Speaking Activities › Conscience Alley
Conscience Alley: a drama technique for exploring a decision
Type the name of your class book and in about a minute Sage has written eight dilemmas from it, ready for the board, with numbered cut-out cards to match. Then the class argues both sides in two lines while one pupil walks between them and decides.
What is conscience alley in drama?
Conscience alley is a drama technique where the class makes two facing lines and speaks a character's thoughts for and against a decision, as one pupil in role walks between them. It is also called a thought tunnel, a decision alley or a conscience corridor.
It slows down a choice that takes one line in a book, so the class hears what the character might have weighed up before acting. That makes it useful wherever someone faces a hard choice: English, drama, history, RE and PSHE (SEL in the US).
How do you run a conscience alley, step by step?
To run a conscience alley, stop the story just before the character decides, make two lines facing each other, and send one pupil slowly down the middle while each side speaks as they pass.
- Put the dilemma on the board as a question with a yes or no answer.
- Give thirty seconds to think before anyone moves, so everyone has one reason ready. A class that lines up first spends the time arguing about where to stand.
- Make the two lines about a metre apart. One line gives reasons to do it, the other reasons not to.
- Choose the walker. They play the character, so pick someone who will commit to an answer at the end.
- Walk slowly. As the walker reaches each pair, those two speak once each, quietly. Most walkers go too fast, so tell them to walk as if they are really thinking it over.
- Decide out loud. At the end the walker turns round and says what they will do, and which reason decided it.
How long it takes depends on what it is for:
| Use it for | How | How long |
|---|---|---|
| A drama starter | One dilemma, one walker, both lines | 10 minutes |
| Exploring a class novel | Use a decision the character actually faces | 30 minutes |
| Before persuasive writing | Alley first, then write the argument that won | 40 minutes |
| PSHE or discussion | A real dilemma, then a proper debrief | 25 minutes |
Why does it work best quietly?
A conscience alley works best quietly because the walker is the only person who needs to hear it, and quiet voices close up sound like thoughts rather than an argument. Thirty shouted reasons are just noise, and the walker remembers none of them. Keep the lines close enough to speak in a normal indoor voice. If the volume creeps up, stop and start again from the top. It is worth the thirty seconds.
Conscience alley ideas for KS1, KS2 and secondary
Good conscience alley ideas are moments where a character has to choose and both choices cost something. That works from a fairy tale in Year 1 (US kindergarten) to Macbeth at GCSE (US high school).
| Book or subject | The moment | The decision | UK year / US grade |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jack and the Beanstalk | Jack is home safe with a bag of the giant's gold | Should he climb the beanstalk again? | Y1-2 / K-1 |
| The Little Red Hen | The bread is baked, and the animals who would not help want some | Should the hen share it? | Y1-2 / K-1 |
| The Great Fire of London, 1666 (history) | The fire is jumping from house to house | Should the Lord Mayor pull houses down to stop it? | Y1-2 / K-1 |
| The Iron Man, by Ted Hughes | The farmers want to trap the metal giant in a pit | Should Hogarth help them? | Y3-4 / 2-3 |
| The Pied Piper of Hamelin | The rats have gone and the piper wants his thousand guilders | Should the mayor pay what he promised? | Y3-5 / 2-4 |
| PSHE (US: SEL) | Your friends are laughing at a new classmate | Should you sit with the new pupil at lunch? | Y3-6 / 2-5 |
| The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe | The White Witch has promised to make Edmund a prince | Should he slip away to her house? | Y4-6 / 3-5 |
| The Prodigal Son (RE) | The younger brother has come home broke, and his father is throwing a feast | Should the older brother go in? | Y4-6 / 3-5 |
| Evacuation, 1939 (history) | War has started and city children are being sent to the country | Should a London mother put her children on the train? | Y5-6 / 4-5 |
| A Christmas Carol | Two gentlemen ask Scrooge to give to the poor | Should he give them something? | Y6-11 / 5-10 |
| Macbeth | King Duncan is asleep, a guest in Macbeth's castle | Should Macbeth kill him? | Y9-11 / 8-10 |
Type any of these, or your own class book, into Generate Your Own and Sage writes eight dilemmas for it, pitched for the age you pick, from 5-7 up to 16-18.
What do you ask the walker afterwards?
After a conscience alley, ask the walker which reason nearly changed their mind. That one question makes the class think about what persuaded, not what was loudest, and it often turns up a reason nobody expected. Then a few more:
- Which voice can you still hear?
- Which reason was easiest to ignore, and why?
- To the lines: did anyone change their mind while they waited to speak?
- What does the character actually do in the book, and did our walker choose the same?
For writing, the walker's decision is the point in a Point, Evidence, Explain paragraph: the decision, a line from the book that backs it, and why it matters.
Conscience alley variations
Conscience alley variations change who walks, what the lines say or when the walk stops, and each one suits a different lesson.
- Swap the lines. Run it again with the same walker and the sides swapped, so every child argues the side they did not pick.
- Freeze halfway. Stop the walker in the middle, ask which way they are leaning, then let them finish.
- Voices from the story. Each child speaks as someone in the character's life, such as Jack's mother or the giant's wife, instead of giving a plain reason.
- Silent alley. Each child holds up one reason on a mini whiteboard (US: dry-erase board) as the walker passes. It suits a class that gets loud, and the boards go straight into writing.
- Before you read on. Run it before the class finds out what the character does, then read the chapter and compare.
- Small groups. Groups of six to eight run their own alleys at the same time, each with a numbered card.
Conscience alley, hot seating or thought tracking?
Conscience alley is for the moment before a character chooses, when the class argues both sides of one decision. Hot seating comes after: one pupil in role answers the class's questions about what they did and why. Thought tracking pauses a scene, and a tap on the shoulder brings out what one character is thinking right then. On one book they work well in that order. For the questioning, try Hot Seat.
Is there a printable conscience alley template?
Yes. The conscience alley printout is two pages: numbered dilemma cards to cut out, and a sheet for planning both sides.
The dilemma cards carry whatever you set up, numbered in the same order as the board, so card 3 on the screen is card 3 in your hand. The two sides sheet has a column for reasons to and a column for reasons not to, so each child can plan their one reason before lining up. At the bottom is a box for what the walker decided, and the reason that changed it.
Is it free, and do I need to sign in?
Conscience Alley is free to try, but you sign in first. Printing the cards costs nothing. Playing it on the board uses one token, and so does Sage writing dilemmas for your book. Every account gets 20 free tokens, and Pro gives 50 a day.
Free to try: sign in, and playing it on the board uses one token.
More speaking activities
Try Hot Seat for questioning a character in role, Rebuttal Pong for a paired debate, or Devil's Advocate for arguing a case you do not hold. All seventeen are in Speaking Activities.
Written by a practising primary school teacher, who built Sage Teachers to use in their own classroom. Every activity here is free to try.