Primary Drama Curriculum: A possible curriculum for five to seven-year-olds

By the age of five, children should have had indoor and outdoor opportunities for sociodramatic play, hopefully including interactions with a teacher or teaching assistant in role. They will have experienced active storytelling, using stories, nursery rhymes, action rhymes and picture books; the children will probably have made and used simple puppets, incorporated story sacks and ambiguous props such as scarves and boxes in their retellings of stories they know and ones they have created themselves.

They will probably have played dramatic games together, involving make-believe, imitation and mimicry. These will usually require the children to learn the importance of turn-taking and collaboration, both of which are skills required for drama throughout the curriculum. They may have seen and responded to a live or recorded performance of some sort, such as a visit from a puppeteer. These interactions and opportunities for storytelling are the foundations of drama, which can be developed throughout their primary years. A successful Drama curriculum can help support and guide this.

Why things need to change

In England, Drama is weakly placed within the English curriculum in a way that serves spoken language, writing and reading. It can too easily become a series of instances of simply ‘hot-seating’ characters, with some ‘freeze-frames’ and ‘thought-tracking’. A Drama curriculum helps ensure continuity and progression of learning. Local authority schools must deliver the national curriculum. If a school designs its own drama curriculum, it will also need to fit with the school's overall curriculum content and approach. Drama is always about something. As a result, it can either be taught as a standalone subject and/or in conjunction with other subjects, such as English/History/PSHE and Relationships Education.

How to place drama at the centre of an integrated curriculum

Five to six-year-olds could create a class pictorial map of Storyland (Geography/English), before travelling there with their teacher in role (Drama). They can use and apply their knowledge there, meeting various characters and helping solve their problems, (Drama/PSHE).

Six and seven-year-olds learning about the Great Fire of London (History) could look at a painting of it projected onto the wall (Art). They could enter the picture in turn and freeze (Drama: tableau/freeze-frame). The scene could then come alive (Drama: improvisation), with the teacher as a boatman, who might be persuaded to row them to safety (Drama/PSHE).

Much of the curriculum for five and seven olds is taught and learned in thematic ways, through topics such as castles, transport, weather, super-heroes and space. Drama can be used to help children engage with and collaboratively explore these themes, while also learning about dramatic practices and techniques.

In English, drama supports oracy and active listening and can be used to enter and explore different types of texts, whether that's a fairy tale or a story from real life. In children's writing, drama can provide stimuli, content, contexts, purposes and audiences. Drama can be evident within a school's English curriculum but will preferably have its own unique, explicit space in the curriculum. This will help ensure that all children get a broad range of age-appropriate drama opportunities and experiences, enabling continuity and progression of learning.

What should we be aiming for?

It is expected that children between five and seven years old will have opportunities to:

• Role-play with others, improvising and building on each other's ideas, in a range of contexts and situations, and in different roles
• Participate ‘in role’ during ‘whole-class drama’, sometimes interacting with a teacher in role
• Retell and re-enact moments, scenes and stories based on material they have read or tales from personal experiences
• Devise story openings and alternative story endings, re-enacting them for others during the lesson
• Actively engage with characters, settings, situations and events in role
• Actively participate in a range of drama games that require imitation, mimicry, facial expression and voice, gesture, movement and stillness
• Explore and consider the effect, of using different voices, facial expressions, gestures and movements
• Participate in a range of drama strategies, such as freeze-frame, tableau, thought-tracking, hot-seating, rumours, eavesdropping, small-group playmaking and performance carousel
• Devise a still image, both individually and with a group, and present/perform it during the lesson
• Improvise a short scene in role in pairs and groups
• Make use of simple props, visual aids and technology
• Devise and briefly rehearse a short scene (in pairs and groups) and re-enact it for others during the lesson
• Rehearse and perform short scenes, including teacher-directed scripts, for a familiar external audience, such as other classes or parents/carers
• Share thoughts, observations, ideas, responses and feelings about their own performances and that of their peers
• Identify and describe any drama activities and live or recorded theatre performances that they have experienced outside school.

Storyland article: patricebaldwin.net/free-lessons

Teachers TV: KS1 Drama and Maths in Storyland: bit.ly/3Acu2bY

Drama curriculum links: patricebaldwin.net/curriculum

Next issue: a possible Drama curriculum for seven to nine-year-olds