Drama teaching resources

Drama · KS3 to A Level £4.99

The Theatre Maker’s Craft, Confident Schools

One book for the whole department — the head of drama defending curriculum time and the teacher whose Year 9 group has run the same scene four times and made it no better. What theatrical thinking actually is, how it is built from Year 7 to Year 13, and what separates a student who can perform from one who can make, interpret and evaluate theatre on purpose.

1. 1 Intention
2. 2 Craft
3. 3 Reading
4. 4 Composition
5. 5 Rehearsal
6. 6 Judgement

All four GCSE and all four A Level drama specifications, read in full · 71 pages, 68 sections · For department CPD, planning and curriculum review

Drama · Key Stage 3 £3.99

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, which 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.

1. 1a Ensemble, Space and the Still Image
2. 1b Physical Storytelling: Mime, Movement and Narration
3. 2a Voice, Body and Character
4. 2b Off the Page: Working with a Script
5. 3a Devising from a Stimulus
6. 3b Performing to an Audience, and Saying Why

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

Drama · Key Stage 3 £3.99

Year 8 Drama Scheme of Work

Six half-termly units built on what Year 7's own progression rows promise: pieces get longer, and students select a form rather than practise the one they were given. Physical theatre, the Greek chorus and mask, Shakespeare, melodrama, theatre made for a named audience, and directing. A Midsummer Night's Dream is printed in full and photocopies without limit.

1. 1a Physical Theatre: Telling It With Bodies
2. 1b The Chorus: Greek Theatre and Speaking as One
3. 2a Shakespeare on Its Feet
4. 2b Melodrama: Playing to the Rules
5. 3a Theatre With a Purpose
6. 3b The Director's Chair

The statutory key stage 3 English programme of study (DfE, 2014) — drama has no programme of study of its own · 63 pages, 25 sections · For heads of drama, subject leaders and every teacher who has to deliver it, specialist or not

Drama · Key Stage 3 £3.99

Year 9 Drama Scheme of Work

Six half-termly units on one argument: the student holds the decision and can defend it. Four practitioners' methods, a half term given entirely to watching live theatre, a sustained seven-minute Shakespeare scene, design as a discipline with a real ground plan, fully independent devising, and a company delivering on a fixed date. Romeo and Juliet is printed in full, completing the two Shakespeare plays the English programme of study requires across the key stage.

1. 1a The Practitioners: Four Ways to Make Theatre
2. 1b Live Theatre: Watching Like a Maker
3. 2a Text: Holding a Scene
4. 2b Design: The Fifth Performer
5. 3a Devising on Your Own Terms
6. 3b The Company: Rehearsing to a Deadline

The statutory key stage 3 English programme of study (DfE, 2014) — drama has no programme of study of its own · 63 pages, 25 sections · For heads of drama, subject leaders and every teacher who has to deliver it, specialist or not

Drama · GCSE (Key Stage 4) £4.99

Year 10 Drama Scheme of Work

Seventy-three pages, board-neutral by construction: every unit is mapped to the DfE subject content for GCSE drama and to Ofqual’s four assessment objectives, identical on every board because the regulator sets them. Six units, thirty-one phases, six purpose-drawn diagrams, eight back-matter tables. Two things are planned a year before the assessment needs them: the devising log, which carries three quarters of the devising marks and is written during rehearsal from unit 3b, and the rule that a student cannot perform a monologue in both assessed pieces — a casting decision made a year ahead.

1. 1a The Performer’s Instrument: Voice, Body and the Deliberate Choice
2. 1b Space, Staging and the Audience: Where the Watcher Sits Changes Everything
3. 2a Reading a Text as a Score: Genre, Structure, Character and Stage Directions
4. 2b Context and Convention: Why a Play Was Made That Way, and What Practitioners Are For
5. 3a Design as a Language: Set, Costume, Lighting and Sound as Things That Mean
6. 3b The First Devising Cycle: A Whole Piece, and the Log That Carries Three Quarters of It

GCSE subject content: drama (DfE, DFE-00039-2015) and Ofqual’s assessment objectives · 73 pages, 18 sections · For heads of drama, subject leaders and every teacher who has to deliver it

Drama · GCSE (Key Stage 4) £4.99

Year 11 Drama Scheme of Work

Sixty-three pages completing the course. Five units rather than six, because the examination series is the summer term and two components must be moderated before it — a scheme that plans six half-terms of Year 11 teaching is planning a year that does not exist. The devised cycle runs nine weeks and finishes in November; the text-based performance finishes in February, so the written paper gets the spring it needs. Twenty-four phases, five purpose-drawn diagrams and thirteen back-matter tables, including a readiness tracker whose descriptors describe what a student does rather than what level they are at.

1. 4a The Assessed Devising Cycle: The Log Is the Component
2. 4b Live Theatre: Watching as a Theatre Maker Rather Than as an Audience
3. 5a Texts in Practice: Two Extracts, and Rehearsal as Diagnosis
4. 5b The Written Paper: Decoding the Question, and Writing About Theatre Not in the Room
5. 6a Final Revision: Retrieval, Timing, and the Things That Decay

GCSE subject content: drama (DfE, DFE-00039-2015) and Ofqual’s assessment objectives · 63 pages, 20 sections · For heads of drama, subject leaders and every teacher who has to deliver it

Drama · GCSE · Every exam board Free

GCSE Drama — Posters

Five A3 posters on craft rather than set texts: five stage configurations drawn in plan with the trap in each; sixteen vocal and physical skills named; the five design elements with the vocabulary for writing about them; six rehearsal techniques and when to reach for each; and how to write about a performance you have watched.

Standard craft vocabulary, tied to no set text or practitioner · 5 A3 posters · For drama studios, corridors and revision spaces