Week 13 Drama 3

Drama 3: Teaching-in-role & Mantle-of-the-expert

In our finial Creative Arts workshop this semester, we focused on teaching-in-role and mantle-of-the-expert as two effective teaching strategies we could use in our future teaching. When I was in Year 10, the teaching-in-role strategy had been used in Literacy class by my teacher. The teacher dressed as a witch and taught us about Macbeth. That teaching strategy made us felt very different from the sterotypes of teaching and learning, hence I agree that involving the ‘teaching in role’ strategy would help engaging and focusing students’ interest and attention on the lesson. It would also encourage students’ higher order thinking about the lesson content.

A picture of Macbeth and three witches.

As the teacher models in the class and teachs in role, students could be enabled to “walk in someone else’s shoes and at the same time confirming the importance of their own understanding and experiences” (Ewing, R. & Simons, J., 2004, p. 31). Both teaching in role and mantle of the expert are useful activity to encourage students’ interests in learning, but I would like to do teaching in role more than mantle of the expert in my future teaching since the idea is more common and easier to be accepted by students from different ages and levels of abilities.

References:
Ewing, R. & Simons, J. (2004). Beyond the script: Drama in the classroom, take two. Newtown, NSW: PETA.