ABSTRACT
Stories are what provide dramas with their substance: the story a drama tells is the key to what the drama is about. Primary teachers do not need reminding of the power and significance of stories in children’s learning. Apart from their potential for language enrichment, it is through the particularity of stories that children apprehend and think through ideas and issues of human significance. Stories can thus provide a teacher with ways of accessing important areas of the spiritual, social and moral curriculum; and drama can help children linger among the ideas contained within a story’s imagery, to engage more fully with the world the story creates. Similarly to the way that Cathy Come Home brought the issue of homelessness into the forefront of British public debate in the mid-1960s, a drama can activate concern among children and can thus be far more effective than classroom discussion in encouraging them to explore the issues a story raises. With primary aged children, the right story can be the most powerful hook into drama.
