Whilst a student’s journey in school is broken into key stages, we believe that the knowledge and skill developed in KS3 should not be seen in isolation to that developed at later stages. All that is learned in every key stage provides important building blocks to ensure success at later stages, and to enable our students to be confident participators in and patrons of the arts.

Staff encourage students to recall and apply their knowledge and skills in familiar and unfamiliar situations. Teachers revisit previously taught skills in order to introduce more complex knowledge to deepen a students’ understanding. For example, in Year 7 students learn basic stage techniques such as still image to begin and end performance and in Year 8 they extend this knowledge to use still image for considered dramatic effect. The Drama curriculum includes a rich range of stimuli and texts in order to help students to understand how theatre makers address social, moral, political and spiritual issues through drama. Students tackle difficult issues in their drama, but also engage with fun, creative risks, selecting and rejecting ideas and constructively evaluating their own and others’ work. Within Music students in Year 7  learn musical notation for rhythm and subsequently revisit more complex rhythms in the Samba project in Year 8. Homework is part of the learning process and is set in line with the school Homework timetable.  It includes a mixture of recall tasks, vocabulary tasks, listening tasks and quizzes, wider listening or evaluations.

Key Stage 3

Throughout KS3 classes are taught in mixed ability tutor groups with all students following the same programme of study with differentiation built into lessons to allow all to access the curriculum whilst taking into account their starting points and confidence levels. Our primary aim is to instil a love of the Performing Arts with our students as participators and audiences. Practical work is an important aspect of each module.  To ensure consistency all topics have a full scheme of work with PowerPoints, worksheets and video links which can be tailored to the teaching groups.  At the end of their first term the whole of Year 7 are given the opportunity to perform in the Carol Service, which is always a special and memorable experience.

Key Stage 4

All students can opt for GCSE Music or GCSE Drama if they so wish.  We follow the OCR GCSE Music course, which offers a balance of performance, composition and listening skills.  Students are taught through projects (knowledge and NEA non-exam assessment based) using a variety of resources.  We follow the AQA GCSE Drama course, culminating in a practical exam early in Year 11 and a written exam in Summer of Year 11. The remaining section of the course is an NEA devised theatre project.  Curriculum staff at KS4 are constantly creating new materials and selecting engaging resources to stimulate the learning of all students. Staff respond and challenge the individual talents of students to allow their performance work to flourish and support those who find the academic demands of a non-tiered examination challenging.  Texts, stimulus material, music and arrangements are chosen with each cohort of students’ need in mind, and with their voice at the centre. Students are encouraged, with guidance, to select their own theatrical styles and extracts for performance.  There is a range of assessment and feedback, consisting of exam style listening or written questions marked to the exam board’s scheme, practical mini-assessments, peer review, and specific individualised teacher feedback on performance work, composition and devising skills through teacher comments and formal online feedback.  Students also have the opportunity to perform at the Waterlooville Music Festival and as part of our concert schedule.

Key Stage 5

The department encourages all KS4 Music and Drama students to consider A level, ensuring students are aware of the skills, knowledge and attributes they need to be successful at this higher level of study.

At KS5 we follow the Edexcel A-level Music course, which is divided into three areas – Performance Recital, Composition and Appraising.  Students study a wide range of musical styles and historical periods and are supported to respond to these through listening tasks and short and longer essay writing tasks. Drama students follow the AQA A-level Drama course, culminating in a performance and written examination, and a significant piece of devised original work.

Further information Curriculum Detail Key stages 3,4 and 5

Catholic Social Teaching

How we address values and virtues through the Performing Arts curriculum

The Performing Arts curriculum provides a medium to consider a number of the themes related to Catholic Social Teaching these include:

1.Dignity of the Human Person: Year 8 – Music  -The Blues Year 9 – Music – Jazz, including the Career of Ella Fitzgerald Year 9 – Drama – Rosa Parks Year 9 – Drama – Craig and Bentley – exploration of the death penalty
2.Peace: Year 7 Romero Day Song writing workshop  –  Year 7 – Fanfares including the Last Post for Remembrance Day – Year 9 Rosa Parks.
3.The common Good: Year 7 Romero Day Song writing workshop Year 7 Carol Service preparation and collective worship  Year 7 Fanfares – celebrations of events, royalty,  Year 7 Drama – exploring the characters of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Year 8 Drama – exploring the concept of Superheroes.
4.The Option for the Poor and Vulnerable: Year 7 – Music – activities linked to the characters within our transition novel ‘Trash’.   Year 7 Music – Renaissance court musicians  Year 7 Drama – Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Year 8 Drama  – Roses of Eyam – black death Year 9 Drama – Craig and Bentley – social class GCSE – Blood Brothers set text
5. Solidarity: This is a key part of our Performing Arts curriculum. Students have shared experiences of whole class performing and through being a member of an audience in their tutor groups. More specifically students produce solo performance work and they often develop their group and ensemble skills through creative processes in Drama and Music.  Throughout KS3 students support one another through refining their work, developing ideas and reviewing creative ideas during a collaborative process.  The whole of Year 7 prepares to perform in the Carol Service.  Small group and ensemble work are part of the curriculum and can be seen in most lessons.   Our new Musicals module in 7 Year demonstrates solidarity between our two departments Music and Drama, and students understand and experience the combined world of Drama, Music and Dance whilst also considering the effect and contribution of set design, costume design and lighting.
6.The Dignity of Work and the Rights of Workers: Year 7 Fanfares – celebrations of events, royalty,  Year 8 Blues  In lessons we celebrate performance work and creative ideas. TBI (Y13), News representations of Britain, Minimum wage and zero hours contract implications ‘Sorry we Missed You” (Y12/13)
7.Care for God’s Creation: Year 7 Drama– Storytelling – Myths and legends,  Year 9 Drama – Craig and Bentley

The department uses a range of resources and skills to support disadvantaged learners. A range of students have learning passports that include implementation strategies to support learning. Students are encouraged to reflect and review their attainment and all teachers track the progress of their classes in their mark books. Careful and suitable grouping plans in class, printouts of resources, use of specific pastel colour backgrounds for handouts are strategies that can be seen in use in this department.

Assessment and feedback

Assessments in Music and Drama are designed to check that the intended skills have been covered and to identify how secure students’ skills, knowledge and confidence are. The department has a clear understanding of the age-related expectations related to Drama and Music, although there is inevitable variation dependent on the exposure students have had to Performing Arts at KS 2 and in their own extra-curricular experiences. Students know what they should try and achieve over time. Assessment and feedback is used to confirm progress.  Due to the practical nature of the subjects, students receive lots of ‘live’ verbal feedback indicating what they have done well and why, and where they need to improve.

Retrieval practice is commonly used to identify where gaps in knowledge and vocabulary exist.

At KS3 students complete one assessment per half term and this is assessed through preparation and performance and success criteria are identified as students are preparing the assessed task.  Assessment is used to model and adapt the curriculum so that students master the sufficient knowledge and skills to make progress to the next stage.

Students across all key stages can expect regular feedback outside of formal assessments. Effective feedback in Music and Drama is specific and skills related, with a clear focus on how to develop and progress. This feedback may be given orally or written.  Students receive continual constructive feedback from their peers.  Self assessment and feedback encourages students to develop and grow in order to maximise their potential. Students are given opportunities to evaluate, reflect and discuss where refinements to their work could be made.

At KS4 and 5, students are regularly assessed with each component/topic covered. Regular assessment through a variety of mediums including mock examinations, practical mini-assessments, written responses provide a clear pathway for continued progress and development in written and practical components. Feedback comes in a range of forms, but each student will receive one piece of written feedback on their work, per half term. The department recognizes that no single piece of work can test every aspect of the level descriptors or the skills required for the demands of the course.   Assessments are viewed as pieces of evidence that together with other evidence from lessons- (both formal and informal) rehearsal, performance, evaluation and discussion- allow teachers to judge each student’s overall performance. Marking criteria based on grade descriptors are shared with students ahead of assessments to improve students’ attainment and engage them. When necessary the curriculum is adapted if knowledge is not secure so that students master sufficient knowledge and skills to make progress to the next stage. This is often in response to teacher assessment identifying gaps common to groups of students.

Extra Curricular and Cultural Capital

Within the Performing Arts department the development of Cultural Capital is addressed through a students’ personal, social, spiritual, moral and cultural development. We build the Cultural Capital of our students by helping them to understand the contemporary arts landscape and their place within it. Personal development includes work on growth mindset and the development of confidence through performance. Social development includes working in groups, both large and small, to collaborate and create performances and original pieces based on a variety of stimuli. Initiatives to enhance a student’s spiritual development are achieved through a response to music or scripts, for example, analysing how a student feels if they were a character in a story, or how a piece of music makes them feel.  This also provides an opportunity to discuss relevant values and virtues. Moral development is promoted in a number of ways including exploring the consequences of behaviours of characters in plays.  Students learn how historical, political and social climates both nationally and internationally, have impacted upon creative output for musicians and playwrights and these ideas are challenged and discussed.  Across their learning journey, students learn about challenging historical and moral issues such as apartheid, plague, reformation. Opportunities for cultural development are achieved through exposure to a multitude of different musical and dramatic genres, particularly exposing students to unfamiliar areas of study.

Students are encouraged to engage with a whole school production every year whereby cast, crew, band and creatives are drawn from the student body and work together on a large scale and professional standard production process.  There are many other enrichment activities on offer through our extra-curricular clubs such as the Choir and Concert Bands which allow our students to work and socialise with young people from all three key stages. Recent additions to the department include, for example, Rock Club and Music Tech Club.

Students are encouraged to engage with a range of arts experiences and visit or see streamed live theatre or music regularly.  Where possible, students gain backstage and industry experiences, and have visited the National Theatre backstage, as well as the NT rehearsal rooms and archive and the British Film Institute.  The Performing Arts department also offers students a range of experiences through theatre trips, concert trips, BSO orchestra workshops and visits to venues locally and nationally.

Development of Literacy through Performing Arts

Time is set aside to engage in the school Flying Start initiative, which  allows students to engage in literacy activities of their own choice (normally reading a novel) or subject disciplinary  literacy. In Performing Arts subjects talk, discussion, evaluation and criticism are routinely used and more detailed ways of expressing oneself are interrogated regularly.  Students spend much of their time engaged in collaborative talk, during planning and rehearsal and effective forms of these types of speech are explicitly taught, explored and discussed.  We use a variety of sources including written, auditory or visual form and subject specific musical notation. A range of dramaturgical texts from across time are accessed throughout students learning journeys and these are selected to be challenging, engaging and age appropriate.  Students need to be able to interpret these sources, analyse and make judgements. Our department ensures students enhance their academic prowess and progress, both through the reading of challenging texts and discussing complex issues.   Students are taught the appropriate command words and written style needed to describe and analyse performance and process. Staff use key subject terminology and where relevant discuss the roots of this terminology. Much of our literacy work can be categorised in three domains:

Disciplinary literacy

• Using oracy and debate to clarify ideas related to the cultural, social, historical and political content of both Music and Drama
• Using pair peer evaluation and constant revisiting of verbal evaluation to promote confidence in communicating in front of peers
• Expressing feelings, expectations and judgements in response to auditory or visual stimuli
• Explicit introduction of subject specific terminology and continued use of this terminology.
• Implementation of vocabulary read and learnt through reading, is encouraged to be used in writing tasks.
• Writing offers an opportunity for students to put their knowledge and skills into practice. Scrutiny of technical accuracy, and depth of detail as the curriculum progresses allows students to feel confident in their ability to produce high-quality writing.
• Repeated exposure to subject specific vocabulary and clear breakdown of what such terminology means- for example, “proxemics” connects to “proximity” and “approximate” to mean space or nearness.
• Direct instruction in the written style needed for evaluation and description of process. Working with students on what it means to “write like a dramatist” or “write like a reviewer”.
• At KS4 and KS5, methods of reflection, review and redrafting, ensure students are constantly learning as part of their continued development and writing skill.
• Using essays, and developing longer written answers using pneumonics, to explore the use of evidence in forming arguments, and to demonstrate knowledge and skills (largely in KS5)

Giving students the ability to read complex academic texts.

• Exposure to a variety of text and song lyrics. Engagement from Year 7 onwards in script, and the conventions of script, at KS4 and 5 students are introduced to different forms of script and how practitioners adapt conventions to meet their needs and purposes.
• Engagement with a rich and varied range of texts as stimulus material, for example poems, song lyrics, news reports and historic script.
• Exposure to a variety of musical notation styles, and exploring how these create musical outcomes.
• Exposure to academic articles related to music and drama
• Breaking or chunking down complex texts

Targeted vocabulary instruction

• Deconstructing the vocabulary used during demonstration of an instrument or a dramatic technique
• Asking students to explain vocabulary used in a complex task
• Revisiting complex tasks
• Helping students reframe sentences, either oral or written, so they include more complex vocabulary related to Performing Arts
• Deconstructing words before students visit them