This book has been created and edited by the Erasmus students of Colegio Maravillas.

It has been coordinated by Daniel Macías

The English text has been supervised by Cristina Hernández

Photos courtesy of Alezeiateatro and Colegio Maravillas

INDEX

1. What Students need today........................................................... 4

2. Our Experience (Alezeiateatro).................................................. 10

3. What Theater brings to the students...................................... 18

4 . The Project...................................................................................... 28

4.1. Why Secondary School?................................................................... 40

4.2. Why History?...................................................................................... 42

5. Objectives........................................................................................... 46

6. Practical Guide................................................................................. 54

7. Evaluation Criteria............................................................................ 76

8. Conclusions......................................................................................... 82

9 . Some Experiences of our students...................................... 86

1. What students need today.

One of the main challenges of education should be to ensure that the students find their place in society, as well as helping them to discover and develop their potential and creative instinct. In this way they will be able to apply it effectively to any field of their work or personal life. All with a view to create a society capable of facing the changes and problems that will appear through their development.

In order to make it happen, we need an educational system that, through social and emotional knowledge, promotes the personalized learning. This would enhance the development of each individual by stimulating the creativity, passion, energy and talent .

In summary, it is crucial to create an educational process that helps students to discover what motivates them, since new challenges are arising and they must be ready for them. In this sense, we must try to build a society in which creativity, autonomy and satisfaction with what you do, are the three main pillars.

2. Our Experience (Alezeiateatro).

In 2006, a drama workshop was created in our school as an extracurricular activity. This workshop began specializing in Greco-Latin theater and teaching students. The name of this school theater group was Alezeiateatro, founded by Juan Manuel Castillo and Desirée Pérez.

However, for seven years, members of the school's parents' association (AMPA) together with some school employees joined this project, which allowed us to introduce classical Spanish plays, musicals and documentary-theater among others activities.

The most notable aspects of our activity are mainly three

Our participation in different editions of the European Youth Festival of Greek and Roman Theate

Our involvement in different theatrical competitions of other educational centers in Spain

The creation of an annual charity event, in which members of the entire educational community of the center take part.

3. What Theater brings to the students.

Throughout these ten years, we have been able to witness how the involvement of the students in the project has progressively increased, along with their skills. The improvements at the collective level have been numerous.

The theater workshop has created cohesion between students of different ages and characteristics, teaching and non-teaching staff at the center and volunteer mothers and fathers. All of them have developed the cooperative work concept that is now part of their lives. Each member offers the best of himself for the benefit of the group, favoring always positive results.

Likewise, the individual and personal development of each participating student has been reinforced, an aspect that, currently, is corroborated both by themselves, and by their teachers and family members. This can be observed in different elements, such as in their communicative and expressive qualities, in their adaptation and socialization capacities, in their autonomy, in their solvency when solving problems and, ultimately, in the improvement of their self-esteem.

In addition, we must add the acquisition of specific knowledge in what refers to the performing arts, as well as in the specific aspects treated in the different shows carried out.

Therefore, we can affirm that theater is highly beneficial to teenagers because it contains an integrating element that favors the development of their social skills and encourages teamwork. Furthermore, it creates interpersonal ties and strengthen empathy and assertiveness. On the other hand, through theater, they experience and assume the feeling of responsibility and commitment to others, as well as the fact of obtaining positive results thanks to the effort made and the synergy of the group as a whole.

4. The Project.

However, although the project that we are going to develop shares characteristics with the activities displayed, it also differs.

The objective of "Theater Classroom" is to lay the foundations of an innovation project that achieves the standardized use of dramatic art as a resource in teaching.

First, it must be clear that the benefits that the theater can bring are not specific in the fact of performing a representation of a certain staging, but in the entire process involved. Undoubtedly, the experience of acting in front of an audience implies facing a challenge that, if overcome, it brings a positive experience. It can be so intense that, automatically, it causes a considerable improvement in the level of self-esteem of any person.

However, the performance is only the reflection of a whole creative, personal and collective development process, which, if not carried out in the right way, could mean that the experience turned to the opposite side, with the same intensity.

Therefore, we must make it clear that, when talking about the benefits of theater, we refer to the entire process involved and only ultimately, to its corresponding representation. Likewise, when using the term theater, there is no reference to a place or a play, but to the entire process that we have just pointed out.

A fundamental aspect in the world of theater, which in turn is a good starting point, is the concept of group that it implies. This collective nature allows the adolescents to identify themselves and feel that they are part of something that goes beyond the environments in which they are familiar with.

On the other hand, theatrical methodology and the very nature of the theater offer the possibility of expressing opinions, emotions and feelings of any kind in a totally justified way. That is a key point because it is an ideal way for adolescents to meet their needs to be heard, accepted and even recognized by their peers (the rest of the group) and by society (the audience).

Considering these aspects, we can affirm that, as regards the adolescent's relationship with the environment, theater is beneficial because it contains an integrating element that favors the development of their social skills and encourages teamwork. Furthermore, the theater creates interpersonal ties and develops empathy and assertiveness.

On the other hand, through the theater, the adolescent experiences and assumes the feeling of responsibility and commitment to others, as well as the fact of obtaining positive results thanks to the effort made and the synergy of the group as a whole.

4.1. Why Secondary School?

Dramatization as an educational resource in the Secondary Education stage is a method that enables students to be satisfactorily and simultaneously trained in most of the basic competences established by the current educational system: awareness and cultural expressions, sense of initiative and entrepreneurship, social and civic competences, learning to learn, linguistic communication... In addition, the use of Dramatization as a school resource also provides possibilities for training in subjects or transverse axes, such as educational values.

4.1. Why History?

There is a high number of benefits that the use of this methodology can bring to the History subject, and we will try to defend them based on the following premises:

-Theater is a way of social and cultural expression.

-Dramatization encourages active learning of history.

-The dramatic experience stimulates learning from the internalization of other people's experiences.

In short, we consider that the use of the theatrical methodology in Secondary Education is a way of awakening the interest of the students about this subject, through the improvement of the teaching-learning process. In addition, through cross-cutting and interdisciplinary that allow the use of Dramatization, the comprehensive development of the student is favored.

5. Objectives.

Main objective: To normalize the use of dramatic art as an educational resource for the teaching of History in Secondary Education

Objective 1: To awaken the student's interest in the subject of History through the use of different interpretive and theatrical techniques and methodologies.

Objective 2: Propose, in a group way, different sets in didactic scenes, based on the selected subject from the different thematic blocks of the History subject.

Objective 3: Collectively develop a series of documentary-theater scripts, providing solutions that cover all the aspects that must be reflected in them to fulfill a didactic function.

Objective 4: To awaken the interest of the rest of secondary students in History and in the methodology used, through the visualization of the dramatizations created by the whole class at the end of each term.

Objective 5: Unify the set of dramatizations and represent the final result through an opened performance for all members of the educational community in the center, in order to awaken interest in the use of this methodology.

6. Practical Guide.

We can summarize by saying that the methodology to carry out this project will consist of the elaboration of a work that will be carried out through the use of different interactive methods based on cooperation between equals, whose materialization will always be carried out through simulations, and dramatizations, which will provide continuity to the project.

To carry out this project, at least ten one-hour sessions will have to be carried out, whose exercises must be collected by each student in what we will call a "Practice Diary".

In each session, the students must list and describe the different exercises carried out, their timing, the resources used, the indications given by the teacher for the next day, and a personal assessment in which each student expresses their experience and opinion on the operation of the corresponding session.

The Practice Diary

Session One

In the first session, the project will be explained to the students in its entirety, so that everyone is aware of the procedure to be followed, as well as its operation, objectives, evaluation criteria, etc.

Session Two

Students with the help of the teacher must choose the topic of each scene. It can be a specific event, the life of an important historical person, or even the adaptation of a classic literary work that reflects the historical period that you want to deal with.

Next, a basic outline of the structure of the scene to be represented will be made.

Session Three

Students will decide which characters will be involved in the play. Once chosen, the distribution will proceed. It is important that there is a storyteller. That is crucial because he will have to introduce the historical context and explain what the actors are trying to represent in each scene. The narrator facilitates understanding of the scene, and there may be more than one. Once the distribution is made, each student will make a character form of their role.

The director's role can also be done by one or more students

Session Four

In this session the students must elaborate in group the screenplay of the scene that they are going to represent. To do this, they must research and search for documentation. They can also rely on movies, plays, novels, interviews, history books, biographies, etc. It is likely that it will be necessary to dedicate one o two more sessions to the writing of the script, since it is one of the most complex parts.