Drama - Getting To Know Personalities
The beginning of the year is a good time to incorporate drama into your program. It will help you out by shedding light on student’s personalities and their boundaries.
There are lots of different ways to use drama in the classroom. This includes;
pantomime
mimes
fun games such as the truth or dare game, space jump and charades
skits
Pantomime ideas
Students perform individually - They open a door to discover;
A funny monster
Smelly garbage
A big box of toys
A human’s arm dripping with blood
Freshly baked apple pie
All your dreams
A new car
Or as a class group pretend you are;
Walking through an ocean of peanut butter
Dodging raining marshmallows
Swimming through jelly
Hanging clothes on a barb wire clothesline
Getting ready to fight a sumo wrestler
Laying on a bed of nails
Caught in a spiders web
Mime ideas
Form groups. One child selects from a tub of cards with the following written on them. The group must act it out together. Pretend you have stepped on a;
Small bird with broken wing
Snake egg about to hatch
Spiky echidna
Balloon
Cold piece of ice
Pair of underpants
Butterfly
Or each child selects a card with a number on it. They then have to act out the mime according to the number. Other children guess what it is they are acting out.
You are trying to dress a toddler who keeps running away
You are flying a kite in a strong wind and it gets caught in a tree
You find a secret doorway in the passage of an old house
You are a mean old man counting his money
You are a princess who decided to throw her crown away
You are a checkout chick in a supermarket
Be the wolf in The Little Pigs, huffing and puffing
You are chopping wood
Your leg is caught on a barbed-wire fence
The ceiling of your house falls down
You are packing a suitcase, then trying to do up the zipper. The case is very full and heavy
You are on a farm and walk right into fresh wet cow poo
Your bike starts to fly
You watch the lotto on television and you win
You pull a face and the wind changes and you stay like it
Imagine you have found a large bag with money in it
You are woken up by a very early morning phone call on the first day of holidays
You are a lion, monkey than a giraffe
You are hammering a nail and you miss, hitting your finger
You are terrified of storms and a huge one blows up as you are walking home
You are walking across some stepping stones in a creek. You slip on one and fall in
A robber with a sackful of stolen goods climbs through the window of the house he has just robbed
Be a famous weightlifter
You are a young child playing with your imaginary friend
You are smelling flower when a bee stings you on the nose
You have just been bitten by a snake
You are trying to teach someone how to swim
You are unwrapping a huge parcel with excitement
You are embarrassed because the person sitting next to you falls asleep during class and you try to wake them up
You are a bus driver driving down a hill with no brakes
Truth or Dare Game
Students choose between a truth question or a dare they must complete
Truth questions -
Have you ever broken something in the house and blamed a sibling?
What was your most embarrassing moment?
What is the funniest thing you have ever seen?
What is your weirdest talent?
If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
What is the one food you couldn’t live without?
What is the scariest movie you have ever seen?
What is your favourite outfit to wear?
What is the subject you like the most at school?
What is your favourite TV show?
Dares -
Push the tip of your nose up with your finger and make pig noises
Choose someone to lie on the floor, and you must mourn their death for 30 seconds
Go down on all fours and imitate how a wombat digs a hole
Act like a washing machine for 20 seconds
Get ice tipped down your back
Say a sentence with your tongue poking out
Pretend you are a dog itchy with fleas
Act like a windmill for 20 seconds
Try to take off another person’s socks
Space Jump
Each scene requires four students. One student begins miming an everyday activity. The second student calls ‘freeze’ and the first student freezes in place. The second student must build another scene based on the frozen position of the first student. The other two students enter the same way. Once students three and four are in, as soon as ‘freeze’ is called, two and three take up their positions in which they were frozen, and continue their scene. And so on backwards. As soon as student one is back alone in his activity, he needs to finish it and the game is over.
Charades
Students must act out a movie title, book title or phrase without uttering a word or sound. Their teammates have to guess what they are acting out in the shortest time as possible. It is played by two competing teams. Use a stopwatch to track the time, giving a maximum of three minutes for each turn.
What are some of your favourite drama games to play with your class? We would love it if you joined the conversation and left a comment below.