Curriculum Overview

 

Key Stage 3 Key Stage 4 Sixth Form

Term 1: Serious Fun

This introductory unit consists of a variety of games and warm up activities to get students used to the drama space. Students will learn to balance their space, practise listening and communicating skills and experiment with their voices and bodies to have intended effects on the audience. A group mime develops non verbal communication skills. A group piece develops storytelling including still images, thought tracking and narration. A duologue called ‘My Fault’ consolidates skills learnt to showcase talent and extend script writing skills for alternative endings.

Ongoing formative assessment.

Mime
The theatrical technique of suggesting action, character, or emotion without words, using only gesture, expression, and movement.

Verbal Communication
Use of words to convey a thought.

Non Verbal Communication
Use of body language and facial expression to convey a mood or message.

Still Image
Still images and freeze frames are both a form of tableau. With freeze-frame, the action in a play or scene is frozen, as in a photograph or video frame.

Thought Tracking
Thought-tracking helps inform an audience about a character. You see it in action when: a character speaks out loud about his/her inner thoughts at a particular moment in the drama.

Soliloquy
An act of speaking one's thoughts aloud when by oneself or regardless of any hearers, especially by a character in a play.

Monologue
A long speech by one actor in a play or film, or as part of a theatrical or broadcast programme.

Focus
The centre of interest or activity; to ensure attention is on specific thing.

Concentration
The action or power of focusing all one's attention.

Improvisation
Something that is improvised, in particular a piece of music, drama, etc. created spontaneously or without preparation.

Devising
Plan or invent (a complex procedure, system, or mechanism) by careful thought.

Script
the dialogue the actors speak, including stage directions

Ensemble
A group of actors working together ( from the French for 'together' )

  • Spiritual
  • Moral
  • Social
  • Cultural

Develop the individual:
Develops communication skills, considers views of others, explores issues.

Create a supportive community:
Working together, sharing and celebrating creative achievements.

Term 2: Skills

Students will learn a variety of techniques to have dramatic impact in role play – hot seating, thought tracking, back story, slow motion, mark the moment, still image, cross cutting and narration. They will learn to empathise with different character types that find themselves in the following situations: Surprise party, the Olympics, a pirate, on holiday and moving house. Students are required to put themselves in the place of characters or real people and speak from their point of view. Students will explore emotions, feelings and motivations in detail and depth and demonstrate their ability to understand actions.

Students choose one of the topic lessons to base a performance on.

Split Screen
Two things happening on the stage at the same time, but one side is frozen

Thought track
Saying out loud how the character might be feeling at a particular moment

Flashforward
A scene that takes the narrative forward in time from the current point of the story

Devising
Creating a piece of drama

Improvising
Making it up on the spot

Role-play
Playing a part; being in role; pretending to be someone other than yourself

Narration
A person tells the story as it is performed

Flashback
A scene that takes the narrative back in time from the current point of the story

  • Spiritual
  • Moral
  • Social
  • Cultural

Develop the individual:
Develops communication skills, considers views of others, explores issues.

Create a supportive community:
Collaborating and working together to share creativity.

Term 3: The Manor House - physical theatre

Students will explore and improvise the mystery of the Manor House. They will create characters using role-play and develop their physical theatre skills to communicate a story.

Ongoing formative assessment.

Explore
Look at different aspects of something.

Tension
Where the audience's emotions and senses are raised as a result of events or dialogue in a performance.

Physical theatre
using movement and physicality to communicate meaning to an audience

facial expression
Using your face to communicate emotions

gesture
using an action to communicate a meaning eg a wave, pointing

space/spatial
an area or expanse/use of that area

ensemble
working together as a group

  • Spiritual
  • Moral
  • Social
  • Cultural

Develop the individual:
Collaboration. Creativity.

Create a supportive community:
Working together, sharing and celebrating creative achievements.

Term 4: Bean and Berkoff

Students will be taught about the two differing styles of acting and their forms and conventions through various stimuli and role plays. They will discuss the impact of the differing styles and give constructive comments and the relative strengths and weaknesses about each method and intended effects on the audience.

They will evaluate contrasting performances, as well as creating one each of their own for assessment, in groups.

Exaggeration
Placing emphasis on movement, gesture or facial expressions

Practitioner
A person actively engaged in an Art Discipline who has created a Theory to be applied

Berkoff
Steven Berkoff, an English actor, author and playwright

exaggerate
to make bigger than is normal

stylised
in a particular style, often unusual

comedy/comedic
a funny story/in the style of something funny

characterisation
becoming a character both physically and vocally

  • Spiritual
  • Moral
  • Social
  • Cultural

Develop the individual:
Develops communication skills, considers views of others, explores issues.

Create a supportive community:
Collaborating and sharing work.

Term 5: Character and Staging

Students will learn to explore different characters in a variety of situations. A variety of techniques will be used to help them identify with the character’s motivations and consequences of their actions. They will be required to put themselves in the place of characters and communicate from their point of view. In pairs and groups, students will explore emotions, feelings and motivations in detail and depth and demonstrate their ability to understand actions, seeing that early childhood experiences can have life long effects.

Ongoing formative assessment.

Stereotype
A widely held, but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing

Body Language
How movement, gesture and facial expressions add to your character

Empathy
Putting yourself into someone else's shoes

Narration
The voice of the story teller

Skeleton Script
A starting point for performance

Signature Move
A movement that sums up a character's attitudes or personality

Voice
The sound produced in speech or song

vocal
using the voice

physical
using the body

pitch
how high or low someone speaks

pace
how fast or slow someone speaks

tone
the emotional quality of someone's voice eg angry, envious, happy, fearful

projection
speaking with power and clarity so the audience can hear

  • Spiritual
  • Moral
  • Social
  • Cultural

Develop the individual:
Develops communication skills, empathy, considers views of others, explores issues.

Create a supportive community:
Collaborating, creating and sharing as a joint endeavour.

Term 6: A Midsummer Night's Dream

Students explore the plot, characters and themes of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'.

A devised piece based on the themes of the play.

theme
an idea that runs through a story eg magic, love, revenge

Shakespearean
relating to Shakespeare

rhyme
when the words sound the same

  • Spiritual
  • Moral
  • Social
  • Cultural

Develop the individual:
Communication skills, using and understanding scripts and Shakespearean language (how language has changed over time); consideration of right and wrong; explores issues around arranged marriage.

Create a supportive community:
Collaborative work that is shared. Creativity that is celebrated.

New time: New title

New Description

  • Spiritual
  • Moral
  • Social
  • Cultural

Develop the individual:

Create a supportive community: