.

Mirror Mirror

In this activity, your students will continue to build confidence in using their body (movement)
to create a role and communicate meaning.

1. Students break into pairs.

2. Allocate, or let students decide who will be A, and who will be B.
3. On the teacher’s signal, student A begins to move very slowly.
4. Student B has to copy the movement exactly as if they are the reflection Student A sees
in a mirror.
5. Continue for some time, and then swap, having Student B lead Student A.

Encourage students to move slowly, with the aim being that anyone watching the pair wouldn’t
be able to tell who is leading the movement and who is following.

2. Human Knot

Working collaboratively is a foundational skill for life and drama students too. This fun game
helps students to build awareness and understanding of group work and is a great way to
introduce the concept of ‘ensemble’ (a group that works together to create).

1. Break students into small groups (4-6 students per group is a good start).
2. Students form a circle in their group.
3. Walking to the center with hands outstretched, students each grab two hands (however, it
cannot be the person next to them, nor can they grab both hands from the same person).
4. Students ‘untie’ their human knot, without ever letting go of any hands.
5. When a group has finished untying their knot, the whole group sits down.
shutterstock/Rawpixel.com

Encourage students to work slowly and carefully, with an awareness of how their movements
affect others in the knot. Some knots are easy to untie, and others take a lot of communication
and negotiation!

Increase the complexity of this ensemble-building game by asking students to complete it in

silence, by making the number of students in each group larger, or by trying to untie a whole
class knot!

3. Shazam!
An absolute favorite of mine, this is a drama game for kids that works with a concept similar to
“Rock, Paper, Scissors.” It is fantastic for exploring role, voice, movement, tension, and focus. In
“Shazam!” the three characters and parameters of play are:

 wizards beat knights by casting a magic spell over them

 giants beat wizards by stomping on them
 knight slay giants with their magic sword.

Students enact each character in the following way:

 wizards step forward with one leg, push both hands forward as if shooting a magic spell
through their hands, and shout “Shazzam!”
 giants stamp their feet and say “Fee! Fi! Fo! Fum!”
 knights pull an imaginary sword out of their belt and shout “En garde!”.

Play “Shazam!” as a whole group game, following these directions:

1. Split students into two even groups, standing in two parallel lines.
2. Have the groups face towards the center of the space.
3. The teacher counts down from ten to zero.
4. Each line quickly huddles in a group and decides which of the three characters they will
be during this round.
5. By the count of zero students must have returned to their straight line, facing their
opponent line.
6. On zero each line enacts their chosen character and the ‘winning’ line is decided by the
above parameters (wizards beat knights, giants beat wizards, knights slay giants).

Play round after round, keeping the pace up and keeping a tally of each team’s number of
winning rounds. The first team to ten are the winners!

Print a Shazam activity for each student.

 its power.

4. Zip, Zap, Zoom

Speaking of zaps, “Zip, Zap, Zoom” is another great collaborative game that teaches focus.
Students “pass the energy” around a circle, using action and a variety of vocal commands. In the
traditional game, students stand in a circle and send the energy around the circle saying either
Zip, Zap, or Zoom.

 “Zip” sends the energy in a clockwise direction

 “Zap” sends the energy in an anti-clockwise direction
 “Zoom” sends the energy to someone across the circle
  Students cannot do more than one Zap or Zoom in a row (they must be broken up by a
Zip)

Every command is done with an action, the easiest being to clap and point to the person the
energy is being sent to.

5. Twenty-One

“Twenty-one” is one of those drama games that get even the most fidgety of students
concentrating with laser focus.

Sitting in a circle, students attempt to count to 21 in a random order, without two or more people
speaking at the same time. One person begins by saying “one”, then another person says “two.”

Continue the group count until you reach twenty-one. If more than one person says a number at
the same time, the count begins again.

Change the Content:

This game can be used with any familiar content that has a sequence. For example:

 skip counting (e.g. threes, sixes, eights, etc.)

 using the alphabet
 musical scales or “Do Re Mi”
 counting in intervals with units (e.g. in tens, and dollars/cents 10¢, 20¢… $1.20).

See more Teach Starter teacher tips for helping students concentrate in the classroom.

6. Body Sculpture Olympics

Also known as “10 Second Object”, this activity gets students to use their bodies to create freeze
frames (like a real-life frozen image) that depict an object or a situation. Use this activity to talk
about how we can communicate meaning through movement.

1. Break students into small groups.

2. Call out an object or scenario (such as the North Pole, peacock, at the beach, washing
machine, etc.)
3. Count down from ten to zero
4. While you are counting down, students have to create the object, character, or situation
using their bodies.
5. When you reach zero, shout “Freeze!”
 6. Give each group a thumbs up or thumbs down depending on if they have represented the
stimulus in a way that makes sense.
7. Continue, keeping the pace up to ensure students are engaged and thinking on their feet!

You can decide on a “scoring” method that feels right for you (such as giving scores out of ten or
choosing one winner per round), or you may prefer not to “score” at all, and just use the activity
as a confidence and group awareness building exercise.

Layer in Context:

“Body Sculpture Olympics” can be adapted as a drama activity linked to most any content at all.
Simply create a list of characters, situations, or objects that are related to a familiar topic. Or
better yet, let the students create the lists.

This activity means students use movement and space to establish a dramatic meaning (they
communicate situation, role, and relationships through their frozen image).

7. The Expert

This activity is great for older students, using both their prior knowledge of a topic and their
imagination. It requires students to use role, relationship, situation, voice, and movement to
create dramatic meaning.

1. Break students into small groups (3-4).

2. Allocate a letter to each student within the group (i.e. every group will have a person A,
person B, etc.).
3. Call out the letter of the person who will be ‘The Expert’ first.
4. Announce the topic that the Expert specializes in.
5. The Expert must speak with authority about the topic for an agreed amount of time (e.g.
30 or 60 seconds).
6. The teacher counts down from three to begin the time and calls “Stop!” when time is up.
7. The teacher then announces which letter/person will go next, and the new topic of
expertise.

What makes this game extra fun, is that there is only one rule – the expert can never stop talking,
even if they run out of facts well before their time is up. Students should just keep talking,
making up anything at all about the topic, no matter how absurd or far-fetched.

Not all drama is based on fiction! This activity is a great way to explore how drama-makers
(playwrights, actors, dramaturgs, directors, set, and costume designers) can play with the ideas
related to a “real” topic in order to create an artistic, symbolic, absurd, or stylistic representation
of it through Drama.

Variations:
  Play as a whole class with one Expert up at the front.
 Allow the “audience” to ask questions of the Expert to help prompt them if they get
stuck.
 Create a panel of Experts, with two or three students in front of the class discussing their
topic of expertise.
 Add simple props or costumes such as a coat, glasses, or other items to help students with
their “expert” characterization.

Layer in Context:

 Have each student in the group play a character from a text or narrative they know. Give
a situation from the text as a prompt for the character to talk about for their allotted time.

8. One Word Story

Create a whole-class story in this imaginative drama activity that is for practicing individual and
group focus.

1. Students sit or stand in a circle.

2. Establish who will begin the story and which direction the story will travel (clockwise or
anti-clockwise).
3. The first person begins the story by saying a single word, e.g. “There.”
4. Whoever is next in the circle says another single word that makes sense following the
previous word, e.g. “was.”
5. Continue around the circle, with each person saying a single word with the aim of
building a coherent story.

When using this as a general drama activity, you could use one of the Teach Starter widgets as a
prompt for the story. The Vocabulary Word of the Day spinner has dozens of word lists you
could draw from, the Visual Writing Prompts Widget provides perfect One Word Story stimulus,
and the Random Sentence Starter spinner is a really fun way to kick-start your students’
imagination!

Layer in Context:

Connect this drama activity to content from a unit, text, or topic your students are currently
studying. Establish with the class a few broad “key features” the whole class story needs to have.
For example, if students are exploring food and nutrition in a health unit, you could agree on the
following aspects of the story:

 a specific character or characters (e.g. a boy named Lashon, and a cookie that comes to
life)
 a specific place (at Lashon’s house)
 a keyword or phrase (“Eat me!”)
It is important not to get too detailed when establishing the key features of the story (i.e. you
might not articulate a specific problem or conflict that has to happen), as you want your students
to be able to shape and guide the story in an imaginative way.

This activity can be played without context for a fun, classroom brain break that explores many
of the elements of drama including situation, role, relationship, voice, tension, and mood (as the
students will likely create a narrative that touches on each of these). Or you can use it as an
imaginative way to reinforce key concepts from, and students’ understanding of, any topic you
have been exploring with your class.

Use visual prompts such as cards from a relevant word wall, a projected avatar of the specific
characters, or create some custom labels with the character names, words, and places that work
with your current units.