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 Stacy Biggs, Beth Huth, Jessica Oates I-Group Project: Drama and //The Crucible// __ **Introduction** __   Arthur Miller’s //The Crucible,// a play about the Salem Witch Trials, presents an allegory to the Congressional hearings of the McCarthy era. The play’s themes of maintaining individual conscience and questioning the sources of power that control us in society are still relevant today, and will continue to have relevance in our society. While this play is filled with conflicts and lessons that apply to our students’ lives, they often have a difficult time getting excited about reading it. The antiquated language and seemingly distant social and historical context of the play often turn students off even before they begin reading. We feel that drama will greatly increase students’ interest in and understanding of //The Crucible// by providing a venue for them to make real connections to the lives and society of the characters. We plan to use drama to illuminate the many layers of conflict that occur in the play. We feel that our use of drama to focus on conflict will provide rich opportunities for students to explore their ethical selves and to examine universal issues of following one’s conscience, telling the truth, and admitting one’s faults. We feel that this kind of reflexivity and ethical exploration is an important outcome of reading literature. The research below represents a range of topics, from the historical context of the play to theoretical support for the use of drama in the classroom. There are equal amounts of more practical sources, like lesson plans, articles to read with students, and descriptions of drama activities, and more theoretical sources about exploring identities through literature and the benefits of using drama to teach literature. This balance of theory and practice, we feel, will allow us to create engaging activities that are informed by solid research.  This is an article explaining the relevance of Miller's play, //The Crucible,// in modern American society. The author discusses how Miller wrote the play as a way to protest the atmosphere of fear and coercion of the McCarthy era and to warn people of the dangers of giving up their individual conscience. Our group could use this article to prepare for discussions with students about the relevance of the play in our own lives. This source is from the National Council for Teachers of English website. It is designed as a step-by-step guide for teachers to integrate drama into the teaching of literature. The authors discuss the use of drama as a pre-reading activity to familiarize second-graders with the dilemma of opening doors to strangers before reading “Lon Pp Po,” a Red Riding Hood story from China. Wile the author’s discussion and examples focus on an elementary classroom, the methods it discusses are general enough that they could be applied to any grade level. The article is divided into sections including those about the role of the teacher, involving the whole group, finding dramatic context within the literature, drawing from student prior knowledge to role play analogous situations, getting students to switch roles, and reflecting both in and out of role. The section on finding dramatic context within the literature will be particularly useful to our project, as we are now examining //The Crucible// for places in the text to incorporate drama activities. This book is also a background information source; it centers around the notion that students are required to study so much that seems disconnected from their lives and interests, but that drama is a way to bridge that gap. According to the authors, "Literature dramatization becomes the lens through which the content is viewed, enabling students to live the curriculum firsthand." This source book is both theoretical and practical, discussing different forms that drama can take in the classroom, delving into two different approaches for structuring drama work in the classroom, and giving numerous examples of things that teachers can do with drama. There are many lesson plans presented that state very clear objectives, have very clear assignments, and state very well how drama is being integrated and why. This source, I believe, will be more theoretical for us, in that it focuses more on middle school age students, but there is a lot in it that is adaptable; also, the philosophical ideas behind how to use drama are clearly relevant to both middle and high school. Heather Huff designed this lesson plan for grades 9-12. The focus is on using process drama to develop an understanding of how people were treated during the Salem witch trials. Other goals include establishing a deeper connection with Arthur Miller's drama //The Crucible// and learning about historic events and how they relate to today's society. The lesson includes a detailed pantomime activity along with a list of discussion questions to be used following engagement.  This source is particularly relevant to us, as it focuses on uses of drama and storytelling in the secondary (and postsecondary) classroom. The author focuses on encouraging students to explore their inner experiences as they read, to use dramatic strategies and storytelling to find their individual, unique responses to literature, and to use their responses to create meaning from literature. The book discusses ways to intertwine literature and drama in the secondary classroom. There are many literature-response strategies, both written and verbal, that may be applied to //The Crucible.// This source will be useful because of its specific focus on the secondary classroom; it will allow us to include some other sample exercises/ideas in our lesson plan and publication. This source is chapter from a book about enhancing critical reading perspectives by analyzing and challenging our own and others' viewpoints. In this chapter, LaMontagne discusses how students can move away from the notion of having one fixed identity to the notion of experimenting with multiple selves. This experimentation, the author suggests, will allow students to be more cognizant of their own beliefs and how they formed them and to be more open to different beliefs. The author describes how she taught a novel, //Things Fall Apart//, to a 12th grade literature class. In order to facilitate the exploration of multiple perspectives, and to illustrate to students that identities and perspectives are fluid, the author used different stages of journaling. In the first stage, students wrote reaction journals and shared and wrote comments with one other student. This allowed students to hear and sometimes challenge their own and others' ideas. Then, students kept a diary in the person of one of the characters in the story. The students were further removed front their initial fixed views by having to envision themselves in a culture and time which they'd probably never considered before. This is useful to our project in that if provides some theoretical support for the idea of encouraging discussion and debate about multiple perspectives in the classroom. Also, the practical ideas about having students journal with one another and keep a diary in character could be applied to our unit plan. This is the 5th edition of this text, and it focuses on drama in the classroom as both education in itself and also as a means of teaching other content areas. It does a nice job of discussing specific theatre games and physical movement exercises, then delves more into how to use drama as a teaching tool (Ch. 13). Where I feel this source will be useful is in getting ideas for different exercises that may be integrated into the teaching of //The Crucible//; for example, the chapter on Improvisation (Ch. 6) contains some ideas that can be applied to the high school level. While it does seem that many of the activities and discussions are more geared towards the elementary level, most of the content is certainly adaptable.  <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'">Miller penned this brief reflection to clearly draw parallels between his experiences in the McCarthy trials of the 1950s and those of his characters in //The Crucible//. Miller carefully conveys the attitudes and emotions he underwent while facing the senators within the McCarthy hearings. The desperation and desire to free Americans from that modern inquisition for covert Communists that Miller felt in the 1950s is established as the basis for his drama; the discoveries he made and drew from while investigating the Salem witch trials are disclosed. <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'">Plunk has compiled an online collection of alternative assessment activites for //The Crucible//. It includes a list of various activities designed for multiple levels of ability and interests. Students may select the level of difficulty they wish to engage in and are made aware of the points each learning activity is worth from initiation. Activities are designed around interests in art, music, research, theatre, writing, and speech. This information may be used in its original form or may be dissected and used as enrichment activites for dialy lessons. <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'">Shapiro's article provides background information on the events leading to, during, and following the Salem witch trials of the late 1600s. It presents factual information regarding the citizenry of Salem, their Puritan beliefs, and patterns of social and public hostility that made the community a rich setting for a witch hunt. The article outlines conflicts between specific members of Salem who are included in Arthur Miller's drama //The Crucible//. <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'"> <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'"> Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company and produced by Classzone, this novel guide includes theme openers that include stimulating writing assignments and discussion topics for //The Crucible//. It also contains four different ideas for cross-curricular activities and research assignments. All of these enterprises encourage student exploration of both theme and conflict within the drama. Activities include editorializing, debate, and role playing.
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'">Cerjak, J. (1987, September). Beware the loss of conscience: "The Crucible" as warning for today. //The English Journal, 76// (5), 55-57. **
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'">Flynn, R. (1994, January). Exploring classroom literature through drama: A specialist and a teacher collaborate. //Language Arts//, //71// (1), 38-43. **
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'">Herring, J. L. (2001). //Dramatic Literacy: Using Drama and Literature To Teach Middle Level Content.// Portsmouth: Heinemann. **
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'">Huff, H. (n.d.) //Connections to The Crucible//. Retrieved July 15, 2008, from <[|http://www.cre8tivedrama.com/>.] **
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'">King, N. (1993). //Storymaking and Drama: An Approach to Teaching Language and Literature in the Seconday and PostSecondary Levels.// Portsmouth: Heinemann. **
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'">LaMontagne, J. (2000). Exploring fixed and fluid identities. In R. Vinz, et al. (Eds.), //Becoming (Other)wise: Enhancing Critical Reading Perspectives.// (p.p. 60-74). Portland, ME: Calendar Islands Publishers. **
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'">McCaslin, N. (1990). //Creative Drama in the Classroom.// White Plains: Addison-Wesley Publishing. **<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'">
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'">Miller, A. (1996) //Why I wrote the crucible; An artist's answer to politics//. The New Yorker **<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'">
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'">Plunk,K. (n.d.). //The Crucible by Arthur Miller//. Retrieved May 1, 2008, from <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'">[|http://www.help4teachers.com/KathyCrucible.htm </span]>  **
 * Shapiro, l. (1992). The Lesson of Salem. //Newsweek//, 65-67.**
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'">The Crucible. (2008). Retrieved May 5, 2008, from [|http://www.classzone.com/novelguides/litcons/crucible/guide.cfm. **<span] style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 150%; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'"> **

<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'">This book is less theory and more direct application of different ways in which to use drama in the classroom. It is well organized and useful in that it is divided into sections almost by "genre" - Context Building, Narratives, Poetic Action, and Reflective Action - so it allows teachers to search for specific activities based on what they are doing at the time. This source is valuable in that it is practical and appears to be more readily geared towards secondary students. We plan to use it as more background/applicable information to complement the //Crucible//-specific source material we have, to mention different activities that could be done with different aspects of //The Crucible.// <span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'">
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'">Tony, J. N. (2000). //Structuring Drama Work: A handbook of available forms in theatre and drama.// Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. **