Building a curriculum for Foundation and Early Years Foundation Stage

Reception - Year 2

If you are unfamiliar with the curriculum expectations for this age group visit www.gov.uk/EYFS to study the statutory framework for EYFS. In many ways it is a drama teacher’s dream. Games and Play are the chief system of delivery for EYFS, so we are in familiar territory. However, there is little point in seeing Drama as a separate subject for this age group, rather its power is in extending and enriching the curriculum.

There are 7 Areas of Learning and drama can enrich the curriculum in most. I found planning most effective in the following Areas of Learning:

Reception: Communication and Language, Physical Development, Understanding the World.

Year 1: As above plus Literacy and Personal Social and Emotional Development

Year 2: As above and begin to bring in popular legends/history stories to Understanding of the World.

Top Tips

Many teachers find this age group a mystery and an intimidating mystery at that. Try to remember you are not delivering the curriculum you are enriching it. Work with the specialist class teachers. With their help, identify the challenges most evident in your school community and think about how you can help the staff meet those challenges. Ask for copies of their mid-term planning so that you are offering extensions to the structure they are delivering. Ensure you check in every now and again to be certain that you are following the class teacher and not ahead of them.

With Reception start slow and small. Imagine the immediate consciousness of the children in front of you, what it must feel like to be with a room full of strangers. It will take a little time for them to feel safe enough to speak aloud and play. Collective singing and speaking will help here, simple poems and songs that they can learn by ear are the best material to use. Likewise singing songs from the early years Kodaly song books work a treat. They will begin to join in on the last word in a line and this is a good spot to add an action so that they know their cue. Use repetition, it builds confidence. When everyone is joining in regularly you can think about introducing a new poem or song but not before. Don’t be disheartened if you are singing on your own for half a term, just keep inviting them to sing with you.

Never hold hands in a big circle, they will just pull each other over. Use large hula hoops for groups of six to walk in a circle, lift it up high, take it down low etc.

You should have a classroom assistant in the room with you but even so make sure you are familiar with classroom etiquette for asking to go to the toilet, lining up, how we show we are ready to listen, any health issues that potentially need to take priority, (diabetes, serious allergies, risk of seizure) and the appropriate protocol. Remember many children in Reception are not able to communicate their needs effectively so we must always be sensitive to their vulnerability and use positive discipline to recognise cooperative behaviour and reward progress.

In developing Literacy in Year 1, I found the most effective use of time was to read their weekly class book aloud, which they were already familiar with, and then play the story in small groups. In Year 2 we sometimes imagined what happened to the characters before the story or after the story and then played that. This sometimes came from the children and sometimes was teacher led. If the latter, the children would play the story as I was telling it, quite spontaneously and often informed where it might go with their actions and emotional responses.

This is quite a magical place to get to.

If a story begs to be outside, then follow your instincts and get outside. A favourite for me was Robin Hood, dressing up warm every November, heading to the green space to build the Merry Men’s camp and imagining all the tasks we needed to do to stay alive. Finally, planning a raid on the Sheriff’s strong room. The camp was made with fallen branches for benches, twigs and leaves for the campfire and bows but not arrows for hunting.

There will always be difficulties and limitations with resources so try to familiarise yourself with anything the school has that you can use. Then start with one of the most powerful questions ever asked, ‘What can we do?’

Building a curriculum in Primary and Middle School

This is where Drama as a specialist subject begins to take shape. Whether you come to teaching through theatre work or come to drama through teaching, the task of building a through-school drama curriculum, from the ground up is daunting.

Being outside of the national curriculum is both a disadvantage and an advantage. In the beginning it can feel like staggering through a desert, short on resources, direction, structure, assessment criteria and a clearly defined purpose. I have listed a few resources above which I found very helpful.

The advantage comes from the absence of a structures with prescribed expectations to meet or surpass that many of your colleagues enjoy. You have the freedom to ask yourself some liberating questions. What is the purpose of education in its broadest sense and how does drama serve that? What serves the needs of the children and young people in front of me? What possibilities can this subject offer which are new to them, surprising, inspiring?

It is enormously helpful to think about the skill set that is required then how to layer the skills progressively through the year groups. To deliver this think about the specific subject vocabulary you want to use. There is no need to change the subject vocabulary through the years, the same language can be used but with increasing understanding and application.

Lastly (definitely lastly) there are the practicalities. The length of each lesson. Continuity, do you have the class throughout the year or for half of each term. The School Calendar, the demands it makes on you, the students and your colleagues. Ultimately there will be enough battles to fit everything in so make sure your own planning doesn’t put you in a perpetual battle.

I devised a curriculum along two structures. One was dividing the curriculum into two columns the first being (knowledge) what drama is and the second being (skill) how to do it well.

The second structure was a wheel of starting points, this would work equally well as building blocks as long as the visual representation in the classroom demonstrates that each starting point is interchangeable and of equal importance. The central idea is that drama can begin with any starting point but all of the starting points must be present for the work to be a drama.