Drama Strategies for Assessment

Hello Readers!
So using drama strategies for assessment has probably been one of the most interesting and innovative ways of integrating drama into the everyday school context that we have learned about thus far. Using some of these strategies can make assessment very exciting for students. This excitement will translate into enthusiastic participation, and when can educators every complain about that?!
In terms of assessment, there is a strategy you can use as a diagnostic assessment for just about anything in the classroom! If you are starting anything new, you can use a strategy that gets students up and out of their seat. I called this strategy relative positioning. In my own class our instructor used this strategy as follows. She placed a chair in the middle of the room and had us position ourselves in the room relative to the chair based on our comfortability and confidence in participating in drama. The closer the chair indicating complete comfort and confidence, and the further away from the chair indicating a decreasing amount of comfort and confidence. We were able to position ourselves accordingly and from this our instructor was able to gauge our dramatic abilities before even beginning. This is a diagnostic tool you could use in the classroom under a variety of situations, but maybe most commonly when introducing a new area of study or concept. This can allow you to get an idea of what your students know and don't know very easily and quickly.
What our instructor did next is another drama strategy that can give you some insight for assessment in other situations. This strategy is called the "tap in". In our context, after we had positioned ourselves based on our comfort and confidence in drama, our instructor walked around the room and tapped on the shoulder of some of my peers. When their shoulder was tapped, it was a signal that she wanted them to explain themselves. This gave her even more insight into the diagnostic assessment! This can be used coupled with the relative position strategy, or in other circumstances as well. This is also a great tool when assessing a tableau! You can tap in a student so they can explain their tableau and the elements they have included to make it a good tableau.
A final strategy I will share is one of my personal favourites! This is a improvisation strategy that involves role playing and can involve the whole class when appropriate. In this strategy, questions are asked to someone in the "hot seat" and they must respond in character. The questions can be asked by the other students or by the teacher depending on skill level. It is a fun and quality assessment tool to check for comprehension in Language Arts, Science, Social Studies, History and more! I have posted a video below of a class who are participating in the hot seat in Language Arts with the teacher leading by asking the questions. This should give you a good idea of how it works!



Happy Assessment!
Miss G.