With September just around the corner, it’s almost time to return to the classroom - and over the last few weeks, we’ve been sharing how DT+ can help make this transition seamless and stress-free.
Last week, we shared some English exercises for your secondary school students, adapted from DT+ resources and available in our free Back-to-School Toolkit.
Today, we’re focusing on KS3 Drama, with three creative activities that are sure to engage and inspire your students from their first day back!
Living Storyboard
Learning Objectives: Understand how to read and extract information from scripts, and demonstrate comprehension and understanding of a text.
This exercise is a great way to ‘bring theatre to life’, and doubles as an opportunity to create mixed ability groups to encourage and facilitate collaboration among students.
Start by dividing your chosen play into six key moments.
Create a storyboard of images, diagrams, and words (perhaps including key lines of dialogue) for each of the chosen key moments.
Once this has been completed, direct your students to bring each storyboard frame to life as a ‘living picture’, using the staging, images, and lines of dialogue from each key moment.
At the start of term, you could use this exercise to cover the basic plot points of the entire play - but as your students progress, you could revisit it in more detail, focusing on one particular act, or even key scenes.
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Hot Potato
Learning Objective: Demonstrate comprehension and understanding of a text.
A great icebreaker, or a way to get the class engaged at the start of your lesson, Hot Potato is a straightforward and fun approach to testing comprehension.
To begin, have your students stand in a circle, and give one student a ball to hold. The aim of the game is to pass the ball quickly (as though it really were a ‘hot potato’). To pass the ball, the student must say something related to the play that you are studying.
For example, if you were studying A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a student could call out key themes like ‘Love’, ‘Dreams’, or ‘Jealousy’. Or, considering how many characters there are to keep track of, you might choose to focus only on character names!
If you’re looking to make this exercise that little bit harder, you can eliminate anyone who hesitates too long, or who repeats a word or name. This way, you can be sure that everyone is actively listening to their peers!
Hot Potato is an example of an auditory exercise.
Set Design "Smackdown"
Learning Objectives: Understand how the major technical elements of a theatre, such as lights, sound, set, and costumes, are used to support and enhance a production, and understand how to use technical theatre components to support formal or informal dramatic presentations.
This final exercise is designed as a springboard, helping students to consolidate what they’ve learnt about the technical side of theatre productions.
Start by asking your students to draw several 30 second ‘thumbnail sketches’ based on the following prompts:
- Playground
- Theme Park
- Shopping Centre
- Supermarket
Be sure to emphasise that these are quick sketches - their focus should be on communicating their ideas, not on creating a masterpiece.
After they’ve finished, have them share their work with another student - or, alternatively, with the whole class. Comparing their sketches, ask the class to identify common elements in their sketches - how did everyone choose to represent a supermarket, for example.
From here, students should consider how a set designer might choose to incorporate the main elements of a location so that an audience can place the setting immediately.
Carly Brownbridge | How To Storyboard Your Design | © Digital Theatre+
Looking for more Creative Drama Exercises?
These exercises have been adapted from DT+ resources, and are available (along with two additional activities!) as part of our Drama Toolkit.
Plus! Your toolkit comes with exclusive free trial access to the DT+ platform, so you can further enhance your lessons with a rich selection of theatrical productions, study guides, practitioner insights, student workbooks, and more…
If you are already a DT+ customer, you can access all of these activities and resources now as part of your subscription.