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| Drama in the primary curriculum |
Drama doesn't appear within the curriculum as a subject in its own right and curriculum guidance until recently has tended to overlook the contribution that drama makes within primary schools. So what is the place of drama in the curriculum and its significance?
Teaching drama is a statutory requirement of the National Curriculum for English as part of the 'speaking and listening' strand. Specifically pupils are required to participate in a wide range of drama activities, ensuring that they:
- use language and actions to explore and convey situations, characters and emotions
- create and sustain roles when working individually and with others
- comment constructively on drama they have watched or in which they have taken part
The National Literacy Strategy Framework for Teaching (1998) - or NLS - is a non-statutory curriculum framework for reading and writing, but does not at KS1 and 2 address continuity and progression in speaking and listening. There has been enormous emphasis in the last few years in meeting the objectives of the NLS. However, to meet the full demands of the curriculum teachers need to ensure that they also allow sufficient time for the planned development and teaching of speaking and listening, which includes drama. Speaking and listening is the cornerstone of communication: its development should not be taken for granted or left to chance.
Since the introduction of the NLS there have been a number of initiatives, each of which have increasingly recognised the value of drama within the primary school and add weight to it having a place of its own on the timetable.
In 1998 the National Advisory Committee on Creative and Cultural Education was established and in 1999 it produced a report intended to feed into the National Curriculum 2000, entitled All our Futures: Creativity, Culture and Education (DfEE 1999). It contains many specific recommendations on the creative and cultural development of young people and recognises the need to support teachers to enable them to teach the national curriculum adopting strategies that engage creativity:
"...there are schools and teachers who have used the literacy hour as a starting point for a wide range of creative activities in reading, writing, drama and in the other arts. We see great value in integrating the objectives of high standards of literacy with those of high standards of creative achievement and cultural experience. To ensure this it would be of great value to many schools to have access to materials, ideas and strategies in the imaginative implementation of these strategies." (DfEE 1999)
In 1999 the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) produced objectives for speaking and listening separately from the NLS within a booklet called Teaching speaking and listening at Key Stages 1 and 2. It enabled schools to plan for progression in the strands of speaking and listening, including drama.
Several other significant projects and initiatives have developed since All our Futures, including the recently completed three year QCA project called Creativity across the curriculum. This has culminated in the production of online guidance materials and exemplar case studies of creative teaching and learning available on the national curriculum website. Drama teaching and methodology is evident within several of the exemplar lessons for English but drama methods are also evident within the exemplar lessons for other national curriculum subjects, emphasising the power of drama as a learning medium across a range of curriculum areas.
In October 2003 Arts Council England will publish online and in hard copy, a revised and updated edition of Drama in Schools. This publication was originally published in 1992, close to the introduction of the national curriculum. The document will promote drama as an art form with its own discipline and methodology. It will be available to download from the Arts Council. The Arts Council will publish complementary guidance on using the arts (including drama) as a teaching strategy for a range of subjects early in 2004.
National Drama is the largest professional association of drama educators in the UK. The association provides advice, support and professional development to those working within drama in education.
Patrice Baldwin
Adviser for the Promotion of Arts in Schools, Norfolk |
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