What are the essential building blocks of every story? In this lesson, you will have the chance to lead students through a simple yet engaging tale about a boy and his mysterious magic hat. This story is a wonderful way to teach students in grades K-2 about important story elements such as character, conflict and transformation. Students will also get a chance to hone their imagination, concentration and careful listening skills.
Overview: this drama lesson demonstrates tailoring the Body Objects activity for science.
This FREE lesson steps you through an acting story with a focus on science. The emphasis is on the question: "How can we use our bodies to show what we know about story and habitats?" This lesson provides teaching tips, assessments and further integration ideas. We designed this FREE drama lesson around the Body Objects Activity.
This lesson is part of our Get Started guide that lays the foundation for more integrated work.
Are YOU interested in finding new drama integrated lesson plans? JOIN TODAY to visit exclusive member-only pages where you will find a classroom-tested curriculum with clear and simple implementation strategies. Our materials align with National Core Arts Standards. We offer a straightforward way to integrate drama into your teaching.
Overview: this drama lesson demonstrates tailoring the Body Objects activity for language arts learning.
This FREE lesson steps you through an acting story with a focus on language arts. The emphasis is on the question: "What impact do details have on creating and communicating ideas?" This lesson provides teaching tips, assessments and further integration ideas. We designed this lesson around the Body Objects Activity.
This lesson is part of our Get Started guide that lays the foundation for more integrated work.
Are YOU interested in finding new drama integrated lesson plans? JOIN TODAY to visit exclusive member-only pages where you will find a classroom-tested curriculum with clear and simple implementation strategies. Our materials align with National Core Arts Standards. We offer a straightforward way to integrate drama into your teaching.
Overview: this lesson combines drama skills with a story to form a drama.
This FREE lesson couples an acting story (included) with body objects work to create a Drama. Using a story turns the Body Object activity into a Drama. The goal for participants is to demonstrate how concentration, imagination, imitation, and collaboration are used in drama. This lesson steps you through the action providing teaching tips, assessments and further integration ideas. We designed this drama lesson to follow after the Skills and Vocabulary Lesson.
This lesson is part of our Get Started guide that lays the foundation for more integrated work.
Are YOU interested in finding new drama integrated lesson plans? JOIN TODAY to visit exclusive member-only pages where you will find a classroom-tested curriculum with clear and simple implementation strategies. Our materials align with National Core Arts Standards. We offer a straightforward way to integrate drama into your teaching.
Overview: this lesson starts building drama skills in groups new to integration work.
Use this FREE skill-building lesson with students to introduce concentration, imagination, and teamwork through group activities. Their goal is to increase their drama skills by learning to create setting and props using their physical bodies. They will also acquire knowledge in drama-specific vocabulary. This lesson steps you through the action providing teaching tips, assessments and further integration ideas. We designed this drama lesson around the Body Objects activity.
This lesson is part of our Get Started guide that lays the foundation for more integrated work.
Are YOU interested in finding new drama integrated lesson plans? JOIN TODAY to visit exclusive member-only pages where you will find a classroom-tested curriculum with clear and simple implementation strategies. Our materials align with National Core Arts Standards. We offer a straightforward way to integrate drama into your teaching.
As you begin using drama in your classroom or organization, here are a few ideas to keep in mind:
We gathered these tips for drama from our >40 years of experience working with students and drama educators. You can also download this list as a PDF.
Overview: students collaborate with a partner using negotiation strategies and applying concentration, imagination, imitation, and transformation skills.
Objectives: students collaborate with a partner using negotiation strategies; apply concentration, imagination, imitation, and transformation skills; identify story elements.
Students transform their bodies into objects and then into settings with a team of other actors for the story B.J.’s Journey. Students work alone, with a partner, and then with a team to use a variety of collaborative and planning strategies to complete the story. The students focus on C.I.T.I. (concentration, imagination, transformation, imitation) competence and work with the actor’s tools (mind, body, voice) to prepare them for integrated work. Download B.J.'s Journey from our story library to complete the materials. When teams are ready to decide who on their team will play B.J., remind them about the Ask, Don’t Tell rule from our Introductory Lessons as the beginning negotiation strategy to use when making a decision.
This FREE drama lesson can be used with one of these additional stories to create a drama: The Dreamer, The Sacred Scarab Root or The Mountain.
Use this lesson in your program with our compliments.
Other uses of this lesson are shown in our Get Started guide integrating for Language Arts or Science.
You can find this lesson as a part of our Introductory Lessons guide [requires subscription] for those just getting started with drama integration. There are 7 lessons in the guide to lay the foundation to enable students to move into deeper and more integrated work.
Are YOU interested in finding new drama integrated lesson plans? JOIN TODAY to visit exclusive member-only pages where you will find a classroom-tested curriculum with clear and simple implementation strategies. Our materials align with National Core Arts Standards. We offer a straightforward way to integrate drama into your teaching.
Overview: this story was written for body objects work: using the body as a prop.
Karen Erickson wrote this drama story for practice with group Collaboration, Teamwork, and Storytelling. They will practice their drama skills by creating setting and props using their physical bodies. As an alternate, this story can be integrated with Science focusing on Animal Habitats. For a complete lesson using this story, use the Body Objects lesson.
Use this story in your program with our compliments.
This story is a component of our Introductory Lessons guide [requires subscription] for those just getting started with drama integration. There are 7 lessons in the guide to lay the foundation to enable students to move into deeper and more integrated work.
Are YOU interested in finding new drama integrated lesson plans? JOIN TODAY to visit exclusive member-only pages where you will find a classroom-tested curriculum with clear and simple implementation strategies. Our materials align with National Core Arts Standards. We offer a straightforward way to integrate drama into your teaching.
Overview: this foundational activity starts building skills in groups new to drama work.
In this activity, students use their bodies to create setting and props. This activity will increase the concentration, imagination, and teamwork of your group. They will also develop skills related to "mind" and "body" of the three drama tools (body, mind, voice). We also created the Body Objects lesson from this activity to provide an example of how to turn our many activities into full lessons. Have fun adapting this to the interests of your own students with our compliments.
This activity is also a part of our Introductory Lessons guide [requires subscription] for those just getting started with drama integration. There are 7 lessons in the guide to lay the foundation to enable students to move into deeper and more integrated work.
Are YOU interested in finding new drama integrated lesson plans? JOIN TODAY to visit exclusive member-only pages where you will find a classroom-tested curriculum with clear and simple implementation strategies. Our materials align with National Core Arts Standards. We offer a straightforward way to integrate drama into your teaching.
One of the top six questions asked by teachers learning to integrate drama is:
"Do I have to do a play?"
The short answer is NO, and here is the longer explanation why:
Drama is about the process of experiencing the art form and sharing the experience with co-participants. Drama isn’t used to create a performance for an audience; rather we strive to integrate Drama because it builds naturally on our ability to play. With play, we can build powerful memory connections. Drama is improvisational and, since it is not for an outside audience, there are less formal structures and performance rules. You will only see participants, not an audience, in any of our images on this website. Pair Drama with each academic subject to enhance learning outcomes.
Theater, or creating a play, tells a story for the benefit of an audience. Theater focuses on performance as the end product and can be VERY difficult to integrate, as time must be spent on memorizing lines, rehearsing, and gathering props, sets, etc. Performing plays is a wonderful endeavor; we have even included some play scripts on our site. However, doing plays is NOT the same as drama integration. We encourage you to provide students with both drama AND theater opportunities, when possible. You understand now, right?
Download this PDF for a snapshot of the difference between drama and theater. A special welcome to our subscribers: this FREE download does not count against your monthly limit.
"Drama is where we begin so that theater might evolve."