Effective practice |

Drama into writing

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Number of pupils
312
Age range
4-11
Date of Inspection


 

Context and background to sector-leading practice

St Gwladys Primary School is in the town of Bargoed in the Caerphilly local authority.  There are 312 full time pupils between the ages of 4 and 11 taught in 12 classes and 53 pupils who attend the nursery on a full time basis.  Around 34% of pupils are eligible for free school meals, which is above the national and local averages.  Twenty-six per cent have additional learning needs, which is above the average for Wales.  Very few pupils have statements of special educational needs.

Description of nature of strategy or activity

St Gwladys Bargoed Primary School has continually refined its approaches to literacy.  This has proved to be necessary in a school where many pupils, enter the school with skills, knowledge and understanding below the expected level for their age.

The learning environment created to compensate for this focuses on developing pupils’ skills while ensuring that the school’s mission statement, ‘The child’s imagination is tomorrow’s reality’ is at the core of the commitment to enhance each child’s potential.

Staff never see the pupils in St Gwladys as passive recipients but always as active makers of meaning.  They have status as learners from Foundation Phase right through to the end of key stage 2.

The school recognises that, as investigative and imaginative play motivates early learning, including writing, the processes and techniques of drama would motivate speakers, readers and writers in a similar way.

All staff, through a structured programme of in-service training, have gained knowledge of a range of drama techniques: hot-seating, conscience alley, freeze frame, thought-tracking, collective voices, and improvisation that would stimulate process, product and evaluative talk.  Staff integrated these techniques into lessons as a means of exploring and generating text.

What impact has this work had on provision and learners’ standards?

Staff found that drama gave intellectual and emotional engagement to lessons.  It helped to shape the content of the writing.  Pupils formed thoughts and opinions prior to the writing in a wide range of genre across the breadth of the curriculum.  The collaborative nature of the discipline enabled an exchange of understanding which benefited learners in a range of ways.

Pupil voice:

Drama helps me with my writing because:
 

It makes you think how characters might feel.

It makes you spellbound in what you are writing.

It lets you explore your imagination, you can think big; you could go to the moon.

It gets you in the thinking zone for creative ideas.

You’ve told the story, it helps you write as you’re already in it.

It makes me more confident.

It helps me to picture.

Teaching and learning in St Gwladys encourages the opinion that: “Creativity flourishes when there is a systematic strategy to promote it.”  The school’s approach to oracy and to writing engages emotions, ideas and critical intelligence.  It has proved a motivator for writers at all levels.   Consequently, the impact on learners’ standards is such that by the end of key stage 2, pupils’ performance in English has been in the top 25% over the last four years.  

How have you shared your good practice?

The school has shared this practice with over fifty schools under the umbrella of the regional consortium’s 21st Century learning agenda on using electronic tablets to improve writing.  Staff have used appropriate electronic applications effectively to record freeze frames within drama activities.  The school have used these to demonstrate the positive impact that drama has in motivating writers, particularly the boys.

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