The Drama of Writing!

Some of our best writing this year has come through drama as a stimulus for writing. In recounts we have used role play of stories, with the children taking it in turns to be each character, e.g. The Three Billy Goats Gruff, this has helped with the who, what, where and how, and with discussion and modelling the children have started to add direct speech to their writing. Drama has also helped with holiday recounts, we played charades in groups and pairs to brainstorm and recall events. We also went through an imaginary door to a place we had been, we then described the scene using our senses, and then brought an object back throught the door with us to describe. This helped with the orientation of the recount, the order of events and adding personal response. We also used drama to write a recount of the school x-country, acting out again the stages and discussing; where we were, what was happening at each and how we felt. From this some children started to use similies in their writing as well as direct speech. If anyone has any other experiences with using drama to motivate writing please comment.