Drama Activities for K-6 Students : Creating Classroom Spirit

Here, the authors provide dramatic strategies accompanied by age-appropriate stories and poems from around the world that address such issues as sharing, caring, cooperation, consequences, and bullying in order to create a positive classroom environment.

The students' enactments take them to different lands around the globe, back into time, and into their very own neighborhoods. The varied theatrical forms included in this book-pantomime plays, shadow theater, living newspaper, story theater, museum theater, and creative tableaus-span the full spectrum of current drama used in the classroom.

To help students create their own variations of the stories with their own dialogue, the authors provide easy-to-follow structures. The framework of Warm-up Development, and Wrap-up, allows teachers and students to discover challenging inquiry and writing techniques and participate in mind-opening discussion and enrichments that can be applied across the curriculum. All activities were designed to promote a deeper sense of trust, mutual respect, and pride in working together.

This book will be a most welcome addition to a teachers' "must have" list of practical books for the classroom.

Visit our website for Sample Readings including a full table of contents!

Milton E. Polsky is the cochair of the UFT Players (United Federation of Teachers), an organization that has produced many of his plays. He has taught creative drama at New York City public schools and New York University, the City University of New York, and Hofstra University. Dr. Polsky is a recipient of the Rod Marriott Award for Outstanding Lifetime Achievement in Theatre Education, presented by the New York State Education Association. Among his many popular books are Let's Improvise, You Can Write A Play, and Celebrate Your School Namesake.

Dorothy Napp Schindel is the director of DramaMUSE Associates, a company that creates interactive theater productions and drama-based programs for museums. Her book Pioneer Journeys: Drama in Museum Education (co-authored with Jennifer Fell Hayes) is a recipient of the American Alliance for Theatre and Education's Distinguished Book Award. Author of articles, director, scenic designer, educational theater specialist, and award winning visual artist she has taught at all levels, from kindergarten through college, and has worked in regional and off-Broadway theaters.

Carmine Tabone is the director of the Jersey City-based Educational Arts Team and an adjunct faculty member at New York University in the Program in Educational Theater. He has served as a board member of the American Alliance for Theatre and Education and as a regional governor for the Children's Theatre Association of America. Author of numerous articles, Carmine has conducted workshops for young people, drama leaders, teachers, librarians, and parents in New Jersey public school classrooms and at regional, national and international conferences.