This state guide to curriculum planning is designed to provide direction to teachers, administrators, and curriculum specialists for developing programs in informal drama and theatre. For each school level (preschool, elementary, middle, and high school) the following topics or concepts are discussed in terms of the student at that level: informal…

A summer English class for gifted fifth- through eighth-grade students was designed to allow students to interact with literature by adapting short-stories into plays that the students then produced, performed, and filmed. During the prewriting phase, students discussed qualities most essential to a story or film, and compared a short story with…

New methods are proposed for teachers to increase the cultural knowledge of their students. Rather than emphasizing food, festivals, and famous faces from other lands, there should be an attempt to use culture in the classroom as content in the regular instruction of speaking, listening, writing, mathematics, reading, and science. Teaching…

Using data from the National Opinion Research Center's 1980 national survey, "High School and Beyond," relationships between an overall measure of ability and participation in performing arts activities were examined for 21,479 high school seniors from 1,015 public and private schools. A low positive relationship was found between…

The strategic interaction method is based on the principle that dramatic tension is the essential ingredient in second language learning, but unlike the drama built on audience spectatorship, classroom drama builds within each student involved in the interaction. Students take scenarios, thematically cohesive events, and create their own dialog as…

A world literature course for gifted and talented high school students is described. J. Renzulli's Enrichment Triad concepts form the basis of the model. The course begins with general exploration activities on the various cultural settings and genres in the literature of the world, and proceeds to the selection of specific novels and topics for…

Drama in the classroom is the theme of the 14 articles in this issue, which can be used as resource material for teachers concerned with incorporating drama into the English curriculum. Titles and authors are as follows: "All the World is a Stage--Except the American Classroom" (Charles R. Duke); "A Drama Program for All Seasons" (Paul Cervoni and…

A study was conducted to determine the effect of a play, a curriculum kit on disability, and a speaker confined to a wheelchair on students' attitudes toward the disabled. Subjects were 150 male and 174 female secondary school students from seven Australian schools. The play presented common myths and fallacies about the disabled and then debunked…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 18 titles are as follows: (1) Physical and Oral Behaviors of the Solo Interpretive Performer; (2) Music in English Children's Drama; (3) Playwriting in the Maritime Provinces: 1845-1903; (4) Dance in Denver's Pioneer Theatres:…

Focusing on the experience of one of seven working groups at a theater-for-development workshop in Zimbabwe, this report details the process followed by many groups, and reveals some of the major learnings, dilemmas, contradictions, strengths, and limiting factors found in a practical village-based theater-for-development process. A brief…

Given the responsibility that was placed on school systems to develop and maintain Canadian culture through arts education, the faculty of education at the University of Regina (Saskatchewan), developed a program to prepare teachers to fill the variety of arts education roles. In the four-year undergraduate program, five arts disciplines are…

Designed to help elementary and middle school language arts teachers structure a comprehensive objectives-based composition program, this guide attends to fundamental rhetorical concepts that should enable schools to effectively use existing resources while extending the range of instructional potentials in areas not often included in commercially…

Although Will Rogers often described himself as "just a cowboy with a lot of luck," he was more than that. At one time or another he was a vaudeville entertainer, film star, world traveler, author, columnist, and after-dinner speaker. The most beloved figure of his time, this famous humorist was also part Cherokee Indian. Rogers was born…

This study examines several genres of Nuyorican literature (works by and about Puerto Ricans in New York) in an effort to demonstrate how authors interpret the political and social contexts of their environment. Works analyzed are the dramas "Short Eyes" and "The Sun Always Shines for the Cool" by Miguel Pinero and "Noo…

This program guide is designed to serve as a reference resource for those involved with the teaching of drama at the junior high school level. Three elective, one-semester courses are described, with each description continuing a discussion of the goals, objectives, teaching strategies, and suggested sequences and time frames for the course. The…