Please note: this article pre-dates the current National Curriculum and some content and links may be outdated.

When I visit primary schools these days it heartens me to see how often drama is used in classroom teaching. Looking back over my own career, drama and role play have always been an integral part of my practice from the early days at the end of the 60s when I made up improvised plays with my class of 7 and 8 year olds to theatre-in-education work in the 70s to role-playing with teacher trainees in the 90s. The principles I applied then are the principles I apply now - involvement, imagination and time for reflection. The ways of teaching through drama are vast and various but the effectiveness of the medium to motivate, engage and ultimately educate children, is beyond dispute...