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Lesson Plans Articles for Drama Teachers

Browse 18 lesson plans articles

Teaching Drama

Character Study in the Drama Classroom

Ideally, we want students to study characters and bring them to life through scene work. But what if you have students who have been away during rehearsals and you need a related activity for them...
Teaching Drama

Lesson Plan: Using the Arts to Navigate Life

How do the arts make life more bearable? Click below to access a one-class lesson plan that uses this George Bernard Shaw quote as its starting point: “Without art, the crudeness of reality would...
Teaching Drama

Playing to Your Students’ Strengths

Drama teachers understand that we must plan our curriculum around the standards established by school boards, administrators, and other leadership. But whenever possible, it’s wonderful to...
Teaching Drama

Writing Lesson Plans for the Drama Classroom Toolkit

Lesson planning is the backbone of effective teaching. Think of lesson plans as your classroom's roadmap—they guide everyone toward shared learning goals. When they're on point, the classroom runs...
Teaching Drama

Setting Up Your Theatre Curriculum

Curriculum is the cornerstone of your entire teaching foundation. Your curriculum is the roadmap that tells you what, when, why, and how you will teach your students. However, there is no...
Teaching Drama

Current Events: Diversity in Theatre Lesson

The following lesson was created for students to discover, appreciate, and display respect for diverse, real-life issues and events in the theatre world. It can be done live in class, assigned as...
Distance Learning

Lessons Learned from Directing a Virtual Show

If you miss doing shows with your students, you’re not alone. We’re all missing live theatre! Luckily, there are playwrights writing virtual plays for online platforms that you can do right now....
Distance Learning

Tips for Adapting Existing Lessons

How do you adapt existing lessons to a virtual environment? The goal is to adapt without reinventing the wheel, which is an added unnecessary stress. Some lesson plan elements will remain the same...
Classroom Exercise

Lesson Plan: Create and Perform a Radio Play

Radio plays are theatrical performances that are purely auditory; they’re meant to be performed on the radio, hence the name! There is no visual aspect, so performers must rely on their vocal...
Classroom Management

Top 10 Tips For Writing Awesome Lesson Plans

If you’re starting out in your drama teacher journey, you will learn very quickly that lesson planning is the bane of your existence. It is never-ending. You may need to show your lessons to an...
Acting

Commedia Dell’arte in the Drama Classroom

Commedia dell’arte is an improvised comedic theatre form that flourished in Italy in the 1500s. The exact origins of commedia are fuzzy and hard to pin down; there is not much documented previous...
Teaching Drama

Teach any Lesson Through Drama

I was one of those math and science kids. But I also loved drama. I started university as a computer science student but left with a degree in theatre. I enjoyed studying calculus, chemistry,...
Teaching Drama

Preparing Middle School Students to Perform Monologues

Do you notice any of these common issues when your middle school students perform monologues in competition? • They’re overcome with nerves. • They’re unable to grow their characters beyond...
Teaching Drama

Speeches from History – A Cross-Curricular Unit

Here’s a unit you can use that combines technology, drama, and cross-curricular learning. Talk about a multi-purpose activity! Since the unit involves speeches, it’s probably best-suited to...
Acting

Script Analysis For Actors: Action Words

Adding on to our previous post on annotating a script for analysis, the next task for student actors is to explore their text through action words (“verbs” for you English majors). The idea is to...
Acting

Celebrity Gift Bag – Lesson Plan

The Oscars are happening this weekend and celebrities are no-doubt cramming the gifting suites. Here’s a little drama/improv warm-up that makes everybody a celebrity! I call it… The Celebrity Gift...