Radio is often referred to as “Theatre of the Mind” and I’m a big fan of using radio plays in the drama classroom, particularly for beginners. I distinctly remember crowding around one of those old school tape recorders when I was in grade five recording an episode of The Shadow. We had a blast.
Radio uses many skills that are important for theatre without that dreaded “live performance” aspect – great for beginners or for those too shy to get up on stage yet.
Here’s a great lesson plan I found online that has students write and record a one minute commercial for a fictional product. I like this activity because it combines creative writing with performance and can be done in a short period of time. And everyone these days has an audio recorder on their cellphone.
Do you do radio drama in your classroom?
Thanks for sharing the lesson idea and I’m glad you liked it! The next lesson in the sequence was using poetry:
http://aiadrama.blogspot.com.au/2012/11/year-6s-doing-poetry-theatre.html
Hope you like that lesson too! You have some fantastic ideas in this blog too by the way :)