Introduction to Primary Drama

Drama does not exist on the National Curriculum, and on the curriculum for primary schools it is only referenced in one paragraph:

‘All pupils should be enabled to participate in and gain knowledge, skills and understanding associated with the artistic practice of drama. Pupils should be able to adopt, create and sustain a range of roles, responding appropriately to others in role. They should have opportunities to improvise, devise and script drama for one another and a range of audiences, as well as to rehearse, refine, share and respond thoughtfully to drama and theatre performances.’ 

National Curriculum.

Unless a primary school is lucky enough to have a Drama Specialist among it's teaching staff, most primary schools do very little Drama outside a school nativity at Christmas. We believe that drama is not only a valuable subject in its own right, which should be taught at the same level as Music, but it is also an indispensible pedagogy which can support the rest of the curriculum.

Our CPD session at the Music & Drama Education Expo was designed to give primary teachers some basic, practical techniques to introduce Drama into their teaching. Below are a few notes on the session delivered, and teachers are welcome to visit our Resources Page to find more, or contact us to discuss CPD sessions for your entire teaching staff or outreach workshops for students.

Getting Started

Circle games are a great way to unite children in a shared experience. Seeing each other do the same thing, no matter how silly they may feel doing it, bonds them and helps focus them on the lesson.

We started with a vocal warm-up combining funny sounds with physical actions, designed to exercise and explore our vocal range, articulation, tone, pitch and more.

Other options may be passing a 'clap' around the circle, call and response exercises, stretches and counting activities.

Tableaux / Still Images

Next we wanted to explore a quick way to create stock characters and explore different emotional states by creating some tableaux or still images.

Break out of a circle and get everyone to find their own space, stand in neutral (feet shoulder width apart, hands by the sides, feeling tall). Explain you will give them a word, and you want them to create a statue of that word, but that you will count to three and say "Go", and that's when they should create their image.

Start with emotions like Happy, Sad, Angry, and Love, etc. Then move on to stock characters like Mother, Father, Teacher, Hero, Villain, Begger, Expert, etc. Encourage them to be as big, bold and expressive as possible, trying not to copy their friends, and to think about both the image they make with their bodies, but also the expression on their face.

These images should give children a good range of characters they can 'put on' when exploring a story later.

Group Images

Form groups of 5-7 people. To get them working quickly together give them 10 seconds to create a group image with everyone involved. I usually go for the number 8, letter Q, a box of chocolates, a boat, and a toaster (with a moving part). Get them to do each one together and see the results.

Now we can start exploring a story using still images, creating scenes like a 3D comic book.

Storytime

Stories are not just part of the English curriculum - stories exist across the curriculum from History to Science, R.E. to Art. They're also rife within Drama.

In our session we asked for any projects teachers we're working on in class and we cam up with Noah's Ark, but you can use any story you like.

We simply asked each group to focus on one part of the story and create one image about it, then to add two more images - a before and after - to tell the story in three images. As these were created, we added additional direction, which could include:

• Finding an interesting way to join the images up

• Adding sound effects (wind blowing, birds tweeting, etc)

• Adding up to 5 words

The result was two very different performances of the story, with groups chosing to focus on different aspects, moments, and visual images.

Key Points

Right & Wrong.

There is no wrong answer! Neither you, nor the children, can get any of this wrong. It is all about your own creativity, imagination and sence of play.

As a practitioner I always try to combine taught technique with student-led practice, so teach them a skill or technique, set a task, and let them interpret that by using that technique to explore thier imagination, creativity and interests.

Effort not Results

I try to avoid telling them their work was brilliant, but that they worked brilliantly together. Rather than tell them what I liked, I ask questions about the choices they made, how they created a specific moment, and what they liked about it.

If you praise the results of their work, they notice when you don't praise another group in the same way. They can also feel they have succeeded and don't need to try harder next time.

Praising their effort and asking them to elaborate on their choices, process or results supports their comprehension of the subject and task set. It helps them to better understand the process, feel they've done a good job, and appreciate that they have more to learn.

Moving Forward

Where do you take these techniques next? This process can be repeated multiple times with different subjects to explore a broad range of stories. Each time you can adapt them to focus on specific characters, emotions or themes present in the story you want to explore, and you can add in a whole host of additional exercises to explore their creativity, physicality, movement, coordination, voices, and team-working abilities.

Each time you follow this process the children will get better at it, more expressive and creative. Encourage this and play.

Outreach & CPD Offer

We want to support schools and teachers to do more drama in their schools, so we're offering a free CPD session for teachers on top of any day-long outreach workshops for children.

Our outreach workshops can be for one group of children, or we can run multiple sessions back to back to cater for more classes, potentially enabling us to work with an entire school in one day. Then, we can deliver a free, one-hour CPD session for teachers after school to explore specific techniques to support your teaching of Drama, or to use Drama techniques pedagogically in your other classes.

Read the offer details here and contact us to find book.