DRAMA AND THEATRICS

We at St. JOhn’s have a uniquely designed curriculum for art and theatre that is based on David Kolb’s ‘Experiential Learning Theory’, Lev Vygotsky’s ‘Social Constructivist and Collaborative Learning Theories” and Jerome Bruner’s ‘Scaffolding Learning Model’.

Mission:

To explore and train the bodies, voices, and minds of young artists so that they can communicate and express their ideas and feelings with confidence in different styles and forms. To learn, understand, and respect the diverse views and attitudes of people belonging to other cultures, communities, nationalities, faiths, and religions. To contribute to building compassion for the world communities and environment.

Our theatre curriculum aims:

• To nurture learners’ imagination, creativity, and critical thinking skills.
• To build a community of learners who are continuously hungry for more learning all through their lives. For them ‘more becomes less’.
• To work collaboratively and create an environment of mutual trust, love, and respect.
• To empower young theatre learners with the theatre tools to create performances.
• To expose young theatre learners to different theatrical genres, forms, and styles.

The EYP grades of Prep I -III & Grades I and II experience a theatrical journey of drama and emotions through our curriculum. It revolves around:

1. Creative Exploration & Artistic Expression – This includes role-plays and improvisations to understand human feelings, emotions, and incorporate personal experiences in storytelling. The students learn all about an actor’s tools (mind, body, and voice) to find artistic expression using characters from students’ lives and imaginary characters.
2. Technical Integration – Developing a fundamental understanding of how technical elements of theatre contribute to enhancing the overall spectacle of the performances. At St. John’s, our students also learn all about costumes, props, make-up, music, sound for the classroom performances, and creating play scripts on the basis of elements of drama.
3. Performance Skills – Offering them a chance to portray characters from comics and cartoon films, and skills their ability to use mind, body, and voice effectively for the convincing portrayal of the assigned characters. Added to this, they learn to perform with confidence and poise in front of an audience.
4. Reflect and Review – Enables a child to be able to reflect on one’s own learning and performances as well as critique the work of others. They can identify ‘what worked and what did not’ and propose methods on how they could improve.

The theatre and art curriculum of III, IV & V, follow a similar framework, but with an integrated difficulty level, with an aim to enhance the impact of all the learnings they grasp in theatre and art

.

1. Creative Exploration & Artistic Expression – To be able to use theatre skills and tools to engage with concepts chosen either from a range of subjects such as EVS, social sciences, sciences, language, and literature or from the personal experiences of the students.
2. Production Skills – Accounts for developing a better understanding of how technical elements of theatre contribute to enhancing the overall spectacle of the performances and how these elements support actors on stage in order to achieve the desired impact. It also covers an integrated application of costumes, props, make-up, music, and sound for the performances. They are also taught to write mini play scripts on the basis of elements of drama.
3. Performance Skills – Enabling students to be able to perform the stories which are developed either from the published storybooks or created by students during the process. It includes the basics of design and direction, the portrayal of the assigned characters through effective use of mind, body, and voice.
4. Reflect and Review – Students can reflect on their own learning and performances as well as critique the work of others. They will be capable of identifying through experimenting and can propose methods of how would they improve upon them in future performances.

MUSIC:

Our music course aligns very closely with the Trinity College London Theory of Music curriculum. It focuses on the basic rudiments in western music theory and journeys over detailed elements in rhythm, harmony, pitch, progression, composition, orchestration, and more.

This unique curriculum includes:

• Performance skills
• Music history, music theory, and analysis, music appreciation, vocal and choral skills, composition skills, and world music. Mainly vocals and percussion instruments.
• Our Music curriculum is segregated into

International Music Curriculum (IMC) : This curriculum is for Primary classes. Children will benefit a lot from this comprehensive program as it covers all aspects of music. The three core elements taught are:

• Performing
• Listening
• Appraising

International Performers Curriculum (IPC) : This curriculum is for Secondary Classes.

This is a performance-based curriculum focusing on instrument learning skills using internationally acclaimed methodology. This gives students of all ages the opportunity to learn in a classroom environment, piano and performance skills, music theory and appreciation, music history and world music. Students will be given the opportunity to progress further by taking performance examinations, individual instrumental lessons and participate in our numerous concerts and recitals.

This unique curriculum includes performance skills, music history, music theory and analysis, music appreciation, vocal and choral skills, composition skills and world music. Based on the interest and inclination of the students we also prepare students for globally accredited examination boards including