Doing Theater for Preschool Children

What is it about?

This paper presents an experienced carried out with pre-service teachers, as part of a course on “reading promotion and drama". With the aim to apply the knowledge acquired about reading promotion and children’s theatre and to develop professional, literary and communicative competences, the students created and performed several theatrical plays for real children, three to six. Thus, the future teachers learned to prepare a performance suitable for preschool children, improved their communicative ability and drama skills –as they used several ways of artistic expression- and increased their practical knowledge about dramaeducation and children’s literature. Although several weaknesses were detected, the experience was very positive and motivating. As a conclusion, doing drama practices as the one described increases the implication of university students, improves learning from a constructivist approach, promotes the development of several competences and prepares future preschool teachers for their professional exercise, as it makes their contact with children possible.

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Why is it important?

The paper offers an example of drama and theatre practices in higher education. The analysis of the experiences reveals the benefits of this kind of creative and collaborative activities and provides some ideas that could be transferred to other similar experiences.