Drama, Literacy and Moral Education 5-11

This text is aimed at teachers who wish to harness the power of drama and story for the purposes of social and moral education and in support of the National Literacy Strategy. The author draws upon classroom examples and provides teachers with guidance to support their own school planning.

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First Published in 2000. Since before modern schooling, before literacy itself, stories have been told in every culture not only as a form of entertainment but also as a means of transmitting values from one generation to the next. Narrative story can be seen as one of the fundamental ways in which the human mind interprets and speculates upon the world and translates lived experience into conceptual understanding. Many good stories of whatever genre that do present themselves as vehicles to develop literacy, whether short stories, picture books, traditional tales, recent or classic novels, will very often present equally exciting possibilities for moral learning. This book seeks to help primary teachers use selected stories not only to develop literacy but also to plan for drama work that can harness the potential for social and moral education, itself an area under increasing attention from central government agencies.