Completion of Course 1 of the Drama in the Classroom Certificate Program is recommended but not required.

In this course educators learn how to foster competencies in reading, writing, speaking, listening, and viewing through classroom drama. The course offers activities and strategies to help learners at all levels to contextualize these skills within a broader framework that encourages critical thinking and a wider vision of the world and their choices of action within it.

Participants experience a broad range of interactive drama and dramatic writing exercises and evaluate their potential for enhancing literacy instruction. In the process, they develop a strong working knowledge of drama structures by exploring stimuli, planning and organizing creative writing, and practicing methods of refining and presenting texts. Creating written and dramatized narratives and then presenting group work as well as individual work helps participants to formulate and articulate ideas, assume ownership of the work, and create a base for further learning in other contexts and subjects. This course incorporates the New York City Department of Education’s performance standards for the English Language Arts.

This course is offered in association with the Paul A. Kaplan Center for Educational Drama of the CUNY Creative Arts Team.