Acting It Out : Using Drama in the Classroom to Improve Student Engagement, Reading, and Critical Thinking

In Acting It Out, you’ll discover how to use drama in your ELA and social studies classrooms to boost student participation and foster critical thinking. With years of experience supervising arts integration programs in Chicago Public Schools, authors Juliet Hart, Mark Onuscheck, and Mary T. Christel offer practical advice for teachers in middle and high schools. Inside, you’ll find…

• Group activities to improve concentration, harness focus, and engage students of all abilities and learning styles in teamwork
• Close reading exercises that encourage students to think critically and build personal relationships with the text
• Strategies for integrating active approaches to dramatic literature, such as improvisation and scene work
• Ideas for using dramatic literature as a springboard for studying history and interdisciplinary studies
• Annotated reading lists that highlight each play’s content and recommended uses in ELA or social studies

Throughout the book, you’ll also find handy tools such as reflection questions, handouts, and rubrics. By implementing the strategies in this book and allowing students to step into different roles from a text, you’ll improve reading comprehension and energize your classroom!

Juliet Hart is the Director of Education at TimeLine Theatre Company. She has presented workshops on active approaches to drama in the classroom for the Illinois Association of Teachers of English and National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE).

Mark Onuscheck is the Director of Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment at Adlai E. Stevenson High School. He also serves as an adjunct professor at DePaul University.

Mary T. Christel is a former teacher of world literature, media and film studies, and theater. Currently, she contributes teaching resources to TimeLine Theatre’s Living History Program and also reviews prospective lesson plans for the ReadWriteThink website.