Devising on the theme of growing up

At any level we expect students to devise work in drama. I hope this scheme will offer a variety of ideas to get students started. The work is divided into sections based on a number of different stimuli, some of the work uses the texts quite closely and some of it is off-text work based on the themes and ideas raised. The timings for each session will vary; you may find that half an hour is ample time to explore some ideas or you might want to take several lessons. As always, it depends on your students and how they want to explore things and what direction you and they want to move in. As teachers we often find something that we thought would take an hour takes fifteen minutes and something that we thought would take fifteen minutes takes an hour. Be flexible and let the students’ work guide you.

By the time students reach GCSE many of them have made, or are in the process of making, the transition from child to young adult, so the theme of growing up is particularly relevant to them and students often create their best work based on what is familiar to them. Growing up is a very broad topic and in this instance I am using it as a springboard in a number of different directions; it spans childhood and adolescence and includes the themes of innocence, independence and responsibility. My intention with this scheme is that you can use the various texts to illustrate an idea and then encourage students to take those ideas and use them for different scenes that could fit into a piece of devised work.

Where appropriate this scheme also aims to extend how students respond to practical work, encouraging them to employ the language of drama in their talk and be more analytical when they discuss work.

Texts used:

• The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole
• Blue Remembered Hills
• The Lord of the Flies

Number of lessons: 4