Are you listening?

Drama and speaking and listening are vital skills and educational activities for children and young people. This scheme uses some speaking and listening requirements of the KS2 National Curriculum to explore people’s ways of communicating. It focuses on those who cannot listen as well as those who will not. The five lessons can either make a logical progression through a range of drama techniques, or any one of the lessons could stand alone.

Learning objectives
By the end of this scheme students will:

• Have worked collaboratively to create drama from different stimuli
• Have experienced preparing drama for performance
• Have used a variety of drama techniques and role play
• Have learned the importance of communicating and listening
• Have experienced group discussion as a way to evaluate their own and each other’s work.

Scheme summary
Lesson 1: Distractions from outside
We live in a world where people are almost always using a device of some kind – communicating but not necessarily with the people nearby. This is a warning about overusing devices.
Lesson 2: Distractions from within
People ‘switch off’ from life for all sorts of positive or negative reasons. This lesson uses soundscapes to create a piece of drama about switching off.
Lesson 3: I can’t actually hear you
One in six people in the UK have impaired or no hearing. This lesson looks at a dramatic scenario in which people cope with that.
Lesson 4: It’s a foreign language
We don’t all speak English, and even when we do there are regional differences. This lesson uses drama techniques to explore ways of communicating to a ‘foreigner’ and vice versa.
Lesson 5: I don’t want to listen to you
Sometimes people don’t listen because they simply refuse to; this leads to some interesting drama, especially if their regrets come too late.