Drop of a Hat: Drama Lessons, Games and Activities by David Farmer

This collection of drama activities is aimed at KS1 and 2 and provides a range of fun and engaging activities based on a variety of fiction and non-fiction stimulus material. Ranging from Ahlberg's Funnybones, and A Midsummer Night's Dream to The Tiger Child, it also incorporates relevant topics such as YouTubers, bullying and refugees.

Each lesson plan is based on a stimulus and is divided into clear sections outlining the timings, activities, and the resources you will need. You can follow each lesson plan through or pick and choose activities that suit you and your class, adapting the timings to suit what you need.

There are many opportunities for performance as well as discussion, writing and extension ideas included in the sessions, and many of these will spark your own ideas for exploring the stimuli.

The choice of stimuli and activities is quite varied and lends itself to being adapted to suit your needs. If you are teaching drama to KS1 or 2, the activities are an excellent choice, but you could also swap the suggested text for your own text and adapt the tasks to suit.

Drop of a Hat is a drama book, but some of the activities can support other areas of the curriculum – for example, there are three lessons that explore science through drama. These sessions would be very useful to demonstrate how drama can be used to support students’ learning in all areas.

Section 2 of the book explores drama games and strategies in more depth. A range of well used activities are included with detailed instructions guiding teachers through the activity, referring to where it has been used in the book and offering useful teaching tips. This is useful for teachers who are new to drama, as well as being helpful for experienced drama teachers looking for new ideas or wishing to explore classic ideas from another angle.

Although the book is aimed at primary, secondary drama teachers will find the activities useful and many of the stimulus materials would be relevant at KS3 and 4. Overall, this a useful addition to a Drama bookshelf. I would very much recommend Drop of a Hat for its content, ease of use, and engaging activities, as well as for demonstrating how you can use drama to great effect in many areas of the curriculum.