In Drama, students respond to dramatic works as an audience member. In doing so, students respond to not only the aesthetic elements of a work, but also reflect, analyse, and evaluate drama works.
Teachers can support students to respond to works:
Responding orally to performances
Peer feedback consolidates students’ understanding of and confidence using Drama-specific language as they describe and analyse:
- how meaning is created
- the impact on the audience.
Oral feedback and reflection stimulate discussion and serve as a ‘rehearsal’ for written responses. Guiding questions, teacher modelling and peer support ease the transition from oral to written response. The direction to use specific drama concepts, such as dramatic conventions, supports students to:
- explore and apply their knowledge when constructing small performances
- view, listen to and interpret performances actively and purposefully
- build, revise and apply Drama-specific language
- provide constructive and targeted oral feedback.
This strategy assumes that students have previously developed group performances incorporating specific dramatic concepts and that the key terminology has been taught.
Before viewing the performances
- Drama-specific terminology that is relevant to the current unit and performances is presented on the board, handouts, or a slide. The terminology may relate to the
dramatic elements and dramatic conventions, for example
- tableau: still image in which participants use their bodies to represent a scene.
- slow motion: movements that give the effect of slow speed, slowing down time.
- vocal sounds: speech or other sound made by the voice.
- exaggerated movement: non-naturalistic movement that is used to create effect.
- heightened language: language that is used to create impact and meaning through sound and structure, for example, rhyme, alliteration, rhythm.
- The teacher provides each student with an ‘Observation and feedback’ template such as the example below. An alternative is to rotate students to provide feedback, for example, Group 1 provides feedback for Group 2, while other groups view and listen.
- The template supplies prompts for guided and active viewing and listening. The sentence stems foster students’ confidence in providing oral feedback and provide models for supportive and constructive evaluation.
- The teacher prompts the students to show the use of the conventions in each performance.
During viewing of the performances
- The students note the use of and success of the dramatic conventions.
After viewing the performances
- After each performance, the students provide oral feedback to their peers drawing on the notes and sentence starters in the templates.
- Students reflect on the feedback in their Drama journals. The feedback forms the basis for reflection and planning for future performances.
Curriculum links for the above example:
VCADRR038,
VCADRR039,
VCADRR045,
VCADRR046.
Writing interpretation responses
In addition to responding to works orally, drama students may be needed to write
reviews of performances or to offer interpretations of performances.
Whereas a review offers a personal response and evaluation of an artistic work, an interpretation response requires students to find the themes or key ideas of an artwork and respond to its values (Derewianka & Jones, 2016 p. 266).
The typical structure of an interpretation is:
- Theme Identification and preview of element
- Element evaluation
- Theme reiteration (Derewianka & Jones, 2016 p. 266).
The below strategy supports students to write an interpretation response to a performed work. Teachers may
use oral responses to a performance prior to this activity to generate a bank of ideas that students can use in their writing.
Note, teachers should use strategies to jointly deconstruct interpretation responses before students write their own interpretations. Joint deconstruction of interpretations responses can be found in the Visual Arts and Dance sections of the toolkit.
- The teacher explains that each group (from the previous strategy) will write a paragraph based on their peers’ performance. The teacher reiterates the general structure of paragraphs, for example:
A paragraph contains a topic sentence which outlines the main argument of the paragraph. This is usually at the beginning of the paragraph. The rest of the paragraph has sentences that elaborate on the topic sentence. These elaborations may be examples, definitions, descriptions, evidence, and explanations. (Derewianka, 2011).
- The teacher indicates that for this task, the topic sentence should provide a summary or argument about the performance.
- The teacher and students jointly construct a sample topic sentence based on one of the group’s performances, for example:
The highlight of the group performance was the use of space.
- The teacher asks students to provide further sentences that elaborate on the topic sentence, in other words, give details and examples that support the thesis or argument in the topic sentence.
Examples might be:
The performers made full use of the space in the opening tableau and this helped to establish their roles in the narrative.
A sense of chaos was conveyed through Cara’s exaggerated movements around the space.
- The students work in their performance groups. The students are asked to focus on the performance of another group for whom they have provided feedback. The teacher ensures that all groups’ performances are covered.
- The teacher provides the students with guiding questions associated with the relevant Drama conventions used in the performances, for example:
- What was the main theme/idea in the performance?
- How were drama conventions (such as tableau/slow motion/heightened language/exaggerated movement) used?
- How did these conventions communicate meaning and develop the theme/story?
- Student groups refer to their observation and feedback notes to discuss responses to the questions.
- The teacher asks student groups to devise a topic sentence for their paragraph based on the main theme or idea or the most successful aspect of the performance.
- The students then create elaborations for the topic sentences which include specific examples from their observation notes. The students are encouraged to include
Drama-specific terminology.
- Teachers may also aid students to write and use expanded noun groups to add detail to their writing. Strategies to support this can be found in Visual Arts and Dance.
- With the teacher’s guidance and feedback, each group sequences and edits their topic sentence and elaborations to form a complete paragraph.
- The edited and refined paragraphs are published and displayed in the Drama room or in a class publication.
Curriculum links for the above example:
VCADRR038,
VCADRR039,
VCADRR045,
VCADRR046.