The In-School Playwriting Program integrates the art of playwriting into the classroom in order to enhance student literacy, creative expression and communication.
Students explore playwriting, revision and performance with professional playwrights, actors, directors and teaching artists in the classroom.
Students learn the importance of language structure, grammar, spelling, and vocabulary choice as a means of clearly communicating their own thoughts, choices and imaginations to the world around them.
During a carefully crafted series of standards-based, in-class workshops, students explore the mechanics of language, drama and self-expression, culminating in the creation of their own original play.
Professional actors visit the classroom during the In-School Playwriting Program. Hearing their work read aloud gives students a strong motivation to continue working and revising their plays.
Each year YPT has further developed and refined its process and several schools now rely on YPT to provide its holistic learning process as a means of enhancing student literacy, communication, and creativity in the classroom.
By emphasizing reading, writing, and revision, the In-School Playwriting Program improves literacy in the following target areas:
- Increased ability to write expressively
- Increased ability to revise and edit writing
- Development of strong listening and speaking skills
- Improvement of vocabulary, grammar, and spelling
- Increased comprehension of text
In 2005, only 30 percent of high school students in DC Public Schools (DCPS) scored at the proficient level in reading on standardized tests. In response, Young Playwrights’ Theater crafted a new playwriting curriculum that addresses and integrates the DCPS English Language Arts Standards.
Expanding its long-term partnership with Bell Multicultural High School to work with the entire 11th grade and faculty on this new curriculum, YPT’s model exemplifies the philosophy emphasized in these new standards and inherent in YPT’s work: learning an interactive writing process in the classroom as a means of creative self-expression is central to successful student learning.
