Drama

Our curriculum at Headlands is designed to build towards success at GCSE and A level, as well as equipping students with the communication skills, creativity, confidence and resilience to maximise their future achievements and cope with challenges they meet along the way. 

The KS3 curriculum provides a broad range of topics designed to help students develop their love of drama and performance but also the physical and vocal skills to express themselves in a confident and individual way. There is a strong focus on team work and self-reflection.

The Drama curriculum explores a range of theatrical styles and topical issues, in order to provide a way for students to explore human behaviour in the world around them and become aware of the diverse range of influences on our culture, in particular the arts. 

Both KS3 and KS4 curricula enable students to prepare with confidence for a GCSE in Drama.  All students will study this award with Eduqas. They can then progress onto the AQA A Level in Drama and Theatre studies at KS5.

Lessons are carefully sequenced, designed and differentiated to support the progress of individual students who have a range of starting points and levels of prior attainment, so that all succeed and feel proud and confident in their achievements.

The Drama Department is staffed by three dedicated and experienced subject specialists who work in close collaboration to support students’ engagement and attainment. We offer a range of extra-curricular projects to support the learning of students, ranging from performance opportunities in plays and musicals to theatre trips and workshops with professional practitioners.

The success of our curriculum is evident in our students’ exam results and in the confidence with which they take the next steps in their education or employment options.  We also judge our curriculum’s success in the ways that students become rounded human beings with strong emotional intelligence and a love of learning and appreciation of the arts.

Key elements – what are they and how do we use them?

• Body language and facial expression
• Still image
• Actions and reactions for characters and situations
• Realistic acting
• Tension
• Narrator
• Monologue
• Split scene
• Awareness of audience
• Projection of voice
• Different tones of voice
• Choosing dialogue for characters and situations
• Melodrama

Skills – Practising and mastering;

• Control
• Cooperation
• Imagination
• Communication
• Confidence
• Concentration
• Expression of ideas through physical and vocal techniques
• Creative application of techniques in devising a performance piece
• The ability to analyse and assess the success of others

The importance of and knowledge of how to use the following drama techniques: 

• Body language and facial expression
• Still image
• Actions and reactions for characters and situations
• Realistic acting
• Tension
• Awareness of audience
• Projection of voice
• Different tones of voice
• Choosing dialogue for characters and situations
• Comic timing
• Exaggerated movement/facial expressions for comic effect
• How to interpret a script
• Interpreting characters from a script
• Subtext
• Adding actions to a script

Skills – Practising and mastering; 

• Line Learning
• Directing scripted pieces
• Control
• Cooperation
• Imagination
• Communication
• Confidence
• Concentration
• Expression of ideas through physical and vocal techniques
• Creative application of techniques in devising a performance piece
• The ability to analyse and assess the success of others

Get more detailed information on what students look at on a term-by-term basis in each year group by clicking on the links below.

Click on the links below to see how students are assessed in Years 7, 8 and 9.