Doorways to imagined worlds

Working as private detectives, the children investigate, ‘who is the key holder?’ as they begin to piece together the clues on the investigation board, the worlds behind the doors beckon – what will they discover? The potential stories are endless, but which door will they decide to unlock?

The ‘key holder’ scheme of work encourages the class to work outside the classroom in the local environment, as a starting point to inspire creative thinking and storytelling. Real-life objects and photographs are used to spark the imagination and to devise characters and scenarios. As part of the process, an ‘investigation board’ can be set up in the classroom to document the students’ ideas, capture statements and observations on post-its and display photographs of the drama activities.

This learning wall can be used to generate creative writing in future English lessons. This scheme of work consists of four one-hour lessons, a trip to the local park or woods and links to the KS2 speaking, listening, group interaction and drama objectives from the English national curriculum.

Learning objectives:

By the end of this scheme the students will have learnt that:

• They can speak with confidence in a range of contexts
• They can listen, understand and respond appropriately to each other in group and whole class discussions
• They can ask relevant questions to clarify, extend and follow up ideas in hot-seating activities
• They can talk effectively as a member of a group, qualifying and justifying their opinion or idea
• They can create, adapt and sustain different roles individually and in groups during improvisations
• They can use dramatic techniques to explore characters
• They can evaluate how they and others have contributed to the shared drama
• They can imagine and explore feelings and ideas, focusing on creative uses of language.

Number of lessons: 4