ABSTRACT
There are ways that a teacher using drama can involve children more strongly with story. The use of teacher intervention strategies has great potential for supporting literacy work. It can enhance the children’s exploration of the ideas and characters in story. The understanding of the story grows by creating a new fictional context based on the story. The technique builds on the power of the children’s own sociodramatic playing, that is their ability to pretend. They use the pretence as a way of making meaning from what they hear or read and in so doing learn from the pretence. The key is for the teacher to enter the ‘as if’ mode with the children rather than only discussing it. In this way a dialogue can be promoted which will produce active use of the story, including exploration of the words met in the story. What we want to demonstrate is how the teacher can intervene to promote understanding by using the pretend approach.
