Process drama is a powerful and motivating teaching tool that engages students in

writing for imaginative and functional purposes. In their lives, students have had a
wide range of experiences with peace and conflict. In this lesson, they will participate
in a simulation of a Peace Journey as they engage in a variety of literacy activities.
Each student will respond to an imaginary advertisement, role play, work in small
groups to develop a visual map, and create a skit that reflects his or her developing
notions of peace. Students will then perform their skits for the class. After the class
has performed, teachers may wish to lead a discussion about the students ideas and
their interpretations of the idea of peace.
What is Process Drama?

Process drama is a dynamic teaching methodology in which the teacher and the
students work together to create an imaginary dramatic world and work within that
world to explore a particular problem, situation, theme, or series of related themes,
not for a separate audience, but for the benefit of the participants themselves.

In a process drama, students play a range of roles and engage in a variety of reflective
out-of-role activities, requiring them to think beyond their own points of view and
consider the topic from multiple perspectives. They emerge with an expanded self -
awareness, and a greater sense of the challenges and the possibilities facing the
society in which they live.

Process drama also carries the potential for rigorous, standards -based learning to
occur. Students not only explore the dynamics, relationships, and conflicts that shape
a given situation, but also to acquire factual knowledge related to the topic of the
drama.



Young children naturally explore their world through dramatic play, taking roles,
acting out situations through cooperative play, and learning about 'their world, about
themselves and especially about human naturehow and why we behave the way we
do' (O'Toole, 2002, p. 48). In the early years, learning through process drama
(Heathcote & Bolton, 1995) links naturally with the preferred learning styles of
children who thrive on spontaneous and active inquiry centred on the exploration of
real and imagined worlds.
The benefits of process drama are well -documented and include language
development, collaborative problem-solving, decision-making and perspective-taking
(Donelan, 2002; O'Neill, 1994; O'Toole, 2002). Process drama provides a unique
approach to uniting children and teachers in a dynamic interplay of role-taking where
all participants act out ideas that are formed and re-formed in the context of a
fictional story that unfolds as a creative process of exposition, rising action and
complication, climax and denouement (Warren, 1999). In a safe environment children
are encouraged to behave 'as if' they are someone else (Toye & Prendiville, 2000) and
in doing so are empowered to take the central role in the emergent dramatic
exploration, a responsibility that requires them to consider their actions and the
impact of these on others, to look at reality through fantasy and imagination, to see
below the surface of actions to their deeper meaning (Wagner, 1979). As Winston and
Tandy state, 'it is through achieving the distance afforded by fiction that we can
reflect more securely upon issues which have significant effects upon our daily lives'
(2001, p. vii).