Finding the Right Balance: Using Drama to Promote Special Education Students’ Engagement in Literacy Learning

Barton and Booth (1990) argue that story drama, the exploration of meanings of a story through improvised action, enables children to apply their own experiences to the story text. It allows for their own “subjective worlds to come into play, helping them understand the meanings of the story as they live through the drama experience” (pp. 135-136). Drama requires that students create personal responses to a story; it unlocks “internal” comprehension of it.