Describes how one teacher developed an approach to teaching the plays of William Shakespeare that included both attending performances of plays and then producing individual scenes through student participation. Outlines other related activities of the unit, including holding an Elizabethan marketplace. (HB)

Shows how one teacher used innovative methods in teaching William Shakespeare's "Macbeth." Outlines student assignments including text renderings, rewriting a scene from the play, and creating a multicultural scrapbook for the play. (HB)

Used both a noncontextual mode and a natural history mode of analyzing the emotionally charged dramas that form an important part of the socialization of Inuit children. Focused on a three year old's participation in such a drama. Analyzed themes and plots of the incident. (MM)

Describes "Theatre Sports," a type of improvisational theater that actively involves the audience. Presents a beginning workshop that explains the basic skills of improvisation (group cohesion and trust, movement, pantomime, spontaneity, offers and blocking, characterization and status, narrative, and endowment) and explains how to play…

Explores the use of drama as a teaching tool to promote students' interest in literacy and to support every aspect of literacy development. Describes how drama can help develop affect, emergent literacy, decoding knowledge, fluency, vocabulary knowledge, syntactic knowledge, discourse knowledge, and metacognitive knowledge. Discusses also using…

Examines the relationship of theater and dramatic study to models of learning communities in promoting identity, diversity, and culture. Levels of theater use in education are presented as ways in which educators can foster community. Strategies for developing learning communities using the performing arts are provided. (Author/CR)

Argues that drama is one of the most powerful teaching strategies available in the classroom, in all subject areas. Notes reasons drama is not used much. Describes two drama activities used with seventh-grade students, and how they used it (with excitement) as a way of experiencing, thinking through and representing new understandings. (SR)

This study investigated the effects of prop realism on the play of 24 preschoolers. Observations of play sessions revealed that highly realistic props and low-realism props elicited equal amounts of group dramatic play. However, low- realism props generated greater diversity of play themes, more fantasy role enactments, and more nonintended use of…

Offers examples of dramatic experiences (student produced soap operas) in two classrooms in British comprehensive secondary schools. Concludes that students in other countries would find such experiences as meaningful and enjoyable as their British counterparts. Notes that the two teachers managed to be flexible, appropriating effective…

Reflects on three articles in this themed issue written by classroom teachers, describing how and why they incorporate the arts into the heart of their language arts instruction. Concludes that sign systems and the arts are powerful tools for thinking, whether they are used efferently, to represent specific information, or aesthetically, to create…

Focuses on the discourse skills used by some white, middle-class, advantaged preschool girls to manage their disagreements. The article shows how their management of opposition is a jointly constructed achievement requiring the coordination of high levels of sociolinguistic skill to arrive at cooperative as well as self-serving, competitive or…

The founder of Bread and Puppet Theater discusses the use of puppetry and theater arts to build community, educate the public about environmental and sociopolitical issues, and provide a setting for group consciousness raising; grassroots reclaiming of art as part of everyday life; and ceremony as a powerful element of performance and as part of…

Describes the collaborative literacy activity that occurred in one teacher's sociodramatic play center in a multi-age classroom (K-2) and a kindergarten classroom. Finds the children in the multi-age group engaged in a larger amount and a broader range of collaborative literacy activities than did the kindergartners; and the collaborative…

Describes how two self described "optimistic feminist teachers" soon realized how difficult it is to combat elementary students' ingrained views of gender and power roles. Explores how creative drama could be used to explore gender assumptions, and which pedagogical techniques can help prevent gender bias in the classroom. Notes the teachers…

The purpose of this article is to explore the evidence suggesting the effectiveness of literacy instruction through communicative and visual arts, according to Flood, Heath, and Lapp (1997). Visual arts includes everything from dramatic performances to comic books to television viewing. The communicative arts, such as reading, writing, and…