Speech Board Drama

For Speech Board in Year 7 and 8 students get to choose between presenting a poem individually or working with a group to present a drama. Unsurprisingly most students choose to participate in a drama.
This links in nicely with the curriculum - The Arts (drama), English (communicating effectively) and Health (relating to others).
Students learn so much during this time of the year. They have to work together to pick a suitable script, then learn the lines, learn to actually act, make props and put it all together effectively.
The part students seem to struggle with the most is the actual acting part. Learning to alter your voice or your body to take on a role of someone else is quite tricky. That's why we spent some time working through some of the suggested drama activities in the Speech Board Assessment Syllabus.
Below are some photos of students pushing themselves out of their comfort zones and trying new things through dramatisation.

In this activity, students had to work together to make items of furniture out of their bodies.

In this activity students needed to show others their emotions through facial expressions and body language. 

Space Jump is an activity that involves 'jumping' into a scene and creating a new scene.

Not only did everyone try hard and learn a lot about different drama techniques, we all had a really enjoyable hour!  

Purposes for Writing

One of the areas that students struggle with is remembering all the different types of writing - is it a report or a narrative or maybe a recount? Once they have worked out what type of writing it is then the next step is trying to remember all the features and structures that go with that type of writing. Not easy!

During some recent Professional Development I came across a simple way to make things much clearer for everyone!

Rather than trying to remember all the different types of writing, we can make it easier by grouping writing into three main areas and simply asking - is my purpose for writing to persuade someone, to inform someone or to entertain someone? As you can see from the graphic above, all the types of writing fall under one of these three areas. Thinking about the purpose for writing makes it much simpler. Remembering features and structures for 3 main text types is also much easier than trying to remember the features for around 9 or more possible text types! 

In class we are working on thinking about our purpose for writing and then looking at the general features that go with that broader type of writing. Ask your children about P.I.E and the 3 main reasons for writing. Hopefully they will be able to explain the graphic above!