Primary Drama Curriculum: A possible curriculum for nine to eleven-year-olds
Patrice Baldwin
Wednesday, March 1, 2023
In the fifth instalment of Patrice Baldwin's six-part series, the education expert suggests dynamic and engaging ways to bring Drama into the curriculum of other core subjects.
Adobe Stock / Sapunkele
The pitfalls of the current system
England has no curriculum framework for Primary Drama. It has a clearer and stronger curriculum profile within areas of learning in other UK countries. If primary schools don't plan a coherent Drama curriculum, ‘Drama’ can too easily be limited to the Christmas play, an occasional assembly performance and maybe a theatre visit, topped up with an after-school Drama club which not all children can attend or pay for. This is clearly inadequate and will not provide or ensure continuity and progression of learning in Drama for all children.
Primary school Drama is usually taught by class teachers who are not Drama specialists. However, with relevant and appropriate in-service training, primary teachers can teach Drama up for children up to the age of 11 and can use it effectively as a learning medium for teaching other subjects.
Drama across the upper primary curriculum
Drama is always about something and can be used as a helpful tool to teach other subjects. When children are learning any subject through Drama, they should be learning about Drama too. Drama subject leaders may collaborate with other subject leaders to decide where and how Drama may be used to support the teaching of their subjects.
English
Scenes and moments from novels can be re-enacted, explored, held still and interrogated through the use of Drama strategies. Some novels have illustrations that can be re-created, stepped into and brought alive through Drama, in conjunction with the text. Additional images, scenes and dialogue can be created through Drama and may pave the way for various forms of writing linked with the novel. Drama lessons based on The Iron Man by Ted Hughes are available online: http://bit.ly/3XknIYA
Upper primary children can explore narrative poems through Drama. Drama strategies can help them focus actively and interactively together on the poetic language, images and text. Drama lessons based on Beowulf are available online:
Drama can provide a context and stimulus, to get children talking and writing in a range of ways, for different purposes and audiences. Find explanations on how to approach this online:
Second languages
Drama games and role-play scenarios are often used to help children learn vocabulary and practise speaking in a second language. A whole-class drama with the teacher in role too, offiers a linguistically immersive experience.
History
During Drama, children often imagine they are present at significant moments, situations and events in history, whether it's as WW2 evacuees or members of Howard Carter's team, discovering Tutankhamun's tomb. Authentic photographs, documents, reports, telegrams and diaries can inform and help shape the Drama. They can meet historical characters, often with the teacher in role.
PSHE, Relationships and Wellbeing
Drama can be sensitively and constructively focused on real-life situations, issues, personal and social problems, relationships and health, all undertaken in a safely distanced and structured way.
Environmental sustainability
Within imagined worlds, children can explore social and global issues facing humanity. In role, they can consider individual and collective actions, consequences and responsibilities. Drama lessons are available online:
A few suggestions
Here are some Drama expectations for nine to 11-year-olds, which schools may wish to use and/or adapt. Between the ages of nine to 11, children should have opportunities to:
- Use voice, movement and language to sustain and develop a role-play, with partners, groups and the whole class, (including with adults in role).
- Collaboratively influence (in and out of role) the content and direction of group role-play and whole-class drama.
- Use role-play to generate and communicate ideas and explore themes, relationships, social issues and key moments in stories – both fiction and non-fiction – from a range of cultures, communities, times and places, as well as their own stories.
- Explore ways in which facial expressions, movements, gestures and language can communicate different emotions, behaviours and characteristics.
- Devise, rehearse and perform scenes (scripted and unscripted) that sustain and develop characters and plots.
- Use simple props, objects and furniture to represent characters and settings.
- Participate in and experiment with a broad range of drama techniques and strategies, for a variety of purposes and effects.
- Respond critically, evaluatively and developmentally to their own drama and that of others, using appropriate drama and theatre terminology, such as ‘plot’, ‘monologue’, ‘prompt’ and ‘director’.
- Consider whether they are making personal and emotional connections with the characters, themes and/or issues within a drama.
- Explore the use of media and technologies to help them meaningfully communicate thoughts, ideas, feelings, mood and atmosphere to an audience. These could include microphones, dimmed lights, spotlights, recorded sound effects or projected images.
- Experience theatre performances (live and recorded), visit venues and experience input from theatre professionals.
Next issue: Implementing a Primary Drama Curriculum: what subject leaders and teachers need