Thank you to Catherine from Cat’s Classroom for this guest blog post! Claire

“I loved drama as a primary school student and now, as a teacher myself, it’s one of my favourite subjects to teach a class. However, as timetable challenges crop up throughout the year, drama is often one of the subjects that can be overlooked. Crammed timetables are certainly a challenge, but one that can be solved with the use of integration. Over the past few years, I have found many different ways to incorporate drama into our daily lessons and make it enjoyable for the students too!

Link with S.E.S.E

Almost every class level studies a group of early people and ancient societies, such as the Aboriginals, Egyptians or Aztecs. One of my favourite ways to introduce this topic with a class is to create an archaeological dig. The children take on the role of archaeologists who receive a letter about a potential dig site. Each group gets a copy of the letter and a set of archaeology tools. I prepare a sandbox for each group, hiding objects or photographs of objects relevant to the topic or ancient society. The team of archaeologists have to use their brushes and other tools to discover and identify the artefacts. Then, as a group, they have to write a finder’s report for a local museum to prepare a new exhibit.

Classroom Novels

Novels offer a multitude of opportunities to incorporate drama into the classroom. One of my favourite lessons with senior classes is to host an interview with the main characters from the novel. 

1. First, we learn how to prepare an interview (all the big hosts don’t just wing it!) and the students are given time to work on their interview questions. 
2. Then we assign roles – interviewers, interviewees and camera crew.
3. The children work together to host the interview using props, costumes, and of course our homemade microphones! 

You can choose to film the session so the class can watch the interviews back. If you have tablets or laptops available for student use, a great activity for senior classes is to teach them how to edit the videos themselves, adding subtitles, sound effects and title screens.

Core Subjects

If you’re looking for a multi-subject approach, Maths and Gaeilge offer a few great combinations! One of my favourites was when Book Week and Seachtain na Gaeilge collided….so my class created their own “Siopa Leabhar” using books from the book fair! The children designed their own shops, set the prices, and then took turns playing the role of shopkeeper and customer. It was a busy and noisy classroom but a wonderful learning opportunity, and great for children who may not feel confident speaking as Gaeilge in front of the whole class. Another personal favourite was our “Caife Pancóga” for Pancake Tuesday. We set up 5 mini cafes in the classroom. Each group had a waiter, a chef and three or four customers. It was another noisy and slightly messy set-up, but the children had a lot of fun!

Movement Breaks

There are lots of ways to incorporate drama into your classroom every day, even if it’s only for a 5- minute movement break between lessons. My current 6th class enjoy playing “Pass the Object” where one child mimes using an object, then has to throw it to another student who must continue using it. The novelty of “throwing” objects across the classroom results in many giggles – a memorable one was when one child decided on a set of weights as their object! Other great mini-games include “Who Am I?” and “What Am I?” They involve no preparation (if you can think of people/objects on the spot) and are a nice break during the day.

Drama is an incredibly diverse subject and there are many ways to incorporate it into your classroom. If timetable constraints are your concern, try and find a way to integrate drama into your topic for SESE, or your English novel. If you’re nervous about losing control of the class – start off small! Set up a drama contract with your students, expressing your expectations, and begin with some games. Then, once you feel more confident, you can integrate it with your topics. Most importantly – have fun and encourage the children’s imagination – after all, that’s what childhood should be about!”

If you would like more information on using Drama in the primary classroom or have any questions about this piece, don’t hesitate to get in touch with Cat on her Instagram page (linked below).