Drama and Discussion
Language learning is about developing the skills to express ourselves in global contexts. Good discourse skill activities empower learners to go beyond repetition and simple phrases. Here are our three guidelines for fostering discourse skill development, plus a few activities to get you started!
Discourse Skill Activity Guidelines:
Tasks must be meaningful. In drama or in discussion, invite learners to add something to the discussion beyond simple repetition. Related to literature, a task can invite students to reflect on text-to-text, text-to-self, or text-to-world connections.
Tasks must be adjustable. Develop levels to support students at a variety of stages in the learning process. A good starting point is to provide templates, sentence stems, or samples for students who need more guidance, but to give students the freedom to work without them as well.
Tasks should invite interaction. Language is social, so create opportunities for students to speak to one another in English. Activate the potential for more confident speakers/listeners/readers/writers of English to model their skills in non-threatening ways.
Sample Ideas:
Role play as characters from a favorite story (puppets work well, too!)
Retell a story to a partner
“Read” a wordless picturebook as a class
Play literature “taboo”- try to get classmates to guess a word relevant to a book you read together without using the word itself
Try literature circles with older students, giving each student a role in the discussion process