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Thursday, 24th May, 2012

Teaching Drama

TEACHING DRAMA IS NOW AVAILABLE IN DIGITAL FORMAT!

- For the digital version of the magazine, click here and search for 'teaching drama'

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For downloadable SCHEMES OF WORK (including account set-up) and supporting material,
please scroll to the bottom of this text, and click on the tab labelled 'schemes of work'.

Teaching Drama, written for teachers by teachers, practitioners and playwrights, is a unique twice-termly magazine resource for anyone involved in drama and performing arts education. Published just before the start of each term and half term for maximum benefit, Teaching Drama offers a dynamic mixture of news, features, schemes of work and in-depth reviews. It offers inspiring ideas and advice for all drama teachers, whether you're newly-qualified or a head of department.

Our schemes of work section (now available online for subscribers) provides material you can use directly in your own teaching, while the features section keeps you abreast of current debates, developments and initiatives within the drama teaching profession, as well as providing innovative ways to expand and enhance your teaching.

Each issue contains six substantial schemes of work, covering KS2, KS3, GCSE, AS, A2, IB, BTEC and the Creative and Media Diploma. Some are specific to certain exam boards; others can be used more widely.

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Schemes of Work

Issue 42 (Summer Term 2 - 11/12)

Key Stage 2: Theatre fit for a King: Enhancing study of the Tudors through drama

Author: Helen Day

There is plenty within the Tudor period to capture young imaginations. Battles and beheadings, imprisonments, rumours and plotting ... these are naturally the stuff of great drama. Focusing on a few key figures and events from the period, this scheme uses games, imaginative exercises and theatrical techniques to encourage students to explore beyond the timeline. It requires them to think as Tudors thought, and as they put themselves into the shoes of others they will develop a greater insight into the stories within the history books,as well as developing their speaking, listening and group discussion and interaction skills. Read less...
Key Stage 3: On your marks: The drama of the Olympic Games

Author: David Porter

The 2012 Olympic Games, Paralympic Games and linked cultural events provide rich opportunities to offer absorbing, stimulating material to finish off the KS3 school year and confirm which students might benefit from Drama KS4 option. Sports, personalities, facilities, money and taxes, VIPs, security, transport infrastructure ... stories are happening, every one a source of dramatic potential, involving characters, plot and skills, which are drama bedrocks. Read less...; Speaking skills: A series of drama workshops

Author: Patrick Salvadori

The following series of workshops is designed to ‘liberate’ students from the strictures of their limited use of voice and physical expressiveness in their daily lives. What underlies the approach is the assumption that we under-use our voices and our physical expressiveness in our everyday lives. Conventional behaviour and interaction both in our working lives and in our social relationships focuses on a very limited use of our vocal and physical expression. The drama studio is an excellent venue for ‘playing around’ with alternative vocal possibilites and the range of sounds that can be derived from everyday vocabulary and idiomatic expressions. Read less...
Key Stage 4: Classic and contemporary character studies

Author: Alicia Pope

The aim of this scheme of work is to focus closely on the creation of character and to encourage students to think carefully about how to create convincing characters. The work is mainly based on short extracts of text, used first of all for students to examine closely a character in order physically and mentally to recreate them. Secondly, students will work off-text to devise their own pieces of work based around the characters to whom they have been introduced. Read less...
Key Stage 5: The Chorus: Developing approaches to traditional and modern work

Author: Mat Walters

The dramatic use of a chorus often invites associations with the theatre of Ancient Greece, and use of this particular stylistic device presents a great many challenges to the actors and director involved. However, developing the necessary skills to present a chorus onstage successfully, and also reflect more modern, versatile uses of the chorus, can be a genuinely exciting and imaginative prospect. Read less...

Issue 41 (Summer Term 1 - 11/12)

Key Stage 2: Living and breathing Ancient Egypt

Author: Helen Day

A study of Ancient Egypt offers an exciting, colourful and intriguing glimpse into an ancient culture that was very different from our own. Students will invariably be excited by the death ritual of mummification, and will be inspired as they become detective archaeologists, trying to unravel the mysteries of a lost tomb. Alongside the facts and figures the students will absorb as they look at this period, there is much natural drama with which to bring this topic to life, and a great deal of learning-based fun can be had through playfully exploring using characterisation, games and
improvisation. Read less...
Key Stage 3: Cover Lesson - Journey to the moon

Author: Mat Walters

This lesson is built around a journey into space allowing students to create drama through mime, improvisation and work as a team. The creation of the ship, the dangers involved, the tension of countdown and lift off, and potential alien encounters allow experimentation with storytelling and small group work. Read less...; The Flood: exploring reactions to environmental change

Author: Mat Walters

The concept of a sudden, catastrophic flood, whether through climate change, polar ice cap melting, freak weather, or just as the focus for developing a narrative over a number of lessons, provides teachers with a wealth of possibilities at KS3. The aim of this scheme of work is to examine reactions to this possibility, in both comic and serious, small group and whole class improvisations, while also providing opportunities for research, basic physical theatre and serious, emotional, naturalistic acting. Read less...
Key Stage 4: Mini-musical

Author: Jo Beynon

Musicals are a unique form of communication. How often do people in real life resolve conflicts through song and dance? When was the last time someone in the staffroom burst into an intricately choreographed musical number?
Musicals offer an upbeat and wholesome way to forget your troubles and disappear into the fantastical world of song and dance. There’s something infectious about listening to people sing and dance and act their hearts out. The tunes get stuck in your head and you can sing along. Read less...; Movement

Author: Alicia Pope

The use of dance, movement and physical theatre in GCSE work can make an exciting change for students and provide a whole new area for exploration. The idea of dance and physical movement can, however, be daunting for some students, so this scheme of work uses both devising and text-based work to help spark students’ ideas. Read less...; Persecution

Author: Siobhan Foster

This scheme has been designed for the Edexcel Unit 1 practical exam. It is written as one six-hour workshop, but could easily be broken up into two or more sessions or even single lessons. It allows students to explore the topic of persecution in relation to a variety of historical and current events, while also applying the use of key Drama skills. I have delivered the scheme this year to a GCSE group of a widely mixed ability, including SEN and G&T students. All the students were able to engage with the material in an imaginative and creative way and achieved their target grade or above. Read less...
Key Stage 5: Devising

Author: Vickie Hatcher

This scheme of work aims to prepare students for devising their own piece of theatre (Edexcel Unit 3) by giving them a wide range of open-ended stimuli to choose from. Each explorative session allows students to explore a new stimulus and at the end to choose the one that they feel has the most potential to be developed into a piece of theatre. One major advantage of this is that it allows the students to work with the stimulus that most interests them, and generally leads to more variety of work if there is more than one group within the class. Read less...

Issue 40 (Spring Term 2 - 11/12)

Key Stage 2/3: Stage movement: Promoting successful transition across key stages

Author: Deborah O'Donoghue

This scheme is not so much a module or unit of work, as it is an approach bank, aimed at providing advice on a range of ways to promote successful transition from KS2 into secondary school, with a drama focus. It is targeted at teachers who have been teaching for two to five years approximately, but is appropriate for anyone who is seeking extra challenges, or looking for ways to make the work they already carry out more strategic and wide reaching. Read less...
Key Stage 3: Celtic Myths

Author: Alicia Pope

Celtic mythology is a fantastic stimulus for KS3 Drama. However, like Greek or Roman mythology, it is also a vast topic. For that reason, this scheme of work is based on a range of myths from a collection compiled by Irish author Sam McBratney. The text is readily available on Amazon. The scheme is based on four myths and divided up into hour-long sessions based on these. The scheme uses a variety of techniques to explore the texts including devising, improvisation, monologue, tableaux and direct address to the audience. Each myth has a suggested timescale which can be shortened or extended to suit you and your students. The final session has suggestions to lead students through an assessment piece. Read less...; Cover Lesson - The Dragon

Author: Mat Walters

This lesson is built around an imagined life cycle of a dragon, allowing the students to create drama through mime, improvisation and working with text. The journey, from a small creature poking through the shell of its egg, through the first attempts to fly and finally becoming an aged and unpredictable beast in a cave, allows students to experiment with storytelling ideas as well as working in a small group. Read less...
Key Stage 4: Making Drama out of a Crisis

Author: David Porter

How often in a drama lesson do KS4 students turn to one or more of the television soap operas for their inspiration? Too often? Well, this scheme makes a virtue of that. It uses soap-style settings and some techniques to develop characterisation. Without relying on regurgitating EastEnders, Emmerdale or Coronation Street, or even a period piece like Downton Abbey, the scheme sets groups of ordinary people in a series of difficulties which allow full exploration and development of characters to meet the needs of GCSE drama exams. These six lessons are suitable for Edexcel GCSE Unit 1, or can be slightly modified for Y10 foundation work, or at the end of KS3. Read less...; Twelfth Night

Author: Naomi Morgan

This scheme aims to explore Shakespeare''s Twelfth Night through a series of practical workshops and to consolidate this knowledge into essay format for the Unit 1 Drama written paper, Section B option Study and performance of a scripted play. This Unit could also easily be adapted for Section A option, Practical work completed during the course, but please note that you cannot use this scheme for both sections A and B of the written paper as the choice of play must be different. It is set out over seven weeks, i.e. one half term, and comprises 14 one-hour lessons, plus additional homework time. Read less...
Key Stage 5: The Wonderful World of Dissocia

Author: Vickie Hatcher

This is a very mature and adult play to explore with AS level students, but it challenges them to explore theatre in new ways and I have found that students love the huge contrast between Act 1 and Act 2. Before introducing the play I use the first lesson to explore the idea of in-yer-face theatre, which this play most certainly falls under. Note: I have not included learning objectives for each session; instead I have included generic learning objectives which are reworded from the assessment criteria in the specification to ensure that students know what they are being marked on. I replace the eight elements with the appropriate focus in the session. Where homework is not set it should comprise the completion of
notes. Read less...

Issue 39 (Spring Term 1 - 11/12)

Key Stage 2: The Aztecs: The rise and fall of a civilisation

Author: Helen Day

A study of the Aztecs is full of drama. This mighty civilisation rose and fell with epic pace: it was wiped out almost overnight and then slowly rediscovered over several hundred years. It is the stuff of sensational history, and therefore weaving elements of drama and performance into the teaching of the topic is, in many ways, a natural thing to do.
This scheme of work introduces the Aztecs, and provides an overview of their history and culture. Using a wide range of practical drama exercises, it will give a sense of the Aztec timeline, underline some key historical figures, and it will take the topic out of the textbooks and bring it to life in the classroom. It is ideal as part of a KS2 world history study, and broadly covers all aspects of the KS2 National Curriculum drama objectives. There are also links to the writing, speaking, listening and group discussion and interaction objectives within KS2 English. Read less...
Key Stage 3: Cover lesson - Hansel and Gretel

Author: Alicia Pope

This cover lesson allows a drama specialist to explore a range of skills but is also ideal for a non-specialist. The lesson is designed to be practical but can also be used as a discussion/written lesson if necessary. The stimulus for this lesson is Grimm''s Hansel and Gretel adapted by Carol Ann Duffy. Read less...; Refugee Boy by Benjamin Zephaniah

Author: Alicia Pope

The concept behind this scheme of work is to explore a subject that most students will have heard about, but with which many will be very unfamiliar. Students will all have some ideas about what a refugee is but will not necessarily have a great deal of knowledge about refugees or much understanding of why people become refugees. This scheme is intended to explore the experiences of refugees as people, rather than seeing them as headlines or statistics, and to highlight to students that young people just like them are included in the label refugee or asylum seeker. As a teacher you will need some knowledge of the text but it is not necessary for students to have any more details than a plot summary and the various sections of text included here. Each session is based on an hour-long lesson, but the scheme is flexible and sessions can run into each other or be paused to continue next time. Read less...
Key Stage 4: Creating a show: assignment brief

Author: David Duthie

The beauty of the Diploma qualification in Creative and Media is the real-life experience that the course gives its students, which directly replicates the work of professionals in the industry. At Level 3, students will always be working towards an actual production, which makes the work exciting and relevant to them rather than hypothetical. Students operate as if they are a professional performance company and take on all the responsibilities of producing a performance. This approach means that the students will be assessed on practical demonstration of their performance skills but also on how they ‘set up and run’ a show, running the event as well as the performance. They must market the production through a poster design, press release and using viral marketing including social networking. They must assess and document the risks and hazards posed by the production and how to reduce these risks. They must also research and apply the techniques of performance practitioners and demonstrate an understanding of how these methods have developed over time through theatrical history. Lastly, they are required to collect and analyse audience feedback and use this effectively to evaluate their performance and implications for future improvement. Read less...; Facebook for learning? Using Facebook as a GCSE stimulus

Author: Deborah O'Donoghue

Love it, or hate it; have five friends, or five hundred, the social networking site, Facebook, provides the stimulus for this module. Lesson by lesson, students are invited to explore the way users interact with the site and with each other. In particular, the scheme deals with dissembling, appearances and dramatic irony. Suitable for KS4, here you will find a range of assessment opportunities. Students explore a number of stimuli to create dramatic effects through improvisation and devised work. Links are made to the design of the National Theatre performance of a scripted play (Chatroom). Some students could follow this up by working on an assessed design element to support performances. In addition, you could use the scheme as a preparation or introductory unit leading to assessment/examination, based on the script of Chatroom. Furthermore, students can write about their peers performances for their live theatre responses. Read less...; The dark side brightens up KS4 drama

Author: David Porter

Finding absorbing, stimulating material is vital in enabling students to learn the dramatic skills needed for their GCSE Drama exams. To push their creative boundaries, broadening the horizons of their ideas can be a significant help in that process. Many teenagers are naturally drawn to the darker side of the human psyche. Without ignoring the need to point them towards the light, and towards optimism, redemption and hope, there is fruitful and innovative work to be found in some of the heavier shades of grey.
The six lessons in this scheme of work explore some of the less obvious areas of life that appeal to the teenage mind, and they are suitable for Edexcel GCSE Unit 1, as part of a foundation Year 10 course or any other GCSE programme where new material can be explored. The scheme focuses on developing characters in challenging situations. Read less...
Key Stage 5: Linking practical lessons to the demands of the written exam using Antigone as a key example

Author: Mat Walters

The aim of this scheme of work is to provide AQA Drama and Theatre Studies students with an approach that shows how practical work can be turned into successful exam essays. Students must be aware of the kind of exam questions that they are likely to face. The approach taken here of developing essay planning ideas is appropriate to all of the set texts for DRA 1 section B. This scheme of work uses Antigone as an example and adopts a more traditional setting and time period for the play, but modern transpositions are perfectly acceptable, as long as they are clearly justified and appropriate to the demands of the play and the playwright''s intentions.
A spiky-haired rebellious Antigone in Doc Martens will work as successfully as one with long, dark hair gently tied back, wearing a chiton and barefoot.A good essay on Antigone should bring the chosen extract of the play to life on stage for the examiner, show an understanding of context and convey meaning to an audience. For an acting-based essay, it should be possible to give that essay to an actor and ask them to follow the ideas the essay contains in order to bring the chosen character to life. An essay is essentially a plan of how to bring a character to life at a specific moment in the play. If the ideas are clear and appropriate, then an actor should be easily able to follow them. Read less...

Issue 38 (Autumn Term 2 - 11/12)

Key Stage 2: How things changed: life in Great Britain during World War II

Author: Helen Day

A study of the impact of the Second World War on Great Britain with KS2 students will always provide rich material with which to inspire their young imaginations. The experience of children living at the time, and the great changes they witnessed both in their own lives and those of their parents and families, provides a vast amount of interesting stimuli for work that extends beyond a history study and across the curriculum. Drama is a wonderful tool with which to bring this key period of the twentieth century to life, and can be used to aid insight into the hardships and
challenges faced by people at the time, as well as to teach key facts about the reasons behind the war, Britain�s role in it, and the impact it had on day-to-day life.
This scheme of work offers themed games and exercises that can be used to explore key areas within the topic, and encourages insight into how people may have felt as their worlds were turned upside down by the onset of war. It is written to build skills from lesson to lesson, however it is also easy to dip in and out of should you only wish to use parts of it. The scheme naturally requires students to develop their speaking, listening and responding skills, and to participate in group discussions and interaction. It has been devised to meet the KS2 drama objectives, and there are extension activities that link to KS2 literacy objectives. Read less...
Key Stage 3: Cover lesson - Island

Author: David Cross

This lesson is built around an island, a classic dramatic structure both for creating a drama through improvisation or working with a text such as Shakespeare''s The Tempest. The contained world of an island provides rich dramatic possibilities e.g. a community isolated where the rules and norms of society can be altered or warped. Read less...; Page to stage

Author: Vickie Hatcher

This scheme of work is targeted at Year 9 students, aiming to give students a taster of, and help prepare them for, GCSE Drama. Over a series of sessions students are introduced to three different plays and explore how to move from page to stage through initial exploration leading to working independently. If you think that the featured scripts are not appropriate for your students, then you may choose to swap them but still use the crux of the scheme. We have found at Chichester High School for Girls that the three plays complement each other well as they contrast with each other. If you are teaching in a mixed school you may want to swap the play or allow the students to explore what happens if the gender of the characters is changed. Read less...; The Tulip Touch

Author: Alicia Pope

Anne Fine‘s The Tulip Touch focuses on the bizarre and increasingly disturbed behaviour of Tulip, a young girl with no friends and a violent home life. This scheme of work is aimed largely at Year 9 although it may be appropriate for the end of Year 8. It uses the text as a starting point for devised work as well as using extracts from the text itself for students to work on and use to create their own pieces. It is not intended that students will read or study the whole text; rather that they will be given a summary of the story and that the teacher will supply all the other information or sections of script they require when necessary. As a teacher, you will obviously need to have read the text and it would be helpful, although not essential, to be familiar with the novel. Each session is based on lessons of an hour but the timings are flexible and if something is met with great enthusiasm then it can be extended; many of the main activities could lend themselves to assessed work. Read less...
Key Stage 5: How to plan for the AS AQA Drama and Theatre Studies practical exam

Author: Mat Walters

The aim of this scheme of work is to give Drama and Theatre Studies teachers a series of strategies to help with the practical exam term. It will suggest starting points and ways of reducing time spent searching for appropriate scripts, ways of coping with the Supporting Notes, how to set achievable practical targets that can be related to the preparation grade and emphasise the importance of preexam showcases.
The time frame and techniques suggested are simple and could be used for any influencing practitioner at AS and are also appropriate for A2. The AQA specification recommends at least 8 weeks (40 hours) for the AS practical exam. This scheme of work will suggest 9 weeks. Every lesson of those 9 weeks is allocated just to rehearsing the Unit 2 project, so teachers need to be careful to plan set text and live theatre response work around this. At my college, students have 4 lessons a
week, totalling 4 hours 20 minutes. Students are set targets on a weekly basis. The achievement of those targets can contribute to their preparation grade and is a powerful motivator. Emphasise the importance of lunchtime and evening rehearsal if this is a possibility. How you organise this time
will also depend on the number of candidates you have. Read less...; Kabuki

Author: Helen Stanley

The Theatre in the World component of IB Theatre is the aspect of the course most likely to frighten British drama teachers (apart from the specification document itself, of course, which is a convoluted and often opaque chunk of prose). GCSE and A level courses do not require knowledge of world theatre traditions, with the exception of Greek Theatre (which is considered a world theatre tradition by the IBO, and which is an excellent focus for exploration, but it will not provide your students with sufficient contact with world theatre just in itself you need more). Depending on your personal areas of interest and the context in which you teach, you might have included some non-western theatre within your KS3 schemes of work, but the expectation in terms of sophistication of understanding within the IB is so high that your KS3 expertise is not going to help you much when teaching the IB. I know that when we first sat down to thrash out a programme of study for IB Theatre, my colleague Richard Coe and I felt nervous about Theatre in the World, but we also felt quite inspired and excited about broadening our expertise in response to the demands of teaching the course. Getting experts and practitioners in to lead workshops with your students is a fantastic way of introducing them to world theatre traditions, but there is a cost implication, which means that most of us cannot rely on visiting experts to provide our IB students with the breadth of knowledge they require. We have to take it on.I have developed this scheme of work over the past three years, beginning from little more than a research task in year 1 to a full exploration in year 3. I was no Kabuki expert when I first began teaching it, and I am still not an expert now, although I feel much more confident with the material. I had some knowledge of the art form, and an enduring fascination with Japanese culture which has grown as a result of my work developing this scheme. What I aim to do in it is to enable students to use Kabuki-specific terminology with some confidence, to identify key conventions, to be able to talk and write about Kabuki. Read less...

Issue 37 (Autumn Term 1 - 11/12)

Key Stage 2: Devise and create a puppet performance

Author: Helen Day

For as long as I have been teaching drama to children and young people, I have included the use of puppets in both games and performances. In the latter, puppets can provide characters that may otherwise be difficult to act or represent. (I once used puppets as Oompa Loompas in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, for example.) In games and exercises, puppets can help to give a voice to students who are sometimes too shy or self-conscious to act or speak in front of the rest of the class, and they can also be helpful in calming the influences of overly confident, outspoken or dominating individuals.
They allow students to see a clear and obvious separation between themselves and the character they are playing/puppeteering, which can be incredibly useful when trying to bring alive or explore a particular story, theme, issue or situation.
This scheme of work is a very practical, hands-on one – including the devising of a story, the making of some simple puppets and the delivery of a devised performance. However, it can also easily be adapted to explore a specific text that the class is reading or studying, and to extend the areas of DT and art and design that are covered. It could also be used to enhance a strand of work in PSHE or to reinforce a cultural or historical learning topic. As with most drama schemes, speaking, listening, and group discussion and interaction are naturally explored, and I have also made suggestions for written exercises that could accompany the project. Teachers who really embrace the performance element of this scheme of work may even wish to explore creating a musical soundtrack with the class, linking to the creating and developing musical ideas section of the National Curriculum. Read less...
Key Stage 3: Flexible cover lesson template

Author: Vickie Hatcher

At Chichester High School for Girls we use one cover lesson which is reusable by changing the theme/topic; this saves a lot of planning but also allows the cover-lesson supervisors to recognise the structure, allowing for stronger drama cover lessons.

Topic/Theme

This is changeable. Ideas include:
* Dreams
ZZ Nightmares
* Fear
* Friendship
* Magic
* Bullying
* First day at school. Read less...; Technical Theatre

Author: Ali Warren

There can be little doubt that the professional theatre is becoming an increasingly visual and indeed sensual (in its truest sense) medium. Recently, critically-acclaimed productions of War Horse and Romeo and Juliet at the RSC made full use of the opportunities that modern technology can add to the stage picture. And our leading innovative theatre companies – Kneehigh, Punchdrunk, Complicite – are as much about the visual element of the production. The idea of going to ‘hear’ a play as in Shakespeare’s day is long behind us – we go to ‘see’ a play and we want to see something special.
And yet, drama in the classroom tends to be focused on the words. Young people, influenced by television drama, fail to see the possibilities of drama’s visual side, and model their work on soap operas and a kitchen table. This isn’t because they are without the imagination to explore these areas – we just don’t give them the tools to do so.
This scheme of work grew out of attempts to teach all my students about the technical aspects of theatre work so that they can use the ideas themselves in creating their own work. And this isn’t just for those who are technically minded – I believe actors should have a basic understanding of the power of a well-placed lantern and this understanding is almost essential for the devising process.
The scheme starts with a stage management exercise, because mining a text for design information is a crucial skill. It goes on to consider lighting effects, thinks about sound and props, and then allows the students to have a go themselves.
Don’t worry – the scheme is designed to happen anywhere. You don’t need access to specialist equipment – though you’ll use a lot of tape and need a few torches ... Read less...
Key Stage 4: Drama in the making

OCR GCSE - Using image as stimulus

Author: David Cross

The new OCR GCSE Drama specification has two controlled assessment units: A581 Page to Stage and A582 Drama in the Making. Page to Stage is based on realising a section of text, basically a piece of repertoire. Drama in the Making is based on a stimulus, issue or theme. The scheme of work that follows is for Drama in the Making.
This is the part of the new OCR specification that differs most from the old course. That course
had a unit based on a stimulus, but there was often a tendency to concentrate on the performance aspects. Indeed some centres chose to use a script as the stimu lus. In many cases students were following the same format and ‘territory’ they’d covered in their script work. The same knowledge and skills could be utilised for both stimulus and script work. The old course deliberately blurred the boundaries between working on a script and a stimulus. If a centre chose to, they could adopt
an approach whereby the two units could be virtually identical in terms of what was asked of students. Read less...
Key Stage 5: Blood Wedding

AQA AS/A2

Author: Mat Walters

The aim of this scheme of work is to give AQA A2 Drama and Theatre Studies students a general understanding of how to approach the DRA 3 section B director/staging question, with specific focus on the first scene of the play Blood Wedding by Federico García Lorca.
This two-lesson introduction builds strategies appropriate for any of the section B texts. It will examine how to get students to cover key aspects of the Unit 3 section B mark schemes, while still encouraging a personal, imaginative approach with ‘directorial strategies and good range of fully developed ideas’. Reminding students that they are staging a short section of the set text, and not the entire play is
vital. Essays littered with irrelevant background detail about Lorca’s life and struggles with fascists and his own sexuality will not gain marks and this is not relevant research. Students are often not sure what they should be drawing a sketch of – a set design appropriate for the entire action of the play, or one which just represents the set for the short exam extract, or a combination of both. There is also the
challenge of lighting and sound design, costume design and, finally, the demonstration of something called a ‘creative overview’. Read less...; Making the right choice

BTEC Level 2 Extended Certificate Performing Arts (acting)

Author: Jo Beynon

This scheme of work fully addresses unit B4 Acting Skills and Techniques. It could also tackle unit B6, Devising Plays, but this would make it a larger project for learners as they would need more time to focus on all assessment criteria for both units. The assignment requires learners to imagine they are forming a professional theatre company commissioned to produce performances for a theatre in education tour to primary schools. The performances must carry a moral or social message to their target audience. Read less...