"That's Not Fair!" Meaning-Making Through Story-Based Process Drama in Dual-Language Classrooms

• In Event: 41.084 - Roundtable Session 16
  In Roundtable Session: 41.084-16 - Equity and Identity: Language and Literacy Tools for Change

Abstract

To understand better emergent bilingual students’ meaning-making from socially-conscious literature, I employed a collective case study methodology and multimodal discourse analysis methods toward describing and interpreting students’ enactments during story-based process drama. Findings indicated students used multiple semiotic resources (including English and Spanish, gesture, facial expression, body position, movement, tone, volume, and moments of silence) when their teachers offered opportunities to step into character’s role at a story’s turning point (i.e., when the course of action turned on the moral ethical decision of a central character). These findings suggested that drama allows students to choose, voice, and embody their decisions for just and equitable action through multiple modalities, and also to collaborate in making meanings together.

Author

• Erin Greeter, Keene State College