Performing Arts

What is our overarching curriculum intent and what do we intend students leave Bridgemary School with?

We intend that our curriculum supports our Trust ambition of ‘achieving more together’.  We do this by giving students essential opportunities for growth and challenge beyond the mere subject content.

All students have the right to express themselves - Drama maximises these natural factors in a safe, encouraging environment. The greatest skill we can give our students is to be able to harness their own creativity and communicate this with others. Drama is pivotal in this whilst also helping pupils to improve peer relationships and confidence. All of this is in addition to giving them the tools they need to continue to enjoy, through participation or appreciation, their rich Dramatic heritage throughout the rest of their lives.

What is the structural intent of the subject curriculum, and how is it sequenced so that students know and remember more?

The drama curriculum is carefully sequenced to work in line with all other subject curriculums, so that prior core declarative and procedural knowledge is built upon, with continual opportunities for core knowledge to be interleaved throughout both key stages so that students know more, remember more and can apply that knowledge in a range of contexts.  Facilitating knowledge adds important local, national, and global context to core knowledge, and our curriculum intends to provide a richness and diversity that enables our students to experience learning in real life contexts.

How do any school values and focuses influence or feed through the curriculum?

The school curriculum is built on 4 aims to ensure our students receive and are able to access it fully, those being:

• Reading and comprehension that aims to ensure all students leave with a reading age at least equivalent to their chronological age.
• Our school values of ASPIRE provide a safe, productive and caring culture and climate, that ensures our students leave as well rounded citizens.
• A deepening understanding of core and facilitating knowledge that enables students to know and remember more.
• A wide appreciation of the world that we live in, and the celebration of the diversity this brings.

In drama we support these aims by providing students the opportunity to learn and develop their abilities in four key areas that will not only make them better at performing dramatic works, but also give them skills and cultural capital that can be applied to future professions in a range of industries. These four areas are:

• Theory: The knowledge of famous dramatic text and performances, of theatrical techniques, and of various styles of theatre and practitioners.
• Skills: The key skills needed to convincingly play a character.
• Performance: The confidence to speak and perform in front of an audience or under other forms of pressure.
• Evaluation: The ability to critically analyse their own work, or the work of others, and reflect on how to improve it.

Each term students will study a theme that either teaches them a basic skill or builds upon what they have learnt the previous year, and the vast majority of lessons will grant them an opportunity to develop in each of the four areas. Thus by the end of the curriculum they will have developed into well rounded performers.

What is our intent to assess how well students access the curriculum and how the school intends to adapt the curriculum to close gaps in knowledge?

To ensure any gaps in prior or new knowledge are quickly identified, we check progress frequently through a range of assessment opportunities, from lesson-by-lesson declarative knowledge tests, end of topic tests that assess knowledge retention and application, to more cumulative common assessments that assess students’ ability to remember and apply knowledge in a range of contexts.  The information from these assessments are used to adapt the curriculums intending to quickly close gaps in knowledge and keep students on track to achieve at our ambitious academic flight paths.

The curriculum we intend to deliver to students at each Key Stage:

At KS3 students begin year 7 by studying the core physical skills that an actor needs to control in order to play a convincing character. They do this by analysing the performances of various works by Roald Dahl, and imitating their use of these skills in performances of their own creations. They then move onto the core vocal skills used in acting by analysing famous speeches given by important historical figures or in professional plays and films, and again emulating their use in their own performances. Once they have the core skills students finish year 7 by studying the skills needed to work effectively as part of a team when rehearsing a scripted performance.

In year 8 students first build upon the physical skills they learnt the previous year by studying the techniques of mimes and silent movie stars, teaching them how to communicate thoughts and intentions without words. They then build upon the rehearsal skills they learnt in year seven by studying the various types of stages available to perform on, and the advantages of each stage that an actor should be aware of. In the summer term students are then introduced to the works of Shakespeare by working with a scene from Macbeth, and build upon all their previously learned skills by learning how to rehearse and perform Macbeth in classical or modern styles.

Finally in year 9 students learn how to turn the skills and techniques they have learned into professional productions of their own. With their knowledge of the basic skills well developed at this point, they begin the year by studying the advanced techniques and skills used by professional actors whilst studying the play War Horse. They then move on to learning about how to structure, produce and write a scripted play of their own devising themed around the genre of a mystery, using An Inspector Calls and other similar plays as inspiration. To finish their work in drama, students are set a project in their last term that requires them to draw upon everything they have previously learned throughout their three years of drama to write, rehearse and perform a play entirely of their own, themed around a topic of personal significance to them.

How does the co-curriculum enhance the curriculum?

During their time at Bridgemary students will be given many opportunities to develop their co-curricular knowledge as well as being able to experience cultural capital in multiple forms. Students will be given the opportunity to watch professional dramatic works in a theatre and engage with the moral arguments and lessons presented to them. They will be given the opportunity to create and showcase performances of their own creation to a live audience, and where possible to practice controlling the lighting, sound system and other technical elements of staging a production.