DARTS

This is a very simple but fun Drama Game that encourages  spontaneous improvisation without the students really thinking about it and before they know it everyone is acting along, laughing with everyone else and thoughts of embarrassment are forgotten.

Standing with all the students in a circle explain that a student will cross the space to another student. Once the student has reached the new student, they will cross the space to another students and so on until everyone has crossed the space.

Simple so far but sometimes it is useful to just make sure that everyone has this idea before moving on to the improvisation element.

Once the idea is established, explain that the students will have to cross the space in the style of whatever you shout out. You can ask the students to come up with a few styles as well. Ask 5 or 6 students to cross the space in one style before moving on.

Styles that I’ve found successful are:

• Spies
• Monsters
• Jungle Animals
• Characters from Disney Films
• Playing different sports
• Different emotions such as angry, happy etc…

Final Letter Association

After DARTS I often play an association game to help focus the students minds as well. The associated games work really well, but strangely enough they never seem to work as well without a physical drama game before hand.

This one is very simple, all the student has to do is think of a word that starts with the letter that the previous word finished with.

So, if you start with Banana, the next word is Apple, then Elephant, then Tangerine etc…

You can add other rules such as no repeating words or you can turn it into a full game where the students are out if they don’t think of a word in time. I challenge everyone to go round the circle as quick as possible instead.