Teacher Guides
00 - New Drama Teacher Toolkit
The New Drama Teacher toolkit has links and resources to help you with your first year in the drama classroom.
01 - Setting Up Your Classroom
These resources will help you set up your classroom for the first time.
02 - Curriculum
Links to DTA curriculum for a beginning drama teacher.
03 - Classroom Management
Resources to develop your classroom management skills.
04 - Classroom Procedures
Resources to help you establish drama classroom procedures.
Attachments
- Preventing Pandemonium Part 1 Course: Lesson 4 'Set Up Classroom Procedures'
- Mission Possible Course: Lesson 1 'The Importance of a Mission'
- Organized Chaos Course: Lesson 4 'Rules and Boundaries in the Theatre Classroom'
- Engaging Students to Work Together
- Engaging the Non-Theatre Student
- Example of Student and Parent Contract
05 - Choosing Plays
Resources to help you choose plays for classroom study and performance.
06 - Classroom Materials
Posters for your classroom, and scenes for classroom study.
07 - Assessment Tools
Resources specifically for assessment in the drama classroom.
08 - PD Courses
Video on how to put our fires in your classroom, using the DTA course modules.
A Guide to the Elizabethan Age
A comprehensive guide to the Elizabethan Age, including historical details, the Elizabethan Theatre, and Staging the Elizabethan Play.
BIPOC Theatre Book List and Classroom Resources
The BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour) Theatre Book List offers a selection of texts (memoirs, essay collections, books, novels) written by BIPOC artists. All of the texts have a theatre focus, which makes them perfect for study in the drama classroom, to use as an independent study project, or for students who require an alternative method of instruction (AMI). Along with the list of books, attachments include Reading Questions for 5 specific texts, and a Close Reading Lesson Plan.
Create Your Own Drama Curriculum
When there isn’t a textbook to follow or a specific set of units, how do you create a curriculum? Tips and tricks from experts in the field.
Directing the Absurd Play
How do you direct something with no plot, nonsense dialogue and uninformative characters? How do you approach the Absurd play? How do you help students approach the Absurd play? This guide comes complete with exercises to help with Theatre of the Absurd plays.
Elizabethan Theatre
This guide to Elizabethan Theatre includes details on the Life of a Playright in Elizabethan times, including biographies of Elizabethan playwrights (including Shakespeare). It includes exercises and activities for 4 of Shakespeare's plays.
Methods of Teaching Theatre: A Teacher Toolkit
There are a lot of challenges that come in the first few years of teaching, especially for new theatre teachers, including non-traditional teaching spaces, entire classes of students who have no interest in theatre, a lack of a standard curriculum, and creating objective assessments for subjective materials, just to name a few. This book will help you anticipate the preparations you will need to address before a student ever walks into your classroom and the kind of philosophical questions you need to ask, and answer, as you begin your teaching career. This toolkit examines four fundamental building blocks of teaching: Classroom Setup, Classroom Management, Lesson Planning, and Assessment. It also provides you with tools and activities that will help you integrate these fundamentals into a drama classroom. If you are a new teacher, or are still in your teacher training, these tools will provide you with a lot of supplemental, practical information that will help you prepare for your first few years of teaching.
New Teacher Primer
If you’ve never done a first week in the drama classroom, how do you know what to expect? What to say? What to do? Let the New Teacher Primer be your guide. We’ve divided this toolkit into high school and middle school sections. There’s definitely a specific way to approach each level. However, there will also be some overlap between the two, so don’t be afraid to read it all and adapt for your situation.
Protest and Art Resource
Students can explore the history of protest and how art has played a role in protest. They can examine different protest plays and protest art to discuss how art is political. What are the creatives behind the art trying to say? Why was it created? Students can examine what other artists have done and what change is happening in the entertainment world now. While analyzing art students should be asking: Why this? Why now? Use the activities in this resource to discover how to respond to political art and how to identify works of protest.
Resource Link Guide
Looking for information and searching online is too overwhelming? See if our Resource Guide has what you need.
Sample Rehearsal Schedule with Exercises
This is a sample six rehearsal schedule for a full length play. Use this as a model and modify according to your and your students' needs.
Sankofa Musings: A Teacher Reflection Activity
This is a guide to trying a recorded video journal to use as a reflection tool. It can be used during a rehearsal period to reflect on the process, or it can be used as a classroom tool to reflect on your teaching practice. This guide will walk you through the process and give suggestions for use with your class as well.
SEL Through the Lens of Theatre
In this resource, we will look at the components of SEL, suggest some activities and reflection questions, and go step-by-step through a Defining Ensemble Activity that you can use as a template. Finally, there’s a SEL Worksheet to take activities you use, apply SEL components and make connections: What specifically about the activity connects to the SEL component?
Self-Care Package
This self-care package includes a workbook, calendar, and posters to help focus on the essential questions: How can you become a practicing self-care, compassionate person who teaches educational theatre? How can you make time for self-care and compassion?
Social Emotional Learning Module: PD Courses and Classroom Resources
This PD module is focused on Social Emotional Learning. In this module, you will have your choice of courses that will focus on SEL in your classroom, and attached to each course are resources to be used directly with your students.
Theatre for Young Audience Plays by BIPOC Playwrights
This document is a collection of Theatre for Young Audience plays (TYA) written by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Colour) writers/playwrights.
Why so Emotional? A Guide for Highly Charged Scenes
A guide for teachers to help with their student actors; to find the right balance within an emotional performance, including exercises that can be explored to counteract overemotional acting.
Writing Lesson Plans Toolkit
In this toolkit, you will learn the structure and terminology of a standard lesson plan and how that lesson plan can be adapted in the theatre classroom. You will learn how to identify and utilize Bloom’s Taxonomy in the creation of your lesson plans and explore the National Standards for Theatre with an eye toward including specific state standards in your completed plans.
