Welcome to a resource for teaching drama in the traditional classroom! Lately this page has been getting more attention than I intended, but please feel free to browse through here. Experienced drama teachers may want to jump to Web Resources, while teachers new to drama will want to start at the beginning of this discussion.
     This page is designed to provide the groundwork for teachers looking to deepen the educational experience in their classroom, and to help teachers who are looking for new ways to reach their students in mainstream subjects. The focus of this site is to provide a basic understanding of the mechanics of classroom drama how to apply it to your classroom. How can we as educators can best address different learning styles and modalities within our classrooms, and how does drama affect the development of the student?

Consider...

• A history teacher greets the class dressed as William Churchill and begins to lead them through a guided improvisation in which they discuss battle tactics for World War II.
• A home economics teacher begins a unit on cooking by having students pretend to be chefs on a television show.
• A mathematics teacher begins a unit on binomial probability by having students create short scenes and give the probability of the outcome.
• An elementary school teacher begins the days lesson by leading the class through an improvisation activity involving the characters from The Sky is Falling.

    All of these teachers have done something in common: they've found basic ways of teaching that integrate drama into their lesson plans. In this site we're going to take a quick look at doing just that - introducing ways of using drama to teach mainstream lessons. Odds are that, like these teachers, you have already dabbled in the basics of classroom drama, now it's time to take that a step farther.
    Imagine this: One day you're looking out at your classroom. Students are gazing out the window, passing notes, whispering to each other. You prepare to present the day's lesson in mathematics or geography, but the students just aren't listening. Two ESL students are watching you with uncomprehending stares. And to add to the general chaos, the new transfer student is not only shy and hiding in the back of your room, but learning disabled. How on earth are you going to get through this day?
    Then it hits you, the solution: integrate the same methods of teaching employed by arts teachers. Use drama to reach your students! In one lesson plan, you've suddenly found the way to reach an entire class full of students with a wide variety of learning styles and educational backgrounds.

Click here to get started or follow the links above.