THE EFFECTS OF CREATIVE DRAMATICS ON PERFORMANCE SCORES OF JUNIOR STUDENTS OF DEMONSTRATION SECONDARY SCHOOL, ZARIA.

Abstract

Creative dramatics allows participants to have multitudes of creative opportunities, and provides sequential learning activities that build on one another to deepen participants' understanding. Creative dramatics requires sensitive leaders that understand human behaviours and relationships, and who are able to help facilitate learning that allow students to explore while building knowledge in the discipline. The inability of students to explore other creative means of learning makes the students docile. As such, students just become a dumping ground of knowledge for teachers which Paulo Freire (1970) called the banking system. This research is hinged on Freire's Pedagogy of the oppressed as a framework for this research which allows students to learn though playful means and games and exercises. This way, students will facilitate the processes of creation; take on characters, and exploring voice and movements from a variety of vantage points to facilitate learning. It is important that instruction and demonstrability in creative dramatics be well delivered, well organized, and very thoughtful, so that student participants of JSS 3 students of Demonstration secondary school have an opportunity to creatively express themselves in a nonthreatening environment during the teaching and learning of Basic science. Through a quantitative analysis as a methodology, forty (40) copies of questionnaire were distributed to students of JSS 3 in DSS Zaria; the findings of this paper discovered that when students experience creative dramabased environment, it can have a positive impact on student performance. Again, creative dramabased instruction is an exciting way of learning which made students find learning more enjoyable and students' academic achievement has been effected positively. This paper submits that students are encouraged to communicate and interact with each other during creative drama-based learning and this encouragement influence their personal development.