Learning opportunities, curriculum links
Taking on a role and seeing how things might look through another person’s eyes is fundamental to drama. When in role, students work across the four strands of The Arts in the New Zealand Curriculum:
- Developing Practical Knowledge in Drama (PK)
- Developing Ideas in Drama (DI)
- Communicating and Interpreting in Drama (CI)
- Understanding Drama in Context (UC).
As year 1–8 students progress in their ability to create and work in role, they will be able to:
- recognise when they and others are in role and when they are out of role (level 1)
- accept a role within a story, alone or with others, independently or teacher-facilitated (level 1)
- take part in blanket roles (level 1)
- sustain a role through to a conclusion (level 2)
- respond within a role with their own opinions, feelings, and characteristics (level 2)
- create and develop a role for a specific situation (level 3)
- enact and respond within a role, showing different characteristics from their own personality, behaviours, and points of view (level 3)
- sustain in role an intended atmosphere or emotion (level 3)
- research and play a role with different characteristics from their own by building on a clear sense of the role’s past and future (level 4).
The New Zealand Curriculum Exemplars: The Arts (the drama matrix)
As students progress, the teacher’s input into the development of the drama experience decreases, while the students become increasingly independent and aware of how role is developed and how drama works.
For more detail on the key aspects of learning that inform progression in drama, refer to the exemplars drama matrix at The Arts: Drama matrix