“The purpose of Drama is to arouse in the audience feelings of pity and fear, and to purge these emotions (catharsis), thereby making people stronger emotionally”

– Aristotle

Our curriculum vision

The aim of Drama education at Harlington is to encourage, facilitate and support creativity and the use of the imagination.   Our students are supported to develop and present rationales for their creative decisions and demonstrate their understanding of the discipline through range of naturalistic and non-naturalistic modes.

They will begin to develop and apply a range of performance, creation and evaluative skills. We want them to learn through devising, script work, drama as a process and techniques that progress through a spiral curriculum building on prior knowledge and developing more complex skills in preparation for GCSE Drama. Drama students learn to use their experiences and ideas in their work, applying techniques from a range of Theatre and Drama practitioners. By using the techniques of significant figures such as Brecht and Stanislavski, students begin to develop their own performance style. Drama develops thinking, speaking and listening, reading and writing as well as critical analysis through emotional and imaginative engagement.

Year 9

The Year 9 course at Harlington is the first year of Drama education at Key Stage Three for most of our students. Our course is built to empower them to become confident in their approach to the skills and stimuli.

Homework is set regularly and encourages the development and consolidation of their research and independent learning skills.

The students will connect with a range of stimulus in the following ways.

• Making and shaping ideas into actions
• Exploring drama conventions, resources and techniques with increasing confidence
• Sharing ideas and experimenting with different texts to deepen their understanding.
• Interpretation of texts and stimuli.
• Performance in class
• Sharing ideas through enactment
• Sustaining a role, communicating with an audience, creating a dramatic atmosphere and working cooperatively with others.
• Reflecting on their own experience of drama
• Critical thinking
• Use of evaluative language
• Analysis

Years 10 and 11

Students will have opportunity to develop creative and imaginative powers and practical skills for communicating and expressing ideas, feelings and meanings in drama, as well as investigative, analytical, experimental and interpretative capabilities, aesthetic understanding and critical skills. They will develop a deeper understanding of drama forms and an awareness of the contexts in which they operate, thereby building their knowledge and understanding of drama within a social, cultural and historical context. Communication of a range of drama forms is assessed through written coursework. We pride ourselves on our extra-curricular provision; students will have the opportunity to work with acclaimed theatre companies in-house and visit the theatre; we also run trips that showcase drama, theatre, film and TV careers.

Be ambitious: Engage with the Super Curriculum

How to find out more