Gen up on Drama
MT readers might be more drawn to the Music and Drama Education Expo for its music sessions, but the event is also a great opportunity to pick up ideas for drama teaching, which many school music teachers also find themselves involved with. As head of content for the drama side of the Expo, I'm delighted to say that the event's drama CPD provision has taken a huge leap up this year to include 27 workshops and seminars across all Key Stages, catering for streams including SEND and inclusion, curriculum and assessment, extra-curricular and higher education drama.
Teachers with students up to Key Stage 2 will find a particularly rich offering on Day 1 this year, beginning with ‘We are all storytellers: storytelling drama and literacy in primary schools’, followed by ‘Sing a song – tell a tale!’ and ‘Exploring and extending picture books through drama’.
If you come to the Expo in search of new techniques for secondary drama, there is plenty of this on Day 1. A practitioner from the National Youth Theatre will be running a session entitled ‘Performing classical text: a masterclass in techniques and approaches’, after which Erika Hughes offers an approach which was certainly new to me in programming the Expo: ‘“Viewpoints” improvisation technique in the drama classroom’. In the morning, a pair of teachers of music and drama will be leading a discussion and sharing some tips on writing arts essays, while an afternoon session with Adam Milford from Theatre Workout will help you devise physical theatre.
School leaders who have let you escape for the day on the promise of bringing back some ideas for the expansion of drama within and beyond the school will be pleased to hear that you're planning to attend PGCE course leader Jo Lock Smith's session ‘Building a drama curriculum to evidence character education for the new Ofsted framework’. Later, Samantha Coates courts controversy with a session entitled ‘Gifted and talented are dangerous words’, while Erika Hughes, in her second session of the day, explores ‘Supportive feedback in the arts classroom: an introduction to the Critical Response Process’.
Day 1 includes two sessions designed to help offer backstage, design and technical opportunities to your students. Jo Franklin of Guildford School of Acting will run ‘Introducing design and stage management: backstage involvement for your students in and out of school’. Later, ‘music and sound technology for drama productions’ will cover the mysteries of radio mics and more. Meanwhile, for performance pathways, meet Andy Johnson, author of The Excellent Audition Guide, to learn ‘How to help your students get in to drama school’. Or if you're visiting on Day 2, try Adam Milford's session, ‘Creative careers advice for your students’.
Cross-curricular and cross-school collaboration are watchwords on Day 2, with sessions including ‘Raising the profile of your drama department’, led by a teacher who has successfully implemented drama across her school. There's also ‘Drama, a most effective link: cross-curricular application for drama techniques focusing particularly on the teaching of modern languages’; ‘Rap Club: embracing youth culture’; and ‘Inter-school drama collaboration to the benefit of all’.
Three sessions on Day 2 offer a pathway for delegates to enhance their management of different aspects of teaching life: management of the curriculum, in ‘Building and assessing a knowledge rich drama curriculum’, with Keith Burt; management of student behaviour, in ‘Why manage behaviour when you can manage energy?’ from Rachel Hawker; and management of teacher anxiety in ‘How to be with yourself so you can be with others – in front of others’, with Andy Johnson.
Finally, some good old-fashioned practical sessions cover key topics on Day 2, including ‘Using drama to explore cultural diversity’, ‘Using music to create physical theatre with text’, ‘Starting with scripts’, and ‘Stage combat: the foundations of communication and storytelling’.
I look forward to seeing you in London on 4 and 5 March 2020: it promises to be an inspiring couple of days. The full programme can be viewed at www.mdexpo.co.uk.
- Sarah Lambie, head of drama content, Music and Drama Education Expo
The Peris by Harry Venning
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