How can creative drama activities in English Language Arts provide assessment opportunities for both students and teachers?
Creative drama activities, such as role-playing, choral reading, and Reader’s Theatre, offer students the opportunity to enter the lives of literary characters, historic or fictional people. By assuming these roles, students discover people’s motivations, dilemmas, and aspirations. Students bring to life their understanding of the literature’s characters, plot, dialogue, symbols, and theme. As students interpret the literature, they use their voices, facial expressions, body posture, and non-verbal gestures along with movement and positioning in spatial relationship to others in the creative drama scenario. Teachers can assess how carefully and creatively students have read and internalized the literature through these activities. During a debriefing of the creative drama activities, the teacher and students can reflect on how the interpretations and presentations affected their understandings of the literary selection. • After each reading lesson, have the class complete a daily creat
