ABSTRACT
Throughout the development of the drama-in-education approach, some activities that teachers have found effective and used repeatedly have become established as ‘drama conventions’. You’ll know their names: hot-seating, thought-tracking, freeze-frame, etc. Indeed, there is a form of classroom drama which seems to involve the simple enacting of these conventions – ‘I hot-seat, therefore I am (doing drama)’ – but we hope the schemes outlined here demonstrate something beyond the basic application of techniques. Simply implementing or even stringing together conventions might enliven your classroom, but will not in itself allow us to generate compelling, inspiring, human learning opportunities. The schemes in this book (Chapters 4–7) represent the artful construction of rich sequences of experiences. The schemes do use recognisable drama conventions – they are the bones of drama – but they are smart about their use, adding ligament, sinew, flesh, heart and blood.
