| Key Issues
Other sources of guidance for drama within and beyond English
The orders for drama within English form the basis for a number of other key guidance documents relating to all Key Stages. In the absence of a national agreement about the curriculum and assessment for drama particularly at KS3, trainees will need to analyse how their placement school’s drama curriculum relates to national guidance documents. However within these documents, there is a wide range of interpretations of what drama is, what should be taught and how, and how and by what means it should be assessed.
Trainees could be asked to locate and download the documents described on these two screens. In sub-groups they could compare at least two in some detail and make a presentation to the rest of the cohort. The focus here would be on identifying the different perceptions of drama in the documents and how the documents might be used to design a curriculum for drama within English or as a discrete subject at KS3.
DfES Key Stage 3 Drama Objectives Bank:
This guidance document is intended for teachers of drama within English as well as teachers of drama as a separate subject. It contains a bank of teaching ideas to help the teaching of drama objectives, and of other Framework objectives which can be addressed through drama at Key Stage 3. The bank elaborates each of the KS3 drama objectives with ideas for content, teaching and assessment approaches. The bank is intended to offer support and serve as the basis for the kind of departmental and inter-departmental dialogues suggested above. This site also gives access to the additional resources used for training Literacy Consultants in delivering the drama objectives. This useful and practical material includes exemplar schemes of work for a drama approach to teaching a class novel and Shakespeare.
http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/keystage3/respub/en_dramaobjs
DfES Speaking, Listening, Learning:
Working with Children in Key Stages 1 and 2: There are drama objectives for each term in Yrs. 1-6 as well, so in theory at least all pupils now have access to a common set of drama objectives from 4 –16 years of age. The Primary Strategy Objectives for drama and other support material can be found at:
http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/primary…
OfSTED Guidance for the Inspection of Drama 11-16:
This inspection document specifies what evidence an OfSTED inspector will collect and report on during the inspection of drama as a discrete subject at KS3/4. Secondary Schools can expect a separate subject inspection of drama if there is a GCSE entry of at least twenty. Even where drama is taught as a discrete Arts subject, pupils still have an entitlement to drama as part of English. In this situation there would need to be dialogue between departments as to where and how the statutory programme of study for drama is covered and assessed. http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/assets/3657.doc
QCA’s Giving a voice: drama and speaking and listening resources for Key Stage 3:
This guidance document contains sequences of lessons in which speaking and listening and drama are explicitly taught. The lesson plans are very detailed and take teachers through a step-by-step approach to delivering drama within English They show how QCA imagine the classroom implemention of the National Curriculum requirements for drama and how the objectives from the framework for years 7, 8 and 9 might be delivered.
http://www.qca.org.uk/libraryAssets/media/3361_teachers_guide.pdf
Arts Council England’s Drama in schools: second edition:
This guidance document published in October 2003, reflects good practice in drama education and provides advice on what constitutes pupil progression across all key stages. There is an emphasis on the assessment of drama and the document contains an assessment framework with eight levels in three distinct strands – Making, Performing and Responding. The document’s theme repeats the message of the original 1992 edition: that drama is an artform with its own discipline and methodology. It also repeats the 1992 message that drama should be taught separately from English and be positioned with the other arts subjects on the curriculum. However the assessment framework is closer to the multi-strand model of the English curriculum. The other arts use a single set of levels to assess achievement:
http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/information/…
 
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