Drama · Key Stage 3 · £4.99

Year 7
Drama
Scheme of Work

Six half-termly units across one academic year, written backwards from what Year 8 assumes on entry. The year runs silent, then physical, then vocal, then somebody else’s words, then their own words, then an audience. Two units in which nobody has to speak: that is the load-bearing decision of the year and the single best thing you can do for a class arriving from twelve different primary schools.

£4.99The Year 7 scheme: 6 half-termly units, 66 pages

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Schools that have bought from Empower Educators include Nottingham High School, Northampton High School GDST and Sutton Valence School.

The whole key stage: KS3 Drama scheme of work

Everything else this site has for Drama: Drama teaching resources

1aEnsemble, Space and the Still Image
1bPhysical Storytelling: Mime, Movement and Narration
2aVoice, Body and Character
2bOff the Page: Working with a Script
3aDevising from a Stimulus
3bPerforming to an Audience, and Saying Why

Ten sections per unit, in the same order every time. Lessons are one row each rather than a page each, enough to teach from and not so much that it cannot be maintained across a department.

Drama has no programme of study at key stage 3. It is statutory, but only inside English, and exactly one sentence in the whole national curriculum describes drama practice at this key stage. This book quotes that sentence, maps every unit to it honestly, and then says plainly that everything else is a curriculum design decision. The Curriculum and Assessment Review found that the absence is precisely why school drama curricula vary so much. A scheme that pretends the requirement exists is no use to the head of department who has to defend theirs.

Six lessons are written out in full, one per unit — timings, what the teacher actually says, and what to do when it goes wrong — so that a non-specialist can teach a drama lesson well at the first attempt. With a warm-up bank indexed by purpose, a seventy-five-term glossary, and three original scripts printed at the back that the school may photocopy without limit.

Written to: The statutory key stage 3 English programme of study (DfE, 2014) — drama has no programme of study of its own
Intended for: heads of drama, subject leaders and every teacher who has to deliver it, specialist or not
Extent: 66 pages · 26 sections

The sequence

What this scheme of work covers, unit by unit

The 6 units of the Year 7 Drama Scheme of Work, in teaching order, with the term each one runs in and the question it is built to answer.

1a
Ensemble, Space and the Still Image
Autumn 1 · approx. 7 weeks · September – October
How does a group of people make something that none of them could make alone?
1b
Physical Storytelling: Mime, Movement and Narration
Autumn 2 · approx. 7 weeks · November – December
How do you make an audience believe in something that isn't there?
2a
Voice, Body and Character
Spring 1 · approx. 6 weeks · January – February
What makes an audience believe you are someone else?
2b
Off the Page: Working with a Script
Spring 2 · approx. 6 weeks · February – April
A script gives you the words. Where does everything else come from?
3a
Devising from a Stimulus
Summer 1 · approx. 6 weeks · April – May
How do you turn an object, an image or a headline into a piece of theatre?
3b
Performing to an Audience, and Saying Why
Summer 2 · approx. 6 weeks · June – July
What makes a performance work for an audience — and how do you say why it worked?