This is one in a series of posts examining the Common Core State Standards and the conversation surrounding their impact on teaching and learning.

I heard the brilliant Nell Duke speak last month about informational text and the Common Core. (She’s been talking about “info text”  since long before the Common Core focused its lens on it.) In her presentation, she talked about different types of nonfiction and how educators can help children grapple with informational text even at very young ages. Reading this kind of content is essential to learning in content areas like science and social studies. She’s a person worth following!

But anyways, this post is not about info text. In her talk, Nell Duke mentioned something else that jumped out at me: That the word “drama” is written 47 times in the Common Core ELA standards. 47! Along with stories and poetry and plenty of nonfiction, the authors of the standards clearly feel there’s great value in having students read drama.

I’m no expert on teaching with drama, so here are a few resources I found today.

The NY Times’ “The Learning Curve” blog has some great ideas for how to incorporate drama into the language arts classroom this week. (They’ve actually declared it Drama Week on the blog!) Worth checking out!

Here’s an article from a past issue of Scholastic Instructor magazine about using drama to teach writing.

Dr. Jeff Wilhelm has also written quite a bit on this topic, including this book he published with Scholastic called Action Strategies for Deepening Comprehension.

How do you incorporate drama into your classroom?