This article invites teachers to consider how to strengthen links between English, music, arts, and acting, maximizing the potential for children to become successful language learners at a young age. It will show how children's opera can act as a catalyst for learning and using the language. The findings demonstrate that teaching English with a…

Describes an acting exercise which can be used to introduce students to Shakespeare's plays. (RB)

To help maintain class interest in the important themes addressed in "Walden" and "The Duties of Civil Disobedience," a high school English teacher has presented a dramatic monologue as Henry David Thoreau to his students. After much library research, the teacher used some of the props characteristic of the author, such as a…

Describes an activity in which students selected a character from a play or novel and acted that role before the class. (SW)

Investigates the experiences of 17 "remedial" readers as they interpreted and performed texts through classroom theater. Discusses results of a study aimed at analyzing patterns of children's text interpretation. Details the students' evolving conception of themselves as actors and interpreters of texts. (HB)

Describes an educational program that involves the use of theatre and dramatic approaches by a team of actor/teachers in order to promote learning in a school. Contains a script for a play developed by a Theatre in Education team and its students. (HTH)

Stimulating and enjoyable dramatic activities in the classroom can nurture children's natural sympathies with drama. Re-acting a portion of a second-rate television show can help children become more perceptive critics and prepare them to view better drama that the teacher could bring to the classroom. Free, creative rhythmic movement allows…

This review of current uses of drama in the teaching of literature deals with drama that is "concerned with experience by the participants, irrespective of any function of communication to an audience." Chapters are devoted to (1) the British-influenced Dartmouth Seminar proposals emphasizing drama and oral language, (2) American…

Over a period of months, illiterate and disruptive Black and Puerto Rican junior high school students in New York City developed and staged an updated version of "West Side Story." Although by professional standards the results were poor, students were able to participate in a highly rewarding activity which demanded discipline,…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 19 dissertations deal with a variety of topics, including the following: the impact of Konstantin Stanislavski's ideas on motion picture acting in the United States and their significance for oral interpretation; the empathic…

Modern drama criticism is rebuked for taking the "closet drama approach" which reduces the theater to yet another type of philosophical and content-oriented literary genre. Group participation and discussion are suggested as means by which the student is encouraged to stage an imaginary performance leading to intelligibility and appreciation of…