Drama
Drama
Drama is taught at KS3 and as an option choice at GCSE.
Pupils have the opportunity to work creatively. Pupils develop the necessary skills to enable them to perform and respond to drama, pupils learn to direct other, to create their own script and look at the physical and technical aspects of theatre.
Drama is all about understanding what it is like to be in somebody else’s shoes. You will play many parts in different imaginary situations. You will have the opportunity to create your own performances, as well as look at plays written by other people.
Exam Boards:
A Level Drama & Theatre Studies: Pearson Edexcel
GCSE Drama: Pearson Edexcel
Statement of Intent
The Drama department aims to encourage all students to develop transferable skills of creativity, imagination and confidence while learning about key principles of Drama and Theatre Studies across all key stages. We aim to deliver 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.
In Year 7 & 8, we provide students with opportunities to explore both devised and scripted work, to develop skills in working in teams, reading, oracy, interpreting a script, and developing confidence in creating and performing pieces of work. We evaluate performances of students’ work every lesson to help build confidence and ensure students make progress, supporting their skills in evaluation from across various subject areas. Students explore Shakespeare, Dickens and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time as texts in year 7 and 8, along with being given stimuli to support them in devising their own performances, such as Detectives, which is centred around finding a missing person. Students are given creative writing and reflection tasks as home learning, for example to write scripts, a diary entry, or to evaluate their progress and targets. Performance of the work created allows them to see their intentions brought to life. This helps to understand the importance of dialogue and communicating intentions to create interesting drama for their audience.
Year 9 allows students to progress the skills and knowledge they began developing in KS3 and challenges them to consider themselves as drama practitioners in terms of devising, interpreting and performing, and designing work for the theatre. This forms the backbone of key knowledge that feeds into the students’ ability to complete the three assessed components in Year 10 and 11. We interleave the curriculum in order to allow for recall and retention of key knowledge for the Component 3 exam. The principles of FHS5 are embedded within all lessons across all key stages, providing an opportunity for students to be challenged and set high targets to stretch all pupils, whilst still scaffolding work to suit learners of varying abilities through modelling, questioning and grouping strategies. Questioning and feedback is crucial to the success of students in Drama as it encourages them to reflect on work created and identify areas for development – key skills in many industries.
We develop students’ cultural capital through enrichment, such as theatre visits, which take place in Year 9, 10 and 11, and performance in school shows such as the KS3 Drama Club and the whole school musical in order to provide 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.