Drama at Mary Immaculate High school, no matter what level pupils engage with the lessons, strives to encourage confidence, creativity and an opportunity for pupils to explore topics and ideas through a practical way. The Drama curriculum has been designed to develop key skills through a variety of different topics that strengthen pupils' ability to perform effectively and evaluate work as both a performer and audience member.
KS3 Drama
As pupils begin their Drama lessons in Year 7, the key focus of the work is how to use key skills (Physical and Vocal) to portray a character effectively. Pupils are given different scripts and stimuli to generate their own work to apply these key skills to different circumstances. As pupils become familiar with these skills, they then begin to look at Ancient Greek theatre and how we are influenced today not by only their theatre but also their culture, society, and beliefs. Pupils then explore a scheme of work that is based around the narrative of 'The Island of Mystery'. This topic asks pupils to think creatively to come up with solutions to problems, work as a group to create performances and to evaluate both themselves and their peers. Year 8 focuses on key skills that are essential for the GCSE Drama course. These include: Script Analysis, Devising Theatre, Characterisation and Theatre evaluation. Year 8 pupils will explore all of these topics through different plays, theatre practitioners and group work.
KS4 Drama
During the three-year course, pupils look at more challenging scripts and theatre practitioners in order to develop their skills and knowledge in preparation for each of the units of the GCSE Course. Unit 1 is worth 40% of the course and involves pupils creating a piece of theatre based on a Theatre Practitioner and being influenced by a stimulus, writing a 750-900 word portfolio of evidence that clearly shows the progression of their ideas to performance and a 1500 word evaluation. Unit 2 asks pupils to explore a script that is assessed by an external moderator, however, due to this element of the course only being worth 20%, there is no written aspect. Lastly, Unit 3 is a written exam which equates to 40% of the overall GCSE Drama grade. This is split into two sections, firstly, section A will ask questions based on rehearsal techniques, design elements and directing which revolves around a chosen text. Section B, is the Live Theatre Review that asks pupils to watch a live piece of theatre and be able to comment on the acting, directing, audience reaction or design.
To find out more information about our GCSE Drama course please check out the link shown below:
