Key Stage 3 Drama

In Key Stage 3 Drama, your child will be given opportunities to explore, evaluate and challenge ideas and assumptions constructively. He or she must demonstrate creative thinking by making fresh connections between ideas and in different contexts. Team work abilities are encouraged, especially as students are often asked to take on different roles in organising, planning and sustaining discussion in a range of formal and informal contexts. They will need to be able to work in groups and to evaluative their own learning.

In Year 7 children explore techniques for role play and develop strategies for anticipating, visualising and problem solving in different contexts. They work collaboratively on scripted and unscripted pieces and evaluate their own presentations and those of others.

In Year 8 children learn to develop the techniques that enable them to create and sustain a variety of roles. And they learn to collaborate in, and evaluate, the presentation of dramatic performances, scripted and unscripted, which explore character, relationships and issues.

In Year 9 children learn to recognise, evaluate and extend their skills. They use a range of drama techniques, including work in role, to explore issues, ideas and meanings, for example, by changing perspectives. Theydevelop and compare different interpretations of scenes or plays by Shakespeare or other dramatists, and they learn to convey action, character, atmosphere and tension when scripting and performing plays. Children will also begin to write critical evaluations of performances.

Key Stage 3 Drama lesson example

Year 7 pupils brainstorm ways to use their voices to represent pride, abomination, fools and angels following the reading of a story looking at these themes. They use drama activities by practising walking into the room and saying their proverb in different tones of voice, such as in a stern, pleading, exasperated, cold, shy or friendly manner.

Jenny, in Year 9, takes her role seriously at director for a class performance of Romeo and Juliet. She advises on how the text should be read, and explains, describes and instructs, selecting aspects to help the 'actors'.