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Year 8 Drama Plans

This book is designed to follow on from YEAR 7 DRAMA PLANS and to lead on into: YEAR 9 DRAMA PLANS. Though some of the games and exercises will be familiar to experienced drama teachers, there are also many that are invented or adapted to a new purpose. The uniqueness of the book lies in the fact that it is a complete year's course for Year 8, where games, exercises and other work have been combined so as to build a carefully developed and balanced programme leading onto Year 9 work and finally into G.C.S.E. and Sixth Form level examinations.

There is quite a jump from the Year 7 work as you will see. Much of the good 'side-effects' of drama, such as confidence building and trust, working as a team and tolerance of others is now taken for granted rather than worked on as an end in itself. The success of this, though, depends very much on the attitude of the teacher and the constant re-affirmation of those values outlined in the Year 7 book.

This book concentrates far more on the early building of the skills necessary for G.C.S.E. By the end of the year's work they will have covered stage positioning and focusing and the importance of eye contact. Mime skills are taught in a precise and logical way. There is work too on how to make spontaneous improvisation effective as well as further work on the shaping of polished improvisation with a view to eventual devising skills. Finally, the book ends with character work using clowning, Commedia Dell'Arte, melodrama and silent movies as the main impetus, finishing with a couple of lessons in which more realistic stereotypes are used.

Built into the book are revision lessons or revision exercises, reminding pupils of work done in the previous year as well as earlier in this one.

DRAMA PLANS: YEAR 9 will carry on the character work into naturalism, introduce scriptwork and refine techniques for spontaneous improvisation and devising, showing how narrative theatre and physical theatre can be used to benefit their work. Both these styles have been used throughout Years 7 and 8, so will be a natural resource by then.

As in all my books, I have found it easier to refer to every student as 'he', taking as excuse the word 'actor' which is used for either sex. No offence is meant, and of course all exercises can be adapted for either sex.

Many exercises are for pairs. If you have an odd number in your group, most exercises will be fine for pairs with one threesome. There is no need to leave out the exercise.

All lessons in this book are designed to last one hour. In every case, however, it is possible to run for longer by showing more of the performance opportunities en route; that is if your lesson is longer than an hour.

* For those with shorter periods, commonly 35 or 40 minute sessions, I have starred those exercises which could least harmfully be eliminated from the overall plan. This practice is also used in the Year 7 book.


Introduction

Much of the below is also part of the introduction to Year 7 Drama Plans. I have reproduced it because some people may not have the first book.

I am aware that many people teaching class drama at this level are not specialists; I have therefore taken care to explain everything - games, exercises, terminology - at the risk of irritating those specialists who are also delivering these lessons. I felt it was better to over- explain and to make clear the justification for each exercise than to leave anyone bewildered. For instance, there are sometimes games used at the beginning of lessons - though far less often than in Year 7 - as I find that starting with a whole group activity is a way of drawing the group together and beginning in a disciplined way. Games, where used, are therefore a useful part of the structure of the whole lesson, quite apart from the individual skills - concentration, alertness, speed of response, group co-operation, etc. - also addressed by participation in them.

For the non-specialist it is important to recognise that drama teachers are rather unusual people who must be prepared to join in as well as to demonstrate and who therefore need to dress appropriately, as must the children. School skirts, high-heeled shoes or hard, heavy footwear restrict movement and inhibit creativity. Just as for P.E., the student attending a drama lesson needs to feel that he is attending something with special requirements, out of the conventional restrictions of the classroom. I suggest that you make a firm ruling from the beginning that they wear trousers or tracksuit bottoms and soft shoes, plimsolls or bare feet. If you, as the teacher, need to deliver other more formal lessons, make sure that you, like them, have some tracksuit trousers to change into and are prepared to take off your own shoes.

Students new to the idea of drama are going to absorb a great deal from your manner at the beginning. That is why clothing is so important, as is a relaxed but disciplined atmosphere. They must know that no nonsense is tolerated at the same time as feeling that they can trust you and everyone in the group. If this sounds a frightening balance to the non- drama specialist, a lot will be solved by making sure there is plenty to do: the exercises must not flag but must move quickly on from one to the other. The lessons in this book will help you here.

In addition, here are a few more ideas as to how to structure your drama lesson. They will very quickly become used to your way of working and will treat the structure with as much respect as a formal lesson sat behind desks.

  1. After changing, they move automatically into a seated circle in the centre of the room. It is better if this circle is seated on the floor, not chairs. Some games specify chairs but on the whole if I have said 'seated' I mean on the floor.
  2. As soon as you join them in the circle they fall silent That is the signal that the lesson is about to begin.
  3. When you indicate that an exercise has finished, they sit where they are on the floor, fall silent and listen to the instructions for the next exercise. They should never move - e.g. to get into pairs - until you have indicated that all instructions have been given.
  4. Lose no opportunity to promote the idea of tolerance and of working together to build a mutually supportive group.
  5. Most of the last exercises of the lesson are 'performance' ones where the groups present their work to the rest of the class. Establish from the start where performances happen, i.e. on the stage or on the floor, and where the group should sit in relation to them. Some of the exercises in this book require a stage or at least a performance area which is clearly defined, others merely indicate the audience should sit in a horseshoe shape leaving the open end for performance; both audience requirements should be shown them and the signal for audience positions should be identified as also a signal for silence and concentrated attention.
  6. Retain this shape for the ending session, where you, the teacher, can move into the open end of the horseshoe or onto the performance area to lead the discussion, as indicated at the end of every lesson plan.

This evaluative discussion is one of the most important areas of these lessons and was begun at the beginning of Year 7. It should by now be a habit, which spills into their written work, whether you require them to write a brief evaluative diary of their drama lessons or just a paragraph or two. Encourage them to spend no more than a sentence or two on description of the exercise and to concentrate rather on what they felt about it, how successful or unsuccessful it was and why. Good practice for later work at G.C.S.E. would be to encourage them to try and describe performances observed- albeit just their friends in the class - identifying what body language, facial expressions and voice tones conveyed moods successfully. This is not an easy task; finding descriptive visual adjectives and adverbs worries many an 'A' level student, so it would be very beneficial if they could start to 'get the habit' as early as this.


Sample Pages from Year 8 Drama Plan:

Lesson Five

This lesson continues the work begun last week on focus. They should have learned from last week that there are a number of ways to emphasise an entrance or pin- point a moment of action. The following work will take them further down this route.

1. Start with a game that involves passing the focus from one person to another in the simplest way. The group stand in a circle. A volunteer goes into the circle and does something - anything at all, recites a verse, sings a song, performs a dance-step or an acrobatic move. Whatever he does is applauded loudly by the rest of the class, both for encouragement and for purposes of underlining the fact that the central figure is the centre of their focus. After completing his act, the performer makes eye contact with someone else in the circle and that person joins him. They both perform together the same 'act', the newcomer copying the originator exactly. Then the first performer steps back into the circle. The next person must either perform his own act now or repeat the former person's with one significant change. Once again he is applauded, makes eye contact with a third, and so on.

2. *This game translates well into a simple form of quick improvisation in which the focus is passed in a similar way. Sit the group as an audience or in a horse-shoe shape which leaves one area free for performing. Start by picking two people and giving them a simple situation to act upon. They could be for instance, customer and client in a hairdresser's. They are instructed to play the scene up to the point where they feel it is beginning to flag, when one or the other should bring someone else into the scene, at the same time finding a reason for leaving the scene themselves. For instance, the aforementioned scene could reach a point where the customer is complaining about the ruination of her hair and the hairdresser could at that point say/Do you want to speak to the manager? I can see her over there.' And she goes to someone in the audience and brings them out to act as manager.

This exercise is good for passing focus as well as seeing how they fare in spontaneous improvisation, something we shall be looking at in more detail later in the year. Confident members of the class will extend the scene quite creditably but less confident ones will quickly 'pass the buck.' Nonetheless, they will have had to say something and will have experienced what it is like to be in the audience's focus, which is no bad thing for early training in oral work and similar lessons for 'life.'

Some situations will play out quite quickly and need changing before they become too stale or difficult. Other ideas of situations you could give them as starting points are:

3. Ask half of the class to go up onto the stage or into the performing half of the studio. The rest remain as audience. The acting half must go into the wings or to the side of the playing area. Then each in turn must make an entrance, remaining on stage once they have done so. Instruct them to find a way of keeping the focus on themselves if they can. Then allow the other half to do the same.

It is important to discuss the findings of this exercise. What kept people watching someone more than another? They should come up with a variety of responses, amongst which I would expect:

Of course, they may add other discoveries to this list.

4. As a finishing exercise, see if they can act on the knowledge learned from the above. They are to devise a scene, in groups of about five or six,in which one person is behaving differently from the rest, keeping that person in focus all the time even when other people need to be temporarily in focus themselves. Examples of scenes could be:

Playing scenes like this teaches them that there are various ways of keeping attention on someone, using grouping both around the person and apart from them - let them try to find the best stage positions too for their individual - as well as by the behaviour of that individual, through stillness or just through different activity.

There may not be time to play all of these in front of the others as audience, but there will be enough if you don't insist on a beginning, middle and end for the scene. In other words, give them time to tackle the problems of focus but not so much time that there is none left for showing and feed-back.

In the closing discussion, which should be very full today, see if they have also spotted - from the opening exercise - the power of eye contact for drawing audience's attention. The next two lessons will be on the importance of eye contact.

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