Introduction
There are many drama-based activities that I like to use in the ELT clasroom, but there is one that especially stands out to me. This article will describe that activity and look at why I think it is so special.
The article will be in five parts
WHAT MAKES A GREAT ENGLISH LESSON.
PRE-ACTIVITY – MUSIC AND EMOTIONS .
A DESCRIPTION OF THE ACTIVITY.
RECAP – WHY THIS IS SUCH A GOOD ACTIVITY.
CREATIVITY AND MOTIVATION.
WHAT MAKES A GREAT ENGLISH LESSON?
This is a huge topic, but for the purpose of this article I suggest the following short list ….
It should use material that the class relates to and is excited by – In other words it should be the kind of thing that students enjoy, that they would almost be happy to do outside school hours in their free time.
It should be empowering, it leaves students feeling good about themselves – The easiest way to achieve this in my experience is through creativity, doing activities that encourage students to be creative.
It should involve an emotional connection – students do not learn passively, they become emotionally connected with the lesson.
PRE-ACTIVITY – MUSIC AND EMOTIONS.
The activity I am describing here involves music so it makes sense to do a warm-up which also involves music. I suggest something as simple as playing different pieces of music and asking students to name the emotions that they connect with the music. This will get them tuned in to the emotional effect that music can have. You can find suitable music on youtube by simply searching ‘Happy music’, ‘Scary music’, etc.
Note – There is a discussion about empathy and if it can be taught to students. I am not going to solve that here, but I do feel first that engaging emotions leads to more effective learning and second that simply learning to recognize and name emotions is an effective first step towards encouraging students to develop empathy.
A DESCRIPTION OF THE ACTIVITY
For this activity you have to choose a piece of music at least a minute and a half long. It should be something that is not famous that your class probably does not even know.
First ask the class to simply listen to the music without talking or taking notes.
Then tell them that you are going to play the music again and this time they should imagine that they are watching a film. They should do their best to see what is in the film.
Finally play the music one last time, with the instruction that this time they should try to see even morer details in their film. They are also allowed to take notes this time.
You should now be in a situation where everybody in the class has a film scenario that they are able to report on. There are many things you could do from here. They can simply get into groups and share their stories, they could write a description of the film, they could write a review of the film, or make a poster for the film, anything.
RECAP – WHY THIS IS SUCH A GOOD ACTIVITY.
I love this activity because it works on several levels. It brings a topic (film) into the classroom that students are interested in outside the classroom. It involves music which is a great way to create an interesting atmosphere and to bring emotion into the lesson.
Most of all it involves students being creative. Everybody in the class has basically created an original film scenario in their heads, which is a reasonably considerable feat of creativity and one that feels quite satisfying. Yet it was done in a completely painless way. In fact during this exercise it is almost impossible not to imagine a film while listening to the music, once you have been instructed to do so.
Finally the exercise leaves the students with some original material to report on and they are generally quite motivated to tell their stories and compare them to the stories of others.
CREATIVITY AND MOTIVATION
Teachers are always looking for ways to motivate their class. I think that creativity is one of the keys to student motivation. The feeling of being creative is empowering and that in turn is motivating. Many people feel that they are not creative people, but there are activities like this one and other improvisation activities which lead people into creativity in a natural way. These activities provide benefits for students that reach far beyond the short-term aims of the lesson.
