Another drama activity with my Friday Year 10 class that worked really well. Again, from our little role plays for TEFL book.

Slides give the general idea but I added a few things…

• Little warmer. Learners work in pairs. One learner smiles at the other. Their partner gives them feedback on how they could make the smile better: ‘raise that side of the mouth a bit! Eyes open wide! You look a bit fake, just…’ Etc. Weird but funny – they were chuckling away and this set the tone I think…
• Lead-in chat from slides, then explain the context and different roles.
• Explain that we need some scenes or actions to act out. Learners write down ideas. I provided some prompts, like:

Crying while eating a cake

Cutting paper and laughing hysterically

Opening the door sneakily

And provided these patterns if needed:

[Verb+ing] while/and [Verb+ing]

[Verb phrase] + adverb of manner

• All ideas written on paper and left at front of room. ‘Directors’ choose a card at random and that’s the scene they explain to the actors.
• I did groups of three instead, with two actors in each. This meant that the director could play the actors off against each other to get a reaction.
• Directors worked with different pairs, craziness ensued, then we wrapped each mini performance up with some reflection.
• The only process language I provided for the first iteration of the task was ‘And… Action!’ plus ‘Cut! For further iterations we had some good language come out!

‘Take 2’

‘Okay, cut, cut, cut. Look, [actor], I’m just not feeling it!’

‘Do you know who I am?! I was in Titanic!’

‘Okay, so in this scene, you’re _________ while ________. Try to ________ but don’t _________’

‘Break it up! This is a film set!’

Learners changed roles and groups quite a bit. Around forty minutes of thinking on their feet and having a laugh. They learnt some new adverbs of manner too. Overall, fun and engaging.

Categories: Lesson Ideas, other

Tags: drama, elt, ideas, movies, speaking games, tefl