Hot Seating

What is hot seating in drama?

Hot seating is a drama technique, often run as a drama game, where one person answers questions in role as a character while the rest of the class asks them. It is used most in English and history.

What it does that a comprehension exercise cannot is force inference into speech. A child answering as Macbeth has to decide what he would say about something the play never mentions. In England that sits in Years 3 and 4 reading: inferring characters' feelings, thoughts and motives from their actions. In the US it is RL.4.3, describing a character in depth.

How do you run a hot seating activity, step by step?

Hot seating runs in three stages that take 13 minutes on the board: everyone writes two questions, one child answers in role, then a second child takes the seat.

1. Prepare (3 minutes). Everybody writes two questions on the sheet. Neither can have a one-word answer.
2. In the seat (5 minutes). One child answers as the character. If the book does not say, they invent what the character would.
3. Swap (5 minutes). A new child, with a different character or the same one later in the story.

Two turns is the point, because the second child has watched the first. The board never moves on by itself: add 30 seconds when an answer is going somewhere.

How do you keep children in role?

Children stay in role in hot seating when they have a prop to hold and the teacher always speaks to the character, never the child.

A hat or a name card that goes on when they sit down and comes off when they stand up makes the role physical, not a matter of willpower.

Use the character's name from the first second. Say “so, Sam, what was Macbeth feeling?” and you have broken the frame yourself.

What does the teacher say during hot seating?

During hot seating the teacher mostly asks follow-ups, spoken to the character by name, that push a first answer one step further.

• Ask for the moment. “Take us back to when you decided. Where were you standing?”
• Pick up their word. “You said you were angry. Angry with who?”
• Bring someone in. “What would your best friend say if they heard that?”
• Test the story. “Is that what you told everyone, or what really happened?”

When a child dries up, make the next answer smaller and keep them in the seat.

• Offer two answers. “Were you more frightened or more angry?” Choosing is easier than inventing.
• Let the character refuse. “I'd rather not talk about that” is a real answer, if you teach it first.
• Open the book. Ten seconds with the page. The character is allowed to remember.

Which hot seating format should you use?

Choose the hot seating format by how confident the class is, starting with the teacher in the seat.

For ready-made characters and question cards, use the Speaking Activities Hot Seat.

What goes wrong with hot seating?

Hot seating goes wrong when the questions are closed, the child slips out of role, the same few children ask everything, or every answer is already in the book.

• Closed questions. Ask “did you feel scared?” and you get “yes”. Ban “did you” and give the class these four openers, which are also on the sheet:
  • Why did you…?
  • What made you…?
  • How did you feel when…?
  • What would you do differently?
• The child answers as themselves. A prop and the character's name fix most of this.
• The same six children ask everything. Everybody writing two questions first is the fix, not hands up.
• It becomes a memory test. The good questions are the ones the book does not answer.

Which year groups is hot seating for?

Hot seating works from Year 1 to Year 9 (Kindergarten to Grade 8), and what changes with age is who takes the seat.

What do you do after hot seating?

After hot seating, put the answers to work the same day: write in role, take the character's big decision to Conscience Alley, or check what they said against the book.

• Write in role. A diary entry or letter from the character, starting from the best answer on each child's sheet. Step Inside is the quieter version, with every child thinking from inside the character.
• Conscience Alley on the big decision. In Conscience Alley the character walks between two lines of classmates, each arguing one side of the choice.
• Check the answers against the book. Test one answer from the seat with Point, Evidence, Explain: what the character claimed, a line from the text, and whether the two fit.

To argue whether the character told the truth, run a Fishbowl. A class not ready to perform can argue it on paper in Silent Debate.