Sacred Drama

Religion: varies

Purpose: to familiar students with various sacred stories allow them to creatively interpret the stories

Cognitive Skills: comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, evaluation (optional)

Learning Styles: active, visual, verbal, sequential

Intelligences: visual-spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, linguistic

Use: in classroom

For: groups

Estimated time: 45 minutes or more (may be done over a period of two class sessions: one session for introducing the story and group planning, the second session for presentations)

Materials needed: primary text sources for stories

The Activity: Students working in small groups will review a sacred story they have been introduced to and be tasked with dramatizing a portion of the story.

• Teacher reviews the story with the entire class

• Divide class into groups and distribute printed version of story as found in primary text resources. These need not be lengthy plays; five minute presentations should suffice. If necessary (due to length of story), assign different parts of the story to different groups.

• Allow students approximately 20 minutes to plan how they will present their assigned [part of the] story.

If desired, students can make presentations at  follow-up class session, after gathering props and costumes from home

• Have each group make their presentation, dramatizing in turn each part of the story or each group may dramatize the same story but in their own unique way (each retelling of the story will further reinforce the story in the minds of the students).

• If desired, students can be given feedback forms to evaluate each other's performance and interpretative skill.

Some possible stories to do:

• Christianity: Birth stories of Jesus (Matthew 1:18-25, 2:1-23 & Luke 2:1-20)

• Buddhism: Birth or enlightenment of Buddha (teacher might show pertinent parts from the feature film "Little Buddha")

• Islam: Muhammad's first revelation of Qur'an, Muahmmad's "night journey"

• Judaism: Moses and the burning bush or pleading with Pharaoh to let the Hebrew people go (EX chapter 3, Ex. chapters 7-11)

• Hinduism: Portions of the Bhagavad Gita or the Ramayana

• Shinto: any of the myths that might be discussed or read (Amaterasu in the cave, the creation of the islands of Japan by Izamagi and Izamami)

Web resources: (beyond those linked to above)

• Ramayana at Sacred-texts.com

• Stories of the Life of Buddha: in pictures, in text

• Shinto Creation stories

Alternative possibilities: students in a history class can dramatize an historical account; students in a literature course can dramatize a scene from a novel they are reading.