The Drama Teacher’s Resource Guide

This is a pathfinder for Junior and Senior High School drama teachers. The guide will assist you in finding great resources to use in your classroom. If you need more help, our librarians welcome any questions you may have regarding your search.

Visit our Library

A great way to start your search is by visiting our library either in person or online. You can find a complete list of resources in our collection by accessing our online catalogue. To locate books particularly of interest to educators, use these suggested call numbers, keywords, and phrases to search the catalogue:

Call Numbers to Browse or Search in the Catalogue

To search the catalogue for Call Numbers, perform the following search:

  1. Click the Advanced tab in the blue menu bar
  2. Click the button beside Local Call Number
  3. In the search field, enter one of the suggested Call Numbers and click Search

Suggested Call Numbers:

  • REF LB Curriculum Guides and Resources
  • REF PN 1701 Drama Education and Guidelines
  • REF PN 2071.i5 Improv and Drama Games
  • REF PN 2075 Teaching Young Actors
  • REF PN 317 Resources for Educators

Keywords to Search in the Catalogue

To search the catalogue for Subject Headings, perform the following search:

  1. Click the MultiSeek tab in the blue menu bar
  2. Change the first Keyword drop-down menu to Local Call Number and type ref in the search field beside it
  3. Leave AND as is
  4. Change the second Keyword dropdown menu to Keyword
  5. Type one of the suggested words and phrases in the search field and click Search

Suggested words and phrases:

  • high school
  • teaching
  • children
  • youth
  • young adult
  • teenager
  • student
  • adolescence
  • games

Searching for Age Appropriate Plays and Musicals

Theatre Alberta publishes indexes that contain information on scripts in our collection. These indexes are updated in March of every year and can be viewed online by going to Library Indexes in the Library menu.

The following indexes, which include the number of actors and a brief synopsis of each play, may be particularly useful to drama teachers:

For a more current listing of titles only of plays and musicals, search the online catalogue:

  1. Click the Advanced tab in the blue menu bar
  2. Click the button beside Department Code
  3. Type one of the following Department Codes in the search field and click Search

Suggested Department Codes:

  • cho Children’s One-Acts
  • chf Children’s Full-Lengths
  • chc Children’s Collections
  • chm Children’s Musicals
  • yoa Young Adult One-Acts
  • yfl Young Adult Full-Lengths
  • ycl Young Adult Collections
  • yms Young Adult Musicals

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Recommended Titles

The lists below have been previewed by us and selected for this topic. Theatre Alberta has many of the suggested titles in these documents; however, we do not have all of them. For additional information on a specific title, search our catalogue or the Internet.

Popular Titles:

Publisher Recommended Titles:

Recommended Reference Resources in the Theatre Alberta’s library:

  • Theatre Arts 1: Teacher’s Course Guide and Student Handbook by Alan Engelsman, c1997
  • The Drama Teacher’s Survival Guide: A Complete Tool Kit for Theatre Arts by Margaret F. Johnson, c2007

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Additional Online Resources and Selected Web sites

Continue your online search by looking for websites with lesson plans, teaching ideas, games and listings of age appropriate plays. Type “lesson plans” theatre drama in your favourite search engine. Remember to type lesson plans in quotation marks to ensure the two words appear side-by-side in your search results. A variation of this search could be to change the spelling of theatre to theater or substitute lesson plans with games. Be creative!