Process Drama

        --"process drama is not about a finished play or performance." 

        --NO external audience

        --"A tableau in process drama (also known as a “still image” or a “frozen picture”) is a silent, human sculpture that is created by a group of participants to “represent an interpretation of an event, action" 

 

"Brains Are for Action"

         --This declaration was written by Glenberg, Jaworski, and Rischal (2007) in response to the question “What are brains for?”

         --Referring to tableau as a “thinking action” suggests an integrated approach to cognition that refutes a Cartesian mind/body divide and brings us back to the third-grade student’s reflection that “the tableau work gave me more energy in my brain.”

 

Tableau as an Embodied Text

         -- “the enactment of knowledge and concepts through the activity of our bodies” (Lindgren & Johnson- Glenberg, 2013" 

         -- "students use their bodies to express a range of gestures and postures to signify meaning. Wilson ( 2003 ) identified four focal points that helped her “read” and analyze the tableaux of first and second graders: facial expressions, use of hands, body posture, and spacing between the participants of the tableau." 

 

Tableau as a Tool for Learning and a Collaborative Practice

        --“Gesture does more than express thought, it is thought”

 

Tableau as a Text

      -- "An expansive view of literacy allows for a tableau itself to be considered a text— one that is three-dimensional and quite literally embodied" 

     -- "An expansive view of literacy allows for a tableau itself to be considered a text— one that is three-dimensional and quite literally embodied" 

 

Tableau: Showing What You Know

     --"As tableau is a visual, nonverbal, and therefore nontraditional text, it also needs to be considered that the tool of tableau can provide an access point for students who str uggle with a “disembodied school curriculum”

     -- “For children with language difficulties, talking or writing about what they know is difficult. It is easier to show what they know through tableau”

 

Tableau as a Response to Close Reading

       -- When close reading is positioned as an intersection between authorial intent and background knowledge, a legitimate space is created for the inclusion of tableau in literacy lessons.

       --“Students will be challenged and asked questions that push them to refer back to what they’ve read”

 

Tableau and Main Idea

     -- With a belief in tableau as an innovative approach to representing main ideas in informational texts, I based a series of lessons around the following structure: n I read a passage of informational text to the class of third-grade students. n The students worked in groups to reread the text, decide on the main idea, and practice a tableau that represented the main idea. n The students presented their tableau representations to each other."