journ

1. The Drama Journal
Welcome!
This month we're going to look at the Drama Journal. What is it and how can it be used most
effectively?
In This Issue
 WHAT IS A DRAMA JOURNAL?
What goes in and what stays out of a journal?
 JOURNAL TOPIC AREAS
What are the areas of focus for a journal?
 QUALITY OF WORK
What makes a good journal entry?
 ASSESSMENT VS EVALUATION
Make these terms clear for students.
 QUESTIONS AND SENTENCE STARTERS
Give students a place to start with their journal entries.
 QUOTES
Use quotes to kickstart journal entries.
What is a drama journal?
“When planning drama experiences teachers should provide students with many opportunities
for reflection and self-evaluation. Through reflection students may extend and clarify their
understanding of dramatic art form and topics they choose to explore. They may also assess their
own contributions to the drama work and their ability to work with others.” ~ Curriculum
Requirements, Saskatchewan Education.
Journaling is a vital part of the drama classroom. The journal gives students the opportunity to
self-reflect and self-evaluate, and to practice assessing and evaluating others. Not only are these
elements essential to the classroom, they also help students build real world skills. The ability to
evaluate what you do and what others do in a constructive manner is incredibly useful in every
walk of life.
What happens in performance is rarely the only area where learning has occurred in the drama
class. What goes on in rehearsal, what happens between actors, how problems arise and are
solved, these are all elements which can't be quantified in a final product. Journaling provides a
way for students to record, monitor and reflect on these learning areas.
It's good for students to have a place to generate and gather source material for written work. The
journal can be used to brainstorm, to jot down ideas, to work out creative possibilities. The

2. majority of drama classes will include some kind of writing project and the journal is one way to
keep create thoughts collected in one area.
What is a drama journal?
The drama journal is the place to:
 Assess and Evaluate.
 Respond and Reflect.
 Create and Brainstorm.
 Offer suggestions, ask questions.
 Record thoughts and concerns
 Discuss the positive and the negative.
What form should it take?
The form is up to you and the technology at your disposal. The drama journal could be an
computerized option with sections printed off, sent by email or posted online when requested. It
could be a notebook in which the entries are handwritten. It could be a more tangible document
with collages, artwork, pictures, or video clips. It's important to find the form that allows
students to express themselves in the most convenient and effective way possible.
What should go into a drama journal?
 Questions and answers.
 Reflection on a particular exercise or class.
 Assessment/Evaluation of a student's own work and the work of others.
 The tracking of personal growth.
 The addressing of challenges and possible solutions.
 Expectations and goals.
 Ideas/Research for an upcoming piece.
 Character work for a scene.
 Reaction to a performance.
 A record of achievements and areas of improvement.
What should stay out of a drama journal?
It's easy for students to misunderstand the purpose of the drama journal. It can often be mistaken
for a diary, which is not its intended purpose. Personal response and reflection is different than
writing in a personal diary or having a personal emotional outburst. It's one thing to criticize
yourself or a fellow performer. It's another to critique a performance, providing reasons for your
opinion and offering suggestions of improvement. It is in this way that journaling is a learning
tool and an opportunity to improve a skill.
Journal Topic Areas

3. If you cannot increase reflective power in people, you might as well NOT teach, because
reflection is the only thing in the long run that teaches anybody. Reflection is what makes the
knowing something that can be touched on and assimilated for further use. ~Dorothy Heathcote
Personal Reflection
This area has students consider who they are as human beings, where they would like to change
and grow, and how they see their place in the world. It is a reflection of the self. Encourage the
use of collage, drawings, or other tools to form personal reflection journal entries. They do not
necessarily have to be written. Some students respond to visual rather than written mediums.
Personal Reflection Topics
1. I firmly believe…
2. I see myself as…
3. I think others see me as…
4. I see the world around me as…
5. I most want to improve this about myself.
6. The areas I am strong are…
7. The areas I am weak are…
8. I am self motivated when it comes to…
9. I am unmotivated when it comes to…
10. I would like to get better at…
11. My biggest strength in life is…
12. My biggest weakness in life is…
13. My biggest strength in school is…
14. My biggest weakness in school is…
15. I am most proud of…
16. I am not so proud of…
17. I see myself in one year doing…
18. I see myself in five years doing…
19. I see myself in ten years doing…
20. I fear… I wish…
21. I love… I hate…
22. My biggest mistake…
23. I want more than anything to…
24. I always speak up about…
25. I never speak up about…
26. I have a big problem with…
27. I have no problems with…
28. Failure is part of life. Do you agree or disagree. Why?
29. Money would make my life better. Do you agree or disagree? Why?
30. Love is forever. Do you agree or disagree? Why?
Drama Reflection

4. This area has students consider their personal views on theatre and drama. It offers students the
opportunity to define why they are in the class, what expectations they have, and what they
would like to learn. This is something that would be well suited to the beginning of the term and
then answered again at the end. Have students note any changes in their answers.
Drama Reflection Topics
1. I am taking this class because…
2. What I want to improve about my acting is…
3. My first personal goal for this class is…
4. My second personal goal for this class is…
5. The thing that makes me most nervous about drama class is…
6. The thing that interests me about drama class is…
7. My opinion of my acting skills is…
8. My opinion of theatre is…
9. I believe great actors do…
10. Theatre has value in the world. Do you agree or disagree. Why?
11. What is the difference between film actors and theatre actors?
12. What is the difference between film and theatre?
13. If you could be an actor would you want to work on the stage or in movies?
14. The stage manager has the most important job in a play. Do you agree or disagree? Why?
15. Acting is easy. Do you agree or disagree. Why?
16. Anyone can act. Do you agree or disagree. Why?
17. You can't teach talent, you have to be born with it. Do you agree or disagree. Why?
18. What is the best way to give feedback to another actor?
19. What do you like about getting/receiving feedback.
20. What do you dislike about getting/receiving feedback.
21. Should there be rules in improv?
22. Why should we learn about past theatre eras?
23. Shakespeare shouldn't be learned in school. Do you agree or disagree? Why?
24. Have you ever experienced stage fright? If so when and what happened. If not, why don't
you think you're afraid of the stage?
25. My favourite theatrical experience has been…
26. Movies are better than plays. Do you agree or disagree? Why?
27. Musicals are better than straight plays. Do you agree or disagree? Why?
28. Who is the more important – the playwright? The actors? The director? Choose one and
explain why.
29. Would you rather be a lead or in the chorus? Why?
30. Do auditions make you nervous? Why or why not?
Extra Tip: Create a skills checklist that students can keep in their journal. A list of the skills
that they are expected to learn throughout the class. Have them refer to it once a month. What
new skills have been checked off? Have students reflect on how far they've come in class, and if
nothing new has been checked off why is that?
Critical Reflection

5. This area has students consider their own work (rehearsal and performance self-evaluation) as
well as examine the work of others. Critical reflection deals with assessment and evaluation. See
the next section for an in-depth review of the difference between assessment and evaluation.
Click on the links below for sample forms.
Performance Self-Evaluation – Monologue
This form is for the student to evaluate their performance in a monologue.
Student Self Evaluation form – working in a group
This form uses checkboxes for assessment.
Performance Peer Evaluation - Monologue
This form asks students to assess the work of another student.
Rehearsal Reflection – Character
This form allows students to reflect on the character work they've done in a monologue/scene or
play.
Peer Assessment Template – Group performance
This form comes from John Forrest Senior High School Drama and offers a number system to
assess group performance.
Critical Reflection Exercise: When students are working in a group, make it the responsibility
of one person (which will change from rehearsal to rehearsal) to write an assessment of the
group:
 How is the scene progressing?
 How is the group working together?
 Is there one leader, or does everyone participate?
 What has changed since the last rehearsal?
 A comment for each actor in the group.
Then give an evaluation of the group based on their assessment (a mark out of 10)
Creative Thinking
This area has students brainstorming ideas, working on warm up exercises, writing monologues,
or answering sentence starters to get the creative juices going.
Examples

6. 1. Significant objects. What is the most important thing you carry with you every day? Why
is it important? What is the most important thing in your room? Why is it important?
2. Write a monologue in which the first line is “Why can't you listen for once.”
3. What kind of superhero would you like to be and why?
4. Visit Google News (or look at a newspaper) every day for a week. Choose one headline
that catches your eye. Write it in your journal.
5. Make up a disease. Give it a name, symptoms and what the cure might be.
6. Write a monologue that takes place the day after a zombie apocalypse.
7. Write a conversation between you and the movie star you would like to meet.
8. Complete the following “If I ran the school I would…”
9. Complete the following : “The only fairy tale that makes sense is…”
10. Complete the following: “If I was invisible I would…”
11. Write about your dream job.
12. If you owned a plot of land, what would you do with it?
13. Go to a baby name site and find the most intriguing/unique/bizarre baby name. Write a
monologue from a character who has that name. What type of character are they?
14. Find a song that inspires you. Why do you find it inspirational?
15. Think of a person you admire in your life. Why do you admire them?
16. Write a letter where the character shares a secret.
Quality of Work
Journal entries should use complete sentences unless otherwise specified (e.g. a collage). Every
journal entry should start with the date. A standard length should be between 200 and 300 words.
In terms of content, the purpose of journal entries is to show the teacher that the student
understands and is able to comment thoughtfully on a specific experience. The aim of the student
is to demonstrate a skill – whether it be assessment, reflection, or creative brainstorming. To use
the journal as a personal outburst or diatribe is inappropriate. To say I don't know, I don't
understand, or I have no answer is inappropriate. There is always an answer when it comes to
personal reflection because there is always a personal point of view.
How do I get students to avoid one word answers in their journals?
To make the most of a journal entry, there has to be more than, “This was good, this was bad, I
don't know what I learned.” There has to be an effort. Having said that, some students don't
know where to start and thus offer shortened answers simply because they have never had to
write in this manner before.
To encourage a fully realized response, journal entries can follow two templates:
The WHAT of the situation followed by the WHY.
If a question asks students to give their opinion (WHAT struck you about the performance of
Group A?) they must follow up their opinion with reasons WHY. This way, students can practice
moving beyond simply criticizing what they see, because they have to back up their opinion.

7. Students should be aware that the WHY is the most important part of the answer because it
shows thought and consideration.
A second template is:
The WHAT of the situation, followed by the HOW.
The HOW portion of the answer allows students to break down experiences beyond blanket
statements. It's more than, “I acted in a scene.” Students have to consider how they approached
the character, how they worked in their group, how they came up with the blocking. Here are
some WHAT/HOW examples:
 What exercise did you do?/ How did you approach it?
 What was the audience response?/ How would you evaluate your work?
 What can you change for next time?/ How can the exercise change?
 What was the outcome of the exercise?/ How can you improve?
 What did you learn? / How will this apply to future exercises?
 What did you dislike about the exercise/ How can you improve the experience for
yourself?
 What was it like to work with your group?/ How well do you work with other people?
Assessment vs Evaluation
Assessment is the process of gathering information from a variety of sources (including
assignments, day-to-day observations, conversations or conferences, demonstrations, projects,
performances, and tests) that accurately reflects how well a student is achieving the curriculum
expectations in a subject. As part of assessment, teachers provide students with descriptive
feedback that guides their efforts towards improvement. Evaluation refers to the process of
judging the quality of student work on the basis of established criteria, and assigning a value to
represent that quality. ~The Ontario Curriculum, Arts
What is the difference between Evaluation and Assessment?
These are two words that tend to get bandied about quite a bit and sometimes the line between
the two can get blurred. It's important for students to know the difference so that when they can
respond accordingly.
Assessment: This is an ongoing gathering of information which can help the student improve.
For example, assessment would occur during the rehearsal period where students would reflect
on the various elements that went into their process during that time – character development,
ensemble dynamics, script analysis. Assessment would not address the quality of the
performance, but what led to the performance. Sample work might include a character profile, or
a question and answer sheet about the themes of the play, or a journal entry about a rehearsal
discovery. With assessment there is also consideration of improvements for future work.

8. Evaluation: This occurs at the end of a project where a definitive mark or grade is given. For
example the evaluation of a performance. With evaluation there is no reference to what could be
done in the future, only a decision on the quality of performance on the day.
The importance of having students practice both assessment and evaluation is that it helps avoid
the trap of, “that was good” and “that was bad” with no tracking of the work that led up to that
declaration. Students can learn to separate out the various elements that go into the larger picture
of a finished product.
Questions and Sentence Starters
Sometimes students just don't know where to start with a journal entry. Here are some questions
and sentence starters that can get them on their way.
1. I rarely…
2. I sometimes…
3. I always…
4. I asked questions such as…
5. An example of a time I listened in rehearsal was…
6. The most significant thing I learned was…
7. My goal for this project is…
8. I will succeed in this goal by doing…
9. In rehearsal today I offered to…
10. I took a risk when I…
11. To learn more I need to…
12. I was happy with my contribution to the group because…
13. I was unhappy with my contribution to the group because…
14. This actor intimidates me because…
15. The hardest part of acting is…
16. The easiest part of acting is…
17. I want to tell my scene partner that…
18. I want to make an audience…
19. When I compare my acting from last year to this I…
20. My favourite warm up is…
1. What new level of understanding have you reached?
2. How are your skills growing?
3. Did you run into problems working as a group?
4. How did you solve those problems?
5. How do you encourage your group to work together?
6. What did you contribute today in rehearsal?
7. Did you compromise in rehearsal today?
8. Why was this exercise important?
9. What skill will this exercise improve?
10. What can you do now that you couldn't before?
11. What are your strengths as an actor?

9. 12. What are your weaknesses?
13. What acting challenges would you like to overcome?
14. What can you do to make performance less stressful?
15. What is the importance of warmups?
16. In the performance who was the most committed to the scene?
17. Who was the least committed?
18. Where you engaged the whole time you performed? Why or why not?
19. What feedback could you give as a method to improve for next time?
20. What was the most useful piece of feedback you've ever received?
Quotes
Here you'll find a collection of acting and theatre quotes. Have students respond to a quote as a
jumping off point for reflection. Do they agree or disagree with the quote and why?
1. I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a
human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being. ~Oscar
Wilde
2. All great art comes from a sense of outrage. ~Glenn Close
3. Listen carefully to first criticisms made of your work. Note just what it is about your
work that critics don't like - then cultivate it. That's the only part of your work that's
individual and worth keeping. ~Jean Cocteau
4. A defective voice will always preclude an artist from achieving the complete
development of his art, however intelligent he may be… The voice is an instrument
which the artist must learn to use with suppleness and sureness, as if it were a limb.
~Sarah Bernhardt,
5. The actor is an athlete of the heart. ~Antonin Artaud
6. Acting is not being emotional, but being able to express emotion. ~Kate Reid
7. Actors are the only honest hypocrites. ~William Hazlitt
8. Acting is behaving truthfully under imaginary circumstances. ~Sanford Meisner
9. Creating relationships is the heart of acting. It is basic. It is essential. ~Michael Shurtleff
10. Listening is not merely hearing. Listening is reacting. Listening is being affected by what
you hear. Listening is active. ~Michael Shurtleff
11. I made mistakes in drama. I thought drama was when actors cried. But drama is when the
audience cries. ~Frank Capra
12. Drama is based on the Mistake. I think someone is my friend when he really is my
enemy, that I am free to marry a woman when in fact she is my mother, that this person is
a chambermaid when it is a young nobleman in disguise, that this well-dressed young
man is rich when he is really a penniless adventurer, or that if I do this such and such a
result will follow when in fact it results in something very different. All good drama has
two movements, first the making of the mistake, then the discovery that it was a mistake.
~W.H. Auden
13. Theatergoing is a communal act, movie going a solitary one. ~Robert Brustein
14. To save the theatre, the theatre must be destroyed, the actors and actresses must all die of
the plague. They poison the air, they make art impossible. It is not drama that they play,
but pieces for the theatre. We should return to the Greeks, play in the open air; the drama

10. dies of stalls and boxes and evening dress, and people who come to digest their dinner.
~Eleanor Duse
15. Truth on the stage is not quite the truth in life. It is always more or less than life. Onstage
you never do exactly what you do in life. ~Stanislavski
16. An actor is a sculptor who carves in snow… ~Edwin Booth
17. The play was a great success, but the audience was a disaster. ~Oscar Wilde
18. The most important thing you can teach actors is to understand plays. ~Stella Adler
19. Acting is not a state of being… but a state of appearing to be. You can't be eight times a
week without going stark staring mad. You've got to be in control. ~Noel Coward
20. When you’re doing a play and you’re afraid of a scene, that’s the scene you should
embrace, because that’s the scene that will tell you something about the play. ~Raul
Esparza
21. It is the writer's job to make the play interesting. It is the actor's job to make the
performance truthful. ~David Mamet
22. Love art in yourself and not yourself in art. ~Stanislavski
23. The heart of improvisation is transformation. ~Viola Spolin
24. Acting is the most personal of our crafts. The make-up of a human being - his physical,
mental and emotional habits - influence his acting to a much greater extent than
commonly recognized. ~Lee Strasburg
25. The last collaborator is your audience… when the audience comes in, it changes the
temperature of what you've written. Things that seem to work well - work in a sense of
carry the story forward and be integral to the piece - suddenly become a little less
relevant or a little less functional or a little overlong or a little overweight or a little
whatever. And so you start reshaping from an audience. ~Stephen Sondheim