama and debates.
The third activity drama activity needed in our school is Simulation (HUA, 2017. This is a case study which involves a problem-solving situation and in which the students take roles and responsibilities in trying to solve it. The structured situation mirror a real-life situation and the students act as instructed by the teacher. This helps the students to practice how they can solve such situations in real life (HUA, 2017). The simulation will also help the student to practice various communication skills like expressing opinions and analyzing difficult situations in real life.
Conclusion
Drama activities are very important in integrating various aspects of communication in the classroom, both verbal and non-verbal. The allocated grant will be used to train students and take them for competition at different levels, starting from regional to national levels. These competitions will help students to improve their proficiency in the English language. The students learn to be creative and improve their fluency English language. Students are given a chance to practice being policymakers by handling those difficult and more challenging situations in real life.