Drama
During 2020 – 2021, we began working with a drama specialist. As well as running After School Clubs two nights a week for children aged Y1-Y6 where children learn how to both direct and act, they also works in school Friday mornings. In these sessions, our consultant, works collaboratively alongside staff to use drama to support all aspects of the curriculum.
Drama supporting PSCHE
Each half term throughout the last year, drama sessions reinforced our teaching of topics within the PSHCE curriculum. A lot of time was spent supporting children in managing their friendship issues, teaching about Bullying, prejudice, different family models, improving self confidence, meeting/greeting peers/adults and internet safety. Our consultant also worked with individual children who benefitted from 1:1 sessions if they were needing specific support. Examples of this have been managing anger, struggling with self confidence, managing home life issues and making friends.
Drama supporting areas of learning across the curriculum
In addition to the above, drama has been used to reinforce learning. This might be preparing children for a lesson they will have in advance ie introducing and acting out a text before reading in class or to help children recall learning by acting out scenarios based on the knowledge learnt. Examples of this have included work in RE, history and poetry recitals.
How will we extend this provision?
This has been really successful so we intend to further build on this next year in 2022 – 23. This will include a public speaking event, reinforcing language teaching by acting out scenarios and looking at the lives of artists/musicians to further help children understand the context they were working within.