Some students may have been to the theater to see plays. Many of them are more likely to have read a book than attended a play. Reading books is cheaper and more convenient than going to the theater. Introducing students to plays can be beneficial in the classroom. They can help educators to teach speaking, listening, reading, and writing. Here are some of the reasons why plays are beneficial.
Plays can teach many skills
A play usually won’t take as long to read as a novel. Students can finish a play in a week. They are also quite accessible and easy for students to process because they rely so much on dialogue. When different students can read the parts of different characters, it can bring the play to life. It gives students a chance to move around and learn more actively.
You could get students to learn a monologue from a play and present it to the class. Taking some risks and performing for an audience can teach students to trust in their abilities. When they act out roles from different situations and cultures, it can increase their understanding of other viewpoints. They can also improve their fluency with language and how they articulate words.
Learn from literary examples
Essays play an important role in education. If you’re a student studying literature in school as part of your education, you can benefit from reading Clare Boothe Luce examples of rhetorical analysis on Samplius. Rhetoric is the art of speaking or writing effectively and persuasively. If you want to receive an original paper on this topic or any other one, you can send a ‘write my paper’ request. You can choose a professional writer to write a quality, unique paper for you within your required deadline. This will ensure great results for you in exams and a good record in writing assignments.
Plays can help to teach literary devices
Literary devices are the building blocks of literature. They take writing beyond its literal meaning. Irony, paradox and puns are all literary devices used very well in plays.
Students are often easily able to identify symbols in plays. You could get them to choose a symbol and create a symbol map. After placing the symbol in a circle in the middle of a page, they could draw lines from it in a specific color and add associations they make with it from daily life. After that, they could use another color to explore the use of the symbol in the play.
You can perform many activities with plays
Watching a film adaptation could help students to understand the differences between films and plays. What could the director of the film do that wasn’t possible on stage? Did they prefer the play or the movie? If they preferred the play, what was the reason?
Getting students to draw costumes that the different characters would wear is another interesting exercise. This can help them to understand more about the characters. You could also get them to create a music playlist for specific scenes.
Explore themes and subject matter
If a major theme is about friendship, you could explore this theme before starting to read. There are so many themes to be found – revenge, power, ambition, obsession, loyalty, and sin.
Another useful exercise would be to get them to do some preliminary research about the setting in which the play takes place. If it takes place at a certain period in history, they could do some research about this period.
They can have a wide-ranging impact
When reading a play with students, connect it to what they learn in other subjects and outside of the classroom. For example, something about the civil war could lead to connections with what students are learning in history.
They can bring humor and laughter into learning which helps to decrease stress and improve motivation. They can be an outlet for students to express a range of emotions. They may find a play expresses their emotions in a way they haven’t been able to put into words. They can also give them an appreciation for the value of theater.
Plays can provide a means to teach many aspects of literature in a classroom. Students often respond well to them as they contain dialogue which makes them easy to read. They can provide a way to teach literary devices, like dramatic irony. They can also form the basis for many different activities in the classroom. Finding ways to connect them with learning other subjects and life outside the classroom can make them even more useful.
Kathy Mercado is a professional writer who believes in achieving her goals with hard work and dedication. She performs deep research, engages in niche-specific discussions on online writer’s groups and reads quality books to be known as one of the best college essay writers and editors. She dreams of developing an AI-based writing tool someday.