As Drama is not part of the national curriculum, KS2 drama is taught widely as a secondary subject at primary and not taught as a single subject. The subject lends itself heavily on communication skills, team work, collaboration and many valuable life skills. When joining secondary school, we are fortunate at Holyhead to offer a drama curriculum that will encourage and build students character from the onset, students have the opportunity to safely create, perform and evaluate their work and of their peers. These are the 3 key areas we study across KS3, 4 and 5 – Create, Perform and Respond. Throughout Year 7, students will explore the use of their voice, body language , facial expressions and gestures; they are then encouraged to explore these skills within rehearsals and performance. Once students have understood how to use these skills with improvisation, they then start to look at the work of dialogues based on scripts, this encourages creativity in a safe space by allowing students to work in pairs to develop confidence and for teacher assessment to be more focused on each student’s skills set at this stage. This work is then evaluated, where students are taught how to evaluate performance work and look at the importance of this. At Year 7 it’s heavily focused on oracy skills where we encourage the correct use of terminology and the ability to discuss and share ideas within confidence. Looking at WWW and EBI.

Once students have grasped the understanding of the basics of performance and how to evaluate they are then introduced to characterisation allowing them to challenge their vocal and movement skills. There is expectation for students to start imitating characters that are different to them, there is a high level expectation for deep thinking to enable this. Through the Autumn term students start to work with more students creating small groups pieces and understand how to structure a Drama piece. Students are taught how to use different techniques such as still images, flashbacks, cross-cutting and mime, this is where we start to see creativity and more risks being taken in their choice of creating. In doing so this allows students to understand how different drama styles are created and performed. By the end of Year 7 students would have understood the basic elements of drama and performance, they would have understood a good level of techniques and skills that can be used to create a performance. The main performance style students should be able to identify are; duologue work, naturalism, mime, scripted and melodrama.

Building on knowledge gained in Year 7, students continue to study; create, perform and respond. As students have a good understanding of the basic elements of performance, they now start to focus on two practitioners in some detail. This encourages the WHY, allowing students to explore, debate, discuss social, moral and ethical views on current affairs. In Year 8 students study Bertolt Brecht and Stanislavski. They start with Brecht, his work focuses on political theatre and social change. Students research Brecht’s theories and his basic principles used in performance, they then explore Verbatim theatre (performance style) and link this to current affairs taking place at the time, for example this might be Black Lives Matter. The content is crucially important as it gives the performance work and exploration meaning and motivation for our students. This style of work (Verbatim) is based on real life stories and allows students to understand the work of Brecht and how ideas can be communicated through drama in an effective way. During this scheme of learning students are taught how to research, edit, develop an understanding of empathy, inference skills and application to performance.

Students then go on to explore Stanislavski who is the comparison practitioner to Brecht this allows students to build on their Year 7 knowledge of naturalism. They start to learn and apply the basic elements of Stanislavski’s work to their improvised pieces. In Year 8 there is a broad balance of improvisation work which leads to devising, students look at scripts in some detail focusing on the performance side of it as to suppose the character and story analysis, which they would do in English. The Drama curriculum lends itself more on the emphasis of character relationships, staging styles, directing and use of techniques to enhance their performances for meaning.

A lot of professional work is viewed in Year 8 to develop students’ understanding of career opportunities, job roles within performing arts, the review of live theatre work encourages students curiosity and ability to evaluate their own work at greater depth, they are expected to write a written response in some detail, looking at WWW and EBI, using the correct terminology.

At the end of Year 8 students study a creative process project where a lot of interleaving learning takes place and students have the ability to apply skills and techniques learnt from Year 7 through to 8 and apply the learning to the project. Students are assessed on creating, performing and responding.

In Year 9 students are introduced to the BTEC Performing Arts specification. Students study plays in more detail looking at the analysis and understanding of text and the processes of creating the script extracts for performance. They are taught technical elements and performance elements linking them to suitable practitioners that were taught in Year 8.

There is a focus on research and what good research looks like, and how to use research for their work. This is in preparation for KS4, as there is big emphasis on the processes of creating performance work in Year 10.

Students start the course with Component 1: Explore. Students explore the processes used to create a performance.
They explore and further understand performance styles, creative intentions and purpose. They investigate how practitioners create and influence what’s performed, learn and discover performance roles, skills, techniques and processes that help to create the final piece.

This builds on their KS3 knowledge of scripts and understanding how they are explored and executed for performance.
Students study 3 comparison plays which are decided depending on the make of each cohort, for example, if we have students who express an interest in movement we will explore a physical theatre piece as part of the 3 plays, one year we may get a group of students who are more suited for comedy. Then we will study this style and 2 other comparison styles to ensure our students foster an interest and a broad knowledge and understanding of different styles of theatre. The flexibility of choice over plays is important as it will help to ensure the learning is meaningful and relevant.

Students study Component 2 – Develop:
Students develop performance skills and techniques by reproducing existing performances.
During Component 2, our students will take part in workshops, taught classes and assessed rehearsals, they will gain physical, interpretative, vocal and rehearsal skills. Students work towards applying these skills in performance and reflect on their progress, their performance and how they could improve. These skills are taught right from KS3 and beyond, ensuring that there is both continuity, but also the ability to build on prior learning.
Component 3: Apply. Students pull together all they have learnt and apply their knowledge in a performance, this type of learning is taught at the end of Years 8&9 and is developed again in Year 10.

• Coursework split into three clear learning aims with short assessment deadlines for each learning aim
• Regular viewing of live work and facilitators visiting, to encourage students confidence in communications skills for research purposes
• Students keep building on their prior knowledge from KS3

Two units are studied in Year 12 that focus on developing critical analysis skills. They give learners the opportunity to undertake research into influential practitioners, relevant to their interests, whose performance work and ideas may engage and inspire them.

During Unit 1, will research contextual factors and identify how these influence the creation of work for performance. This equips students for the external unit they will study. Throughout Unit 1 students will watch and analyse live and recorded productions as well as finding information in books, journals, newspapers and magazines and online. This is a synoptic unit, and it is important that interleaving learning from KS4 is repeated, students are encouraged to consider their exploration of practitioners’ repertoire in other units and use this to consolidate and/or inspire their investigation. The external assessment requires learners to carry out research into two practitioners’ work. The content covered in this unit requires students to develop their research skills and writing skills in preparation for the external assessment.

The externally assessed unit provides opportunities for students to draw on their individual practical performance skills and demonstrate an understanding of the methods and techniques for creating performance in order to contribute to the making and realisation of new performance material. Students will work in small groups to create an original performance piece in response to a stimulus provided in the external assignment briefing. Students will demonstrate their understanding of selecting appropriate strategies and techniques they may identify when exploring how to respond to the stimulus in order to create an inspiring and unique piece of theatre. The emphasis of the unit is on exploration and development of original performance material and the selection and application of appropriate performance skills. Learners will devote much of the unit therefore to experimenting with devising and/or choreographic methods, and using discussion, improvisation, staging and compositional techniques to put together a short performance in which they will ‘try out’ their creative intentions and ideas to an invited audience.

• Familiarising learners with ways of responding to different stimuli
• Equip students with a practical vocabulary of working methods to create performance
• Students will be familiar with directing/choreography, staging techniques and rehearsal processes from work in other units
• Students need to confidently prepare a skills audit, using self-assessment and peer-assessment when considering their strengths and contribution to a working ensemble

Music is something shared from early childhood through singing, rhythm and play. Though it is difficult to determine what music experience all children have had from primary school, generally speaking most students have already experienced rhythm through clapping, song or even percussion instruments right through to melody through song. From this point, it is vital for us to move onto developing techniques within these areas. This can mean correct finger technique right through to being able to play and hold a rhythm over a cross rhythm, metronome beat and even being able to identify and read notation and tab. From this basis we are able to then develop other musical skills such as performance and composition. As well as this, students will be aware of some key elements of music, giving students the fundamental building blocks to create and compose within the topic they are studying, whether that be through Samba, improvisation, music technology, keyboard skills, classical composition or advert music. This all links directly to the requirements of the National Curriculum, where students should have experienced composition and performance through the act of doing and learning about the diverse culture and history of music

To continue to develop our KS3 students, we now explore these areas and themes introduced in Year 7 in much more detail, most specifically through the introduction of music technology composition. This enables students to explore composition through technology and allows students to gain an understanding of how music can be used in film, advert and in day to day life. In order to continue to develop their learning from both Year 7 and KS2, we also begin to introduce more techniques into their learning. This is achieved through introducing the ukulele; a different form of notation and playing, as well as more complex rhythmical patterns through African Djembe, as well as continuing to build their knowledge on keyboard skills through introducing more complex notation such as chord progressions and accidentals. This allows us to then scaffold composition allowing a much more complex understanding of how to compose and select chords and melody lines. Throughout Year 8 students continue to develop in terms of the required elements of the National Curriculum, but extending their music theory knowledge, listening, appraising and performance skills.

Throughout year 9 we will build upon students’ prior knowledge through introducing students to blues, with a focus on developing their improvisation skills that will now allow them to embed improvisation and technique into not only their compositions, but also their performances. As well as this, students will continue (in conjunction with the NC) to develop their listening and appraising skills, allowing them to identify the key elements of music in terms of style, genre, tempo, dynamics, and timbre our key elements of music which have been embedded since KS2.

The students are gradually introduced to the topics they will study throughout their examination years by firstly exploring genres of music, and then moving on to using these experiences and the contrasting genres to develop, plan and perform their own sets for their external assessments. Through the development of deeping skills on instruments through instrumental lessons, rigorous practice and self-reflection. Students will now add depth in terms of level and ability of pieces they are performing. Students will also have more challenges in terms of showcases they organise. They will also now use skills from music technology to select and choose units that are suitable for their own skills.

In year 11 the students have now gained the experiences they need to enable them to plan and prepare their own concerts and analyse health and safety. Through their exploration of genres in year 10, they are now able to select an appropriate repertoire for their own performances. This academic year within music is very student-led. The tutor will be watching for musician qualities and this is developed from year 10 all the way through to year 11.