Middle School Drama Curriculum

This Middle School Drama Curriculum was originally written for The Haverford School.  (Middle School at Haverford consists of grades 6 through 8.)  Specific lesson sequence varied from year to year because lessons were written to conform to each class's specific needs, but the objective was to accomplish all of the stated goals in a three-year program.  The goals are arranged not sequentially but logically, by main subject area, with no hierarchical relationship between main headings implied.  It is expected that every lesson taught will address a number of different points on the outline simultaneously.  Where specific skills, activities or subgoals appear more than once, this is because they address more than one main goal.  (This curriculum is really best understood as a three-dimensional web of interrelated skills.)  It is not arranged by grade level because at the time Drama was not taught grade-by-grade.

 

This curriculum was designed to meet the requirements of the Goals 2000 National Standards for Arts Education, which was the standard in place at the time of its creation, but its structure was more closely modeled on the "Essential Elements" of the Texas Theatre Arts Curriculum, which was a well accepted model of a working elementary level dramatic arts curriculum.  At the time, Texas was the only state to mandate drama education in its public schools.  The National Standards focused mainly on performance skills, while the Texas curriculum was much more process-oriented.  The Haverford School curriculum was a balance of the two, meeting the requirements of both but stressing the more developmentally appropriate process-oriented approach.

 

This curriculum addresses four basic domains of learning:  Psychomotor--developing perceptual and expressive skills and techniques; Cognitive--assimilating knowledge and developing higher order thinking skills; Affective--cultivating positive attitudes towards art and the discipline or are, and about themselves in relation to art; and Aesthetic--deriving pleasure from a combination of senses, emotions, intellect, philosophy, imagination and spirit.