Drama through play in the early years

Abstract

The main aim of this dissertation is to see how drama and play relate together, giving an easier option for teachers in the early years to include drama throughout their day, whilst promoting a holistic development, as it was stated by the National Minimum Curriculum. Chapter 2, Literature Review provides an outline of the concept of drama in relation to play whilst referring to two of the pioneers of drama; Peter Slade and Dorothy Heathcote. It also gives an analysis of the essential features that these two pioneers deemed as important mainly; Observations, Child’s ideas, Planning and the Teacher’s role. Chapter 3 describes what we intend to use for our project with the early years children at the St. Ignatius College, Luqa Primary. In Chapter 4 we stress the importance of play and it’s relevance and importance to the early childhood develoment and education. Chapter 5 deals with the different theorists that stressed out the importance of play mainly; Jean Jacques Rousseau, Fredrich Froebel, Rudolf Steiner, Maria Mmontessori, Margaret Mc Millan, Susan Isaacs and Lev Vygotsky. Throughout Chapter 6 we showed how drama can be related through play with the help of the senses. In Chapter 7, one can find our results from the activities done in school. Every single lesson is dealt with in detail and there is also an analysis of the results achieved. Finally the conclusion contains our recommendations of what can be done in schools so as to give more importance to drama within the early years. This was all done with the help of our tutor Mr. Alfred Mallia, as well as with the help of our critical friend Ms. Etienne Ferrall, who helped throughout the activities by giving us points to consider after each activity.