Drama & Performing Arts
Curriculum Intent
The Blue Coat drama curriculum aims to provide highly creative, collaborative and fun learning experiences for all students. Our goal is to furnish students with the abilities required to interpret and realise script-based drama and likewise to create original drama from scratch, as young performers, designers and directors. Students move from project to project with application of a spiral curriculum through which skills, knowledge and understanding are established, revisited and added to over their seven years with the school. Our approaches are underpinned structurally by the whole school curriculum design, our CHRIST values, the KS3 national curriculum and the DFE’s ‘Drama Objectives Bank’.
We have selected the AQA GCSE & A Level Drama specifications at Key Stages 4 and 5 as this exam board offers the greatest amount of choice to teachers and students in terms of choice of texts, specialisms and theatre practitioners. Our ambitious project-based approach levers creative experimentation with wide ranging performance and design skills, ever increasing in challenge as students move through the key stages. It likewise levers engagement with multiple styles/genres of scripts, stimuli and issue-based topics offering learning opportunities and insight into a broad range of social, cultural and historical contexts.
We are connected to the professional theatre industry and offer students opportunity to engage with professional artists through seeing live performance, attending workshops and collaborating on projects. We aim to offer “something for everyone”, appealing to and broadening the specific interests of students through the diversity of opportunities drama and theatre has to offer.
Curriculum Documents
Teaching and Learning
In Drama & Performing Arts, we deliver an ambitious, inclusive curriculum that ensures all students access the full breadth of content. Our teaching vision focuses on high expectations and embedding the 3Rs: Ready, Respectful, Responsible. Lessons follow the school’s Blue Coat approach; explaining and modeling, do and practice, and using the 4forAll Toolkit: key words/reading, time management, chunking/checking, questioning, and providing appropriate verbal, written and visual feedback. Reading is a key strategy, with staff using “Jump In,” the “3-Second Rule,” and “Echo Reading” techniques to support learning.
How can parents help?
Taking students to see live theatre. There are a number of fabulous venues right on your doorstep with performances suitable to all needs and tastes:
- Belgrade Theatre
- Warwick Arts Centre
- Royal Shakespeare Company
- Birmingham Rep
- Birmingham Hippodrome
- The Alexandra, Birmingham
- Royal Spa Centre
- Priory Theatre
Reading to and with pupils. Encouraging them to read play texts alongside other important literature will help students to explore skills like characterisation and textual analysis. Encouraging students to read aloud is vital for effective literacy development and play texts can be a really imaginative way of doing that.
For GCSE students, websites like the BBC’s GCSE Bitesize have some useful breakdowns of the course’s main areas of study https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/examspecs/zrnjwty
Theatre websites often have interesting resources that can help students and families develop their understanding of literature. The RSC learning areas is a good example of this https://www.rsc.org.uk/learn
Most importantly, encourage everyone in the home to experiment with their use of voice, physicality and creative expression. It is only though practise that we can develop as performers.
Options
- AQA GCSE Drama
- AQA A Level Drama & Theatre
- Edexcel Level 3 Performing Arts (Acting)
Enrichment & Experiences
Blue Coat Theatre produces at least three annual dramatic productions. There is an annual musical open to all students, recent productions include ‘Legally Blonde’, ‘Grease’ and ‘Drop the Mic’. There is a production for students in key stages 4 and 5 such as ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’, ‘ The Lady Killers’ and ‘Merchant of Venice’. Also, an annual production for students in key stage 3, recently ‘The Comedy of Errors’, ‘Matilda Jr’ and ‘The Canterbury Tales’. The school took a production to the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in 2023, ‘Merchant of Venice’. There are also bespoke community drama projects in partnership with a range of organisations and student directed productions.
