Active learning - Drama

Children learn in many different ways and have different learning styles. Opportunities for children to experience language through song and rhyme, storytelling and games offer children ways to interact with the new language and with one another in a dynamic and social environment.

Through active methods and physical response children feel safe to explore and experiment with the new sounds. For those who prefer to listen and observe, they absorb the new language by watching others and gradually increase in confidence, until they too are joining in, responding to what they hear and see and engaging with others in short conversations and role-play.

Handkerchief

A class learning colours in German have fun as their teacher produces different coloured hankies which he has hidden on his person, like a magician. Children give the correct name for the colours. They go on to play a game in which the teacher, with his eyes shut, must guess the colour of the handkerchief which a child standing behind him is holding. The class say whether he is right or wrong.

The children tell the teacher to close his eyes, saying ‘Augen zu’, rhythmically. He deliberately plays the fool and does the wrong thing, until eventually he obeys them and closes his eyes.