At Featherstone High School the Performing Arts faculty forms a valuable part of the students’ school experience and we aim to be a leading PA department within the borough. Our ethos is to give students a variety of in-class and extracurricular activities and opportunities through all the arts.  We are passionate about working together as a team and strive to give pupils high quality experiences in lessons as well as many performance and backstage experiences outside of lessons. The Drama department aims to encourage all students to learn about key principles of Drama across all key stages, developing transferable skills of creativity, imagination and confidence. We aim to explore key subject-specific themes and develop knowledge from a range of performance styles, to ensure students understand how practitioners have developed theatrical works in response to sociological and political changes. We encourage students to explore cultural, social and personal issues by looking at different characters and stories, which helps to develop empathy and cognitive awareness towards others. We also encourage students to consider the British Values of mutual respect, acceptance and tolerance of other cultures.   

CREATING
In all lessons, students work to create performances, whether scripted or devised. When working with scripts, they work in pairs or groups, developing skills in reading, oracy and interpreting a script. Scripts such as Romeo and Juliet, Refugee Boy and an anti-bullying play, ‘The Terrible Fate of Humpty Dumpty’ allow students to explore topics and themes through effective dialogue, which shows them how they can develop their own work in similar styles. When devising their own work, this is from a theme, and allows them to be creative with the techniques and characters they wish to explore.

PERFORMING
We encourage performances every lesson, whether that be whole class freeze frames/mime/thought tracks or individual groups/pairs performing to allow for highlighting good practice and noticing areas for development. Students are always encouraged and supported to perform, even if they feel nervous, as we believe in encouraging everyone to develop their voice and confidence. We also offer routes for designing, if students would prefer that option, for lighting, sound, set and costume.  

RESPONDING
Each lesson, students are expected to respond to the tasks given to them in a creative way, and to also respond to the work of others. This takes the form of evaluation after performances, and this is a supportive way to ensure students know their strengths and areas for improvement. Students are expected to act on feedback in future lessons to ensure they then make progress to improve work. Ways we support this is by logging verbal feedback in journals, so they can refer back to what targets they were given previously. In KS4 especially, we also attend theatre trips as part of the course, which students evaluate and critique.

ENRICHMENT OPPORTUNITIES
We develop students’ cultural capital through enrichment, such as theatre visits, which take place in Year 9, 10 and 11, as well as some reward trips and workshops for students. We have a large uptake of students performing in school shows such as the KS3 Drama Club and the whole school musical, which provides a range of opportunities for both performance, design, or other backstage roles. This in turn provides a wider understanding of the career opportunities within the Arts, and exposes students to learning a variety of skills including team work, organisation, working under pressure and presenting to a live audience.   

Key Stage 3
Year 7
Year 8
Year 9

GCSE
Year 10 
Year 11

Year 7
Year 8
Year 9

Year 10
Year 11