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How to Fit Drama into Your Homeschool
The Challenge years are very busy years, but there is still time to add drama with a little creativity. Whether you are the tutor/director or a parent, you can fit drama into your homeschool with these ideas broken down by Challenge level.
Hi! My name is Danielle. After homeschooling my kids through the Classical Conversations program from Pre-K through graduating Challenge IV, as a mom and tutor/director I found a lot of creative ways to add drama to our homeschool without giving up the curriculum we loved.
As a Challenge tutor/director for seven years, I had the benefit of enjoying many classes and different levels of Challenge. Through the years, as we followed the curriculum, we were able to seamlessly incorporate drama into many different areas of our studies without feeling like we were adding another subject to the already busy schedule.
My kids and their friends enjoyed it so much that I want to share what we did with you. Below are some of the ways you can fit drama into our homeschool while also gaining the benefits that each Challenge level has to offer:
In Challenge A, as well as any level, you can have your kids act out a page or chapter from a book. In Challenge A there are wonderful stories to discuss and learn from. Acting them out helps them with understanding the story and relating with the characters.
Number the Stars by Lois Lowry has so many moments I just wanted my kids to stop and think about what the characters were going through in a particular situation. This story is based on the time during World War II in Nazi occupied Denmark. Neighbors decide to help when they notice many of their Jewish friends keep disappearing. Their businesses are suddenly closed, and they have been told they have been "relocated."
Have students act out the scene when the German soldiers come into the apartment, and the family is hiding the young girl who is their Jewish neighbor. How would these characters behave in this situation? Remember this is not just a story, but real people had to experience similar situations.
Acting out the story can help students relate better with actual people from this time in history.
Putting one of your favorite characters on trial is a lot of fun and a creative way to look more deeply at the details of a book. To prepare for mock trial the following year or just for fun, students can use a simple fairy tale to create a trial. Jack and the Beanstalk is a short tale with plenty of characters and room for the plaintiff's attorney and the defense attorney. Students can read the play, act it out, then put together a case and gather witnesses that can save Jack or help the Giant’s wife win the case. Check out Jack and the Beanstalk – The Mock Trial drama curriculum, and fit this in during the school year, a break or in the summer!
The summer following Challenge B my daughter published the short story she wrote for class, then tried to create a movie version of the story. Even though she never completed the movie, coming up with ideas for how it could be filmed, collaborating with others, creating the script, and acting out different scenes was a great way to express her creative energy and to add some drama to our homeschool.
With the Mock Trial, encourage students to really get into character. Don’t just sit on the witness stand ready to answer questions, but create a character based on the facts of the witness statement. Really get into the role and consider how the person would walk, talk and respond to the questions being asked. Although you have to stick to the facts, you can still have that character come to life.
We’ve seen students have an accent that they were able to maintain consistently throughout direct and cross-examination, dress a particular way to characterize the witness well, and bring basic accessories to enhance the believability of that character. They even answered questions in a way that you believed they were actually there.
Besides acting out The Taming of the Shrew by Shakespeare, students can continue the drama when they do their presentations. My daughter wrote a newspaper article covering the dramatic details of the wedding, then did a scene in a bathrobe where she was Bianca, the sister, reading the paper out loud and commenting on the many outlandish things that happened. It was hilarious and such a creative way to add drama to the presentation.
Don’t just memorize an interpretive speech but get into character and make it a memorable presentation.
Instead of just reading Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, act out the 30-minute play. Enjoy watching the students get into character with many of their favorites in this short play. (You can find the play here!)
Act out scenes from your Latin reading to add interest and understanding to your studies. You can read this blog, Perform a Drama Play in Spanish, to see the value of adding drama to your foreign language studies.
Something changes when you tell kids there is going to be a special event attached to them presenting, especially when it comes to poetry. In the past I’ve always had the kids read their poems in front of the class like any other presentation they’ve done. Sometimes kids would come unprepared, or they just didn’t put a lot into the assignment. They just couldn't get excited about poetry.
Once we started implementing a Poetry Café, all that changed. The kids knew this event was coming up and that it was going to be special. We even had decorations, snacks and iced coffee for our junior class thanks to some helpful moms. Some of the kids got dressed up to represent the Beatnik theme we discussed. Others dressed up in something related to their poem or put in the extra effort to present well with dramatic flair. One mom even played the hand drums between poets to add to the dramatic effect.
You can read the full blog Have Fun with a Poetry Café and learn why one student wanted claps instead of snaps.
There are a lot of lessons that can be learned and a lot of creativity that comes from portraying the roles Shakespeare has created. Working as a larger team is another great skill for students to learn. Although we never had time to perform the entire play, we did choose to perform Macbeth in a shorter format. This 30 minute version still uses the original language and keeps the important plot points to properly tell the tragic story of Macbeth.
The character Macbeth does have the most lines by far, but each year the actor playing this role managed to do what was necessary to learn them and perform them well. It’s always a wonderful experience to see students stretch themselves to do more than they think they can. Since we only met once a week, doing a shorter version of the play was necessary to not interfere with the other subjects the students were studying or to take time away from the next Shakespeare play we planned to study and present. Since these students are Juniors in high school, I allowed them to be in charge of how the play would come together. They could each work on their individual lines but come together to consider what were important elements to include as they presented it to the other classes.
Presenting this play has become a tradition ever since the first class asked to perform it. Check out Macbeth 30-minute play to have your students perform it this year!
How would each of the gods act? When my daughter did her family tree of the gods, she decided to make it live action having each of her classmates represent a different god. They were given a prop and a possible position to stand in and she explained each of them and how they were related to one another. It didn’t take any more time out of her schedule, since it was a part of the assignment she was already doing. You can add drama in a lot of creative ways.
When it came time for my class to read The Iliad, The Odyssey and The Aeneid, as the director and parent I was a little overwhelmed by their size. It seemed a bit daunting to take on these ancient works, but adding drama helped my students and me better understand these epic poems.
Now, we couldn’t act out the entire epic poem as that would take way too long, but we could and did have students choose their favorite scenes, or go through and choose some important ones to be presented as a drama in chronological order. These epic poems have many books in them, so sometimes it’s good to choose major scenes from different books to help tell the story. One year we did this and presented it to the other high school classes. It really helped them to understand the overall plot of The Aeneid.
When my students acted out Oedipus Rex, they had so much fun getting creative with the different accents they could use to tell this story. It wasn’t a story we could present to the younger students, but it was a fun time in class acting out scenes in a new and interesting way.
In one scene, one of the students used the voice of Yoda - hilarious. Some of my more quiet students actually came out of their shells a little more for this one. One did the voice of a southern lawyer which totally fit the role. She was able to maintain it consistently throughout her time presenting. Instead of having kids avoid coming up to perform, they actually volunteered. Meanwhile we would discuss what actually happened in each scene to make sure the kids were following the storyline and then move on to another scene.
Check out this blog for ideas on how to incorporate what the students have learned in Challenge into their graduation ceremony performances.
Whether you are the tutor/director and you can implement some of these ideas into your class, or you are a parent who is willing to support the class to add drama or implement these ideas at home, there are many ways to fit drama into your homeschool without giving up the curriculum you love.
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Looking for more ways to add drama to your homeschool? Check out our plays and drama curriculum related to these ideas and much more!
Thanks for joining us!
Danielle at homeschooldrama.com