Devising from an image: Narrative approaches

Waiting: an introduction to drama conventions

Acting Shakespeare: Monologues from A Midsummer Night's Dream

Practising physical and vocal skills

Live theatre responses: Becoming a critic

Narrative structures using poetry: Developing monologues

Who Cares?: A devising unit

Acting Shakespeare: Twelfth Night

Posture, gesture and voice in performance

Live theatre responses: Using social media

Approaching text: Bringing it to life

One text, different approaches

The journey: a verbatim project

Study of text in contemporary, cultural contexts

Live performance responses: Evaluating stagecraft

Understanding roles and responsibilities of the creative team

Commedia dell'arte: an introduction

Using Drama conventions to explore contemporary issues

Drama

Y7 Drama

Key Stage 3

Year 7

UNIT

In this lesson, students will learn about pace, tone, emphasis and volume. They will experiment with these skills in activities to alter meaning and affect. Students will experiement with vocal expression to show emotion.

Vocal skills part 1

﻿Hello, and welcome to Drama. This is Practising Physical and Vocal Skills. And this is lesson one of five vocal skills, part one. My name's Mr. Wood and I'm going to be your teacher for this unit. For today's lesson, you're going to need a little bit of space. So just make sure your surrounding area is clear and you can move without anything hindering you. You can stand if needs be. If you've started today's lesson with your intro quiz, well done. Now, we're going to continue with the lesson and you will have a look at understanding vocal skills. We'll then move on to experimenting with those vocal skills before we finish off with our exit quiz. Your key words for today's lesson, are emotion and that is a strong feeling which comes from someone's mood or circumstance. Emphasis. An emphasis is stress given to a word to indicate a particular importance. And scenario is an outline of a scene or play with its own setting. So let's understand some of these vocal skills. What are they? They are the skills that we use when we're speaking or making sounds. There are many vocal skills when we speak. There are even more in drama. Here are some. Pace, pitch, volume, tone, accent, clarity, pause, emphasis. So pace is to do with the speed at which you speak. Pitch is how high or low it might sound. Volume is of course how loud or quiet it might be. Tone gives off a specific meaning or feeling. Accent generally, gives us a sense of location as to where the character is from. Clarity how well pronounced or how there is a lack of clarity. It might be that they don't pronounce their t's or vowels or consonants as well. Pauses, stopping for a brief moment in time. And then emphasis is of course stressing the words to give it more meaning or importance. Just be aware that today the skills we're looking at will intertwine and overlap with each other. The beauty of these skills are that they blend very nicely and it is quite easy to make them very effective by combining them. So for example, if we're looking at tone and we don't realise that pace comes into it as well and it sounds very effective, even though we were focusing on tone to begin with. We're going to start experimenting with vocal skills next. Just before we do, we need to make sure that our voices are ready. So let's warm them up. Okay. Make sure that you are sitting up nice and tall or you can be standing for this. We're going to start with the letter P and we're going to copy the sound of /p/ with a really strong push through that word. And I want you to be able to breathe out the letter as you say it, okay? So we'll do it all together. We'll do it five times. Three, two, one. Okay. We'll do it again. Make sure that you're really pushing that letter out, okay? Don't forget to breathe. Three, two, one. Well done. Okay. Now, we're going to move on to the letter M Same thing. We're going to breathe the letter out and it's going to be, ma, ma, ma, okay? Again, do it five times. So three, two, one, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma. Okay. We'll try that one again. All at the same time, three, two, one, ma ma ma ma ma. Lovely. And then the last one we'll do is wa. Okay, so we're going to be trying to breathe that letter out with the sound of a W, okay? Five again, three, two, one wa, wa, wa, wa, wa. Okay. Are you breathing? Make sure that the breath is elongating the sound of the letter. We'll try that again. Five more in three, two, one, wa, wa, wa, wa, wa. Okay, lovely. Now, I want us to think about Sandra. Sandra sells seashells by the seashore, okay? So I'm going to say it and I'd like you to copy it back. Sandra sells seashells by the seashore. Your turn. Okay. We'll do that again. See if we can go quicker. We're going to up the pace. Sandra sells seashells by the sea shore. Your turn. Sandra sells seashells by the sea shore. Off you go. And lastly, Sandra sells seashells by the sea shore. Lovely, well done. Now, we're going to talk about Gunter. Because Gunter grew great hearty greens. Gunter grew great hearty greens. Okay, you have to go say that for me. Let's try and get that quicker. Gunter grew great hearty greens. You're turn and see how quick you can go. Gunter grew great hearty greens. Off you go. I'm sure you quicker than I was at that one. Okay. Now we're going to have a look at some emotions with words that we say, for example, if hello is the word, say that in a happy tone for me like this. Hello. Okay. Now can you say in a sad tone? Hello. Can you say it in an angry tone? Hello. And what about confused tone? Hello? Okay? Now if we move the phrase to come back, say that with a happy tone. Come back. Okay, what about in a sad tone? Comeback. Okay. What about in an angry tone? Come back. And what about in a confused tone? Come back? Okay. What if the phrase was, how are you? Have a go at saying that in a happy tone? How are you? And what if it was a sad tone? How are you? What if it was an angry tone? How are you? And what if it was a confused tone? How are you? What if the phrase was finally, who are you? Say that in a happy tone for me? Who are you? What about in a sad tone? Who are you? What about in an angry tone? Who are you? What about in a confused tone? Who are you? Lovely, okay. If you'd like to repeat any of that then please feel free. If not, let's continue with the rest of the lesson. Pace affects the meaning of the words you say depending on how quickly or slowly you say that phrase. For example, I'm not doing it. If we look at saying that at an average pace, we might say, I'm not doing it. What's the meaning there? Obviously the phrase would always stay the same. So we've got to think about subtle changes. What if I sped it up? I'm not doing it. Naturally, it comes with an emotion. Can you identify what that emotion was, if I went quicker? I'm not doing it. Any thoughts? And now if I slow it down, what sorts of meaning is created? I'm not doing it? I have a feeling that the latter seems a bit more defiant than the one that was quicker. The one that's quicker seems obviously rushed but for what reason? Any ideas. Right, I see. Right! I see. Right, I see. Right, I see. Right, I see. Right, I see. Right, I see. We can slow them down, obviously. We can speed them up. Pace can give us new meaning depending on the speed. Practise the line, "You can't sit with us." At a slow pace, a medium pace and a fast pace. The aim is to understand the meaning shown at each stage and they should be ever so slightly different. Okay? You can't sit with us. You can't sit with us. You can't sit with us. Now, as I said before there are some other vocal skills that are starting to come into these. So don't fight them. Don't try and separate it. Allow them to help you out when you are adapting the pace. Okay, cause it will help give new meaning pause the video to complete this task and click resume. When you're ready to move on. What pace might we consider using for the delivery of the line below to show that you care? Don't worry, everything's going to be okay. Do we think a quicker version or a slower version would be more appropriate? What do you think? A slower pace, I think so as well. Don't worry, everything is going to be okay. Experiment with your pace when you deliver the line, don't worry, everything is going to be okay. Practising it out loud a few times because that's the best way to understand the communication or intention. Okay? You need to aim to sound caring through your speed of speech. Pause the video to complete this task and click resume when you're ready to move on. Okay. Now, what pace might we consider using for the delivery of the below line to show that your excited do we think, "No, really? You're joking." would be fast or slow? What'd you think? I think fast. Should we try that? So I would like you to experiment with your pace when you deliver the line, "No, really? you're joking." Practise saying it out loud a few times, get yourself ready and comfortable. You need to aim to sound excited through your speed of speech. Okay? So your pace must communicate your excited emotions. Pause the video to be able to complete this task and click resume when you're ready to move on. Now, we're going to have a little look at volume. Volume is incredibly useful to a performance and when you're portraying a character. It can communicate a whole range of different meanings. Brenda, Brenda, Brenda, speak up. I can't hear you, Brenda. Hello, Brenda. All right. No need to shout. Hello. Hello, can you hear me? I am trapped at number five. Oh, hi. You all right? You all right? No. Hello? Hello, yes, yes. I'm calling to tell you I have a problem. I have... I've got a real problem, can you help? Shh, shh, I don't want anyone to know. Why? But why? No, no, I'm not doing it, no. No. So aggression. That could either be a high volume or low volume. Okay? Stop what you're doing. Stop what you're doing. Okay. So even though we've got high and a low volume we can still communicate the same emotion. We've got realisation, being fearful, being secretive, in shock, panic, confusion, in defence. Okay. So it's understanding that you can show a range of volumes to communicate meaning. So practise the line. "No, you mustn't." AT low, medium, and high volumes to communicate the following meanings. Firstly, aggression. Next, fearful. Realisation and then being secretive, okay? They may have a similar volume, but they definitely won't sound the same. So bear that in mind pause the video to be able to complete this task and click resume when you're ready to move on. Part two, practise this line. Did you see that at low, medium, and high volumes to communicate the following in shock, in defence, panic, and confusion. Pause the video to be able to complete this part of the task and click resume when you are ready to move on. Now, we're going to start working with emphasis. This allows the performer to get passionate about something. It allows us to stress a particular word and therefore give meaning or more importance to a part of a sentence. It depends on the phrase, but to a large extent it allows you to get emotionally invested in what you are saying and doing. I don't want that. I don't want that. I don't want that. I don't want that. I don't want that. I don't want that. I don't want that. I don't want that. I don't want that. I don't want that. I don't want that. I don't want that. Imagine you're very hungry for chocolate in a shop. There's only one chocolate bar left on the shelf. Someone takes it only seconds before you. Practise saying the example below stressing the word in bold. "I was going to have that." How does it feel? Does adding context make it easier to use emphasis to understand its effect? For example, if I would have taken away the introduction there and just given you the word, sorry. I've given you the phrase would that have been just as easy to create? Could you have formulated in your head the reasons why you were going to have that? Okay. Practising these four examples below stressing the words that are in bold. So we have, "Excuse me, do you have the time?" Go for it? We have "Don't call me saying I didn't warn you." You're turn. We have "I can't believe I'm hearing this." Give it a go. And we've got "You're so embarrassing." Give it a go. So "Excuse me, do you have the time?" "Don't call me saying I didn't warn you." "I can't believe I'm hearing this." "You're so embarrassing." Okay. Now, what if you emphasise a different word in that sentence, in any of the four sentences that we've looked at. Pick a different word in there that you think might be just as interesting to stress. It might change the meaning. That's okay. Just see what you can find. Okay. Now, I'm going to stop exploring tone. Tone has a very large impact on the overall meaning of what we're trying to say. You may have heard, "Lower your tone," or "Don't take that tone with me." And they all refer to a specific way of speaking and we're going to explore different ways of speaking now. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay, okay. Okay. Practise saying, "Don't do that" using a range of tones. So in other words, think of all the different meanings you could say from changing tones ever so slightly. Okay. One tone may give you a meaning a completely different tone. Completely different meaning. Yeah? So have a think. Pause the video to complete this task. Try them on out and then click resume when you're ready to move on. Don't do that. Okay. Which meaning was presented in that example? Do you think it was me educating a child on how to use their cutlery correctly? Because they've clearly used it wrong. Did it sound like that? What about someone who I caught stealing? Did it sound like that? Well then what about me giving a friend advice? Do you think it sounded more like that? All of the three options, yeah. Don't do that. Okay. Which example was that then? Was it educating your child on how to use their cutlery correctly? No? Was it me catching someone stealing? It could have been. I think it was more likely that than the other. Well done. Now you are going to adapt to the meaning. Using the very same meaning, create your own phrase that supports that. Consider your use of tone, pace, emphasis and volume to make this successful. Okay, get creative pause the video to complete the task and then click resume when you're ready to move on. Now, we're going to practise tone, pace, emphasis, and volume. You are going to say the building is on fire. Using a range of different vocal skills, you should aim to create a sense of urgency. Okay. So the idea of a rising tension through your delivery of that line. Pause the video to be able to complete this task and click resume when you're ready to move on. Volume, pace, and emphasis can affect the meaning of what you say. Is that true or false? The answer is true, okay? That's exactly right. Okay. We've reached the end of today's lesson and you've worked brilliantly to explore and tackle various different vocal skills. Now, we've looked at tone, varying tones. We've looked at emphasis on stressing particular words to add new meaning. We've looked at pace, okay? How quickly or how slowly words are said. And we've looked at volume, okay? Now with those vocal skills, we need to understand the basis of where they come from in order to be able to use them later. So today we've laid the groundwork to explore these skills in greater depth next lesson. So well done for your hard work today. If you would like to share any of the phrases that you've worked on today, if you're particularly proud of a meaning that you feel you've discovered, then you can share your work with us at Oak National. Just ask your parent or carer for permission first where they can go to Twitter, share your work, and tag us using @OakNational and #LearnwithOak. Until our next lesson, which is lesson two, Looking Our Vocal Skills, part two, take care. And I'll see you soon. Bye-bye.

In this lesson, students will work with a short text and use the thought-tracking technique to add original 'asides' into the script. Students will experiment with vocal expression to show character.

Vocal skills part 2

﻿Hello, and welcome to drama. This is practising physical and vocal skills. It's less than two of five, and this is vocal skills part two. My name is Mr. Wood and I'm your teacher for this unit. If you're ready, let's get started. In today's lesson, you're going to need a little bit of space. So make sure there's nothing in your immediate vicinity that's going to stop you from taking part in the lesson. So hopefully you've completed your introductory quit. That's great, well done. Now we're going to continue with recapping last lesson before we move on to thought-tracking and text work, and then we'll continue the lesson by expanding the text, before we finish with the exit quiz. Your key words for today's lesson are: thought, and that's just an idea or an opinion produced suddenly in the mind. An aside is a comment in a play made to the audience, not the other people in the scene. So it's dipping out of the scene to say something to the audience, coming back and continuing the scene. And thought-track, that is a drama strategy where you speak the thought out loud in character. So if the character had a thought, it pops into their head, they say it straight away. Now let's recap last lesson. We explored a range of vocal skills in a range of ways. The skills we started to explore were: pace, if you can remember what is. It's to do with the speed at which you speak. Tone, if you can remember what tone is. That's to do with how you say something in a particular way. And that gives us one meaning. If you change the tone a bit so slightly, you might get a completely different meaning. We explored volume, which has to do with how loud or how quiet you are when you speak. And emphasis, that is where you stress a particular word to give it certain importance. And that in itself might give us new meaning too. Now we're going to start thought-tracking and our text work. Before we do this, we need the warmup. So can you please sit nice and tall or you can stand for this. We're going to start our vocal warm up with some Ps. I'd like you to say the letter P just like we did before, but I would like you to breathe that letter outward. Let's get your lips moving. Repeat after me. /p/, /p/, /p/, /p/, /p/. Your turn. We'll do that one again. Don't get to really breathe whether you're pushing that letter P outward. /p/, /p/, /p/, /p/, /p/. Now again, just do the same thing, but with the letter M. So we'll breathe that one out into a /m/ sound. We'll do five of them. You repeat after me. /m/, /m/, /m/, /m/, /m/. Your turn. Seat back, don't forget to keep your lips moving. That's the point of this one and breathe out as you do it. We'll do it once more. /m/, /m/, /m/, /m/, /m/. Your turn. Seat back. Okay now /W. We want to get that breath coming out words and we also want to start moving parts about face. Repeat after me. /w/, /w/, /w/, /w/, /w/. Your turn. We'll do that one again. Really breathe out with it. /w/, /w/, /w/, /w/, /w/. Your turn. Seat back, well done. Now Sandra has returned. Sandra sells seashells by the seashore. Can you repeat that for me? We'll try and speed it up a little bit. Sandra sells seashells by the sea shore. Your turn. We'll do it again as quick as we can. Sandra sells seashells by the sea shore. Okay, well done. Now, if I said to you, hello? And I said that in a happy way, how would that sound? Hello? Can you copy that for me? Positive and upbeat. Off you go. What if I said to do it in a sad tone? Hello? Give it a go. What about an angry tone? Hello? Confused tone. Hello? That's it, copying with me. Now the term is, come back. Say that in a happy tone. Come back. Sad tone. Come back. Angry tone. Come back. Confused tone. Come back. The phrase is now, how long are you? In a happy tone, go. In a sad tone, go. Angry tone, go. On a confused tone, go. Super, now final phrase, who are you? Happy tone, go. Sand tone, go. Angry tone, go. Confused tone, go. Super, well done. Now, Gunter has turned up because Gunter grew great hearty greens. Repeat after me. Gunter grew great hearty greens. Speed it up. Gunter grew great hearty greens. And as quick as you possibly can. Gunter grew great hearty greens. Well done. If you'd like to go through that again, please feel free. If not, let's get started. So now we're going to start with our thought tracking now that our voices are ready. Tell me what is the weather like outside right now? Take a look out the window. What do you see? Now, I want you to think. What is the first thing that pops into your head when you see this weather? Actually, that's a lovely day. The weather lied. It's really coming down out there. Is it positive? Is it negative? It looks really warm and then a massive gust of wind comes past and it looks freezing cold. I love the sunshine. Is it a descriptive statement? Hey, seagulls up there. I can still see the moon. It's raining. Smells like chicken. I wonder how birds don't freeze when it snows like this. Whatever it is, hold on to it. I would like you to practise this thought out loud but be clear. You don't need to make a monologue. It is just the first thought. Pause the video to do this. Click resume when you're ready to move on. Consider your thoughts now, you're in a restaurant and you've ordered a Mexican bean burger. You all very hungry. However, the waiter brings you a burger, but it's not a Mexican bean, it's chicken. What sorts of thoughts might you have right now in that moment? No idea is wrong at this point? Now, we've got a couple of options to consider as this character. Which statement are you more likely to be thinking if you were expecting one thing but received something else? Option one is, "I should send this back." Option two is, "Oh, it's chicken. I don't mind." Option three is, "I'm vegetarian, I'm not eating that." Option four is, "I'm so hungry I don't even care." Have a little think about one of those options now. Which one is more like you? Which one are you more likely to be thinking right now? I would like you to role play three different thoughts you might have in this moment when you realise you don't have a Mexican bean burger, you have a chicken burger. These ideas should try to contrast each other. It's okay if there are connections that overlap, but try and keep the focus upfront. Say them out loud, consider your use of tone, volume, pace, and emphasis. Pause the video now to do this and click with you when you're ready to move on. So this is the text. "I knew a lady called Sandra. She was a respectable woman. She knew how to talk to people and to put them at ease. She was one of the best. Sandra was always so helpful to me when I came back from shopping, she would help me with my bags. Come to think of it, she was always there to help." After hearing that, what's your opinion of Sandra? Who is she? What did she do? Where is she from? Why she so helpful? Now, what about the speaker? What's your opinion on them so far given what they've said? They seem to be quite complimentary about Sandra. What are your thoughts? Now, I would like you to role play this particular bits of text. So practise saying this section out loud and get a feel for the character that you're speaking as. Pause the video to be able to complete this task. The text is copied in there on the screen and click resume when you're ready to move on. Sandra is not the speaker in the text. Is that true or false? Yep, that's true. Sandra is the focus of what our character is saying, not the speaker. So what is your opinion? What connection might this speaker have with Sandra? "I knew a lady called Sandra. She was a respectable woman." And it ends with, "She was always there to help." Think about what you've heard, think about what you've said. Get a feel for it. Make these decisions yourself and fill in the gaps of your knowledge. You get to decide what the reason is here. What connection have they got? Are they related in some way? Were they neighbours? You decide. Now, an aside is very important. Imagine you are saying these words. What would you say immediately after if your character truly believed something different? This is a technique that is very similar to thought-tracks, which is why we started with that. So an aside is something where we dip out of that scene. If you remember me saying right at the start with our key words. We might have a scene going on and then we just pause there, we look at the audience, we say what we're really thinking and then we come back in to carry on the conversation. So option number one, "Hello, good to see you." If that's part of our scene, what might you say to the audience? What are you really thinking as you see that person and you say, "Hello, good to see you." Is it, "I'm not actually happy to see them?" Is it, "I haven't seen that in years. Would you believe that?" Funny I see them here now. Something like that. What about option two? "Wow, nice shirt." Or could you say that as you look at your audience? Option three, "I like you." What could be said there. Have you thought something different? What might you say to the audience? And option four, "It's raining again." Straight to the audience, what would you say? You're going to have go practising this aside. The line is, "Wow, nice shirt." Creates an aside to go straight after this line which tells us your actual intentions, what you really think. Now it can be positive, it can be negative. It can support the statement, it can go up against it. It's entirely up to you. You need to pause the video to be able to complete this and cook resume when you're ready to move on. We just looked at option two. Refresh your brains. Now you're going to have a look at, "Hello, good to see you." Just like before creating an aside to go straight after this line. Now you may be talking to the same person as you did in the last one. You may decide to have an entirely different setting. For example, you could be on a beach, you could be in the street, you could be on your front door. It doesn't matter where you are or who you're speaking to, but I would like you to imagine what you say directly after this line. Pause the video to complete this task and click resume when you're ready to move on. Now, we're going to start expanding the texts that I gave you earlier. So there are many opportunities to develop this text. We can add asides which would of course help make the text more interesting to an audience. It stops us just watching it. Instead, it breaks down the fourth wall and it allows us to be involved. We are spoken to as if we are allowed to be there. So enjoy that. Have a connection with your audience there. "I knew of a lady called Sandra. I didn't like Sandra at all. She was a respectable woman. She wasn't actually horrible snake of a woman. Always shoving a nose into other people's business. She knew how to talk to people to put them at ease. There were countless times actually she belittled me in front of people. It was embarrassing. She was one of the best. Sandra was always so helpful to me when I came back from shopping. She would always help me with my bags after the car only because she knew that meant she could look and see what one was buying. Why else would she come and help? Savage. Come to think of it. She was always there to help, always always." So you're going to have a go at this yourself now. Develop the text with any asides of your choosing. Now, all you've put in a few gaps into the body of this text, but you can use this at your own discretion. So if you would love to put some asides in right at the very start, right at the very end, partly through the middle, it's entirely up to you where you put them, but I've put some markers so that you can see a rough idea of where I would put them. Now, use this as a chance to add character. Because this is your interpretation, you are looking at this speaker and how they have a relationship with Sandra and that's where the interest will lie. So it'd be really interesting to get your perspective as the speaker and really hearing what you think. This seems this bit of text would appear to be a bit of a facade. Don't forget to keep looking at your audience each time you say an aside. And you need to pause the video to complete this task and click resume when you are ready to move on. Welcome back, I hope you enjoyed that bit. Now an aside can stop us from knowing more about the character speaking. Is that true or is it false? The answer is false. An aside helps us to build a relationship and it can help us learn more about the character who is speaking. So it's ever too early for an aside? As I said earlier, you could place in the side right at the very start of the text. What's aside would you use if you could before introducing the character Sandra? Are there any bits of information that would be important to hear? For example, about their background? They are really three. They come in to ask me about someone and I'm going to have to fill you in as I go, but why did they have to be early? Anyway, whatever I'll say to them, I don't mean it, trust me. I'll tell you more later, but yeah. "Hi, so, I knew of a lady called Sandra." So now you'll go to have a go yourself at creating an aside as the speaker which warns us about this Sandra character and the immediate arrival of having to talk about them. You can prepare us for what we're about to hear. For example, is there anything shocking in the aside you made previously about Sandra? Is there anything that went on between you two? For example if Sandra did something and after that, did the speaker do something even worse so they're trying to cover it up? In which case do they need to forewarn the audience? Consider your use of tone at this point? Is it going to be different? I would imagine that the tone you use now at the very start is similar to what you use in your asides later, but it could have a sense of urgency. You could have, let's say a rising tension. It could be very shocking to start with as you realise you have to tell us. Your pace might also need to change. For example, would you be quite quick at the start and then gradually slow down the pace as the text continues. Your volume may also need to be higher or lower depending on what you use with tone and pace. And lastly, emphasis. Don't underwrite emphasis. Stressing a word will make an audience remember that word. So really consider what words need highlighting in what you're saying. So pause the video for now, get this task done, be as creative as you like, and then click resume when you're ready to move on. Welcome back, how did you get on? What was the most challenging part to that activity? Was it trying to figure out what's going to come before? Trying to take those steps backwards? Did you manage to add in any details about Sandra right at the very start? Or about the speaker themselves? Now, we are at the end of the lesson. So, well done for your hard work today. We have gone through thought-tracking, asides, and we've worked with both of them in amongst the texts to explore emphasis, volume, pace and tone. So we were using all of those skills from last lesson today as well. Next lesson, we're going to be focusing on the physical skills before we work towards combining both of them. So I look forward to seeing you in our next lesson, lesson three, physical skills part one. Until then, it's goodbye. If you would like to share any of your work, as ever you can. Just ask your parent or carer for permission first and they can share your work on Twitter using @OakNational and #LearnwithOak. Take care, I'll see you soon. Bye bye.

In this lesson, students will learn about facial expression, gesture and body language. Students will consider how they might react in different scenarios.

Physical skills part 1

﻿Hello, and welcome to Drama. This is practising physical and vocal skills. It's lesson three or five, physical skills part one. My name is Mr. Wood, and I'm your teacher for this unit. If you're ready, let's get going. For this lesson, you're going to need plenty of space. Okay, so make sure that there's nothing around you which could potentially cause danger or harm to you as you move around the space. If you can do that for me now, we'll get started. By now, I hope you've done your introductory quiz. Well done if that's already done. If not, there's time for you to do that now. We're going to continue with a recap of last lesson and what we achieved. We'll then continue with looking at emotions and what that means for us with physical skills. And then, we will continue with scenarios that demand physical skills. Before we finish with our exit quiz. Your keywords for today are: facial expressions. And they are positions of the face that communicate emotion, thoughts and feelings. Gesture is a movement, often hand, but can also be things like head, that express an idea or meaning. And emotion, that is a strong feeling derived from someone's circumstance or mood. So let's begin by recapping the last lesson. We continued to explore vocal skills and we specifically looked at pace, emphasis, tone and volume. We did this by looking at a text and we started off by having a couple of lines of that text. It developed and expanded into a whole piece. We explored thought-tracking and what that means for us, initial thoughts in a particular scenario. And also, an aside, which is similar to a thought-track. Is where you almost dip out of the scene and you've directly address your audience to tell them what you are thinking at that moment in time. For example, it may be in complete contrast to what you're saying on the stage to a character. So emotions, let's start looking at those. What emotions are there? If I was to do this, would this give you a clue? What about this one? What about this one? What about this one? Okay, are there any emotions that you can think of that I haven't shown you? Have at least a look at this table. I would like you to identify the positive emotions from what's there. So we have happiness, confusion, anger, sadness, fear, love, excitement, pain and shock. What are the positive ones? Hopefully you've identified that there is happiness, there is love, there is excitement. The rest are either negative or somewhere in the middle. Okay, somewhere between the two. So where can we see emotion? I gave you a clue earlier when I used a part of my body. And the image will help you, it is the face. So facial expressions can be one of the first ways to detect emotion. Is that true or false? The answer is true. The face can tell us much about the emotion that the character is feeling. So let's try and recognise some emotion in the face. Have a look at the table and tell me which emotions I might be showing. Did you say fear? You would have been right? What about this one? Pain? Well done if you said that. What about this one? If you said shock, well done. What about this one? If you said excitement, well done you. Okay, we have the other four we covered earlier. So you guys have a go at showing instantly recognisable emotions, right? Specifically through your facial expressions. However, I would like you to experiment with showing happiness in your face three different ways. Think about what makes it recognisable as an emotion. Too many people think about what you've seen in others and you can copy that. Okay. In the face, happiness, three different ways. Pause the video to complete this task and click resume when you are ready to move on. Before we continue with the rest of this lesson, we need to get our faces warmed up. So can you copy me as best as you can. We're going to start warming up the muscles in our face. So imagine you have a piece of chewing gum in your mouth. Okay, or a really sticky toffee. I would like you to imagine you're chewing it and it's putting your teeth together. And you're fighting to pull it apart, okay? Think about what that does to the face as you chew through a bit. You're trying desperately to pull your jaw apart. You would, if you could just pull it open, but you can't. Okay and now start rotating your jaw, almost like a camel chewing grass. Or your favourite animal that chews grass. On the other way. Ah, cause a wiggly. Okay. Make sure your jaw is nice and warm. Now we're going to be doing some U, Es. Okay, by that we have, U, which is the mouth coming down and to an E we go back. Okay, so Uu Ee. Follow me Uu, Ee, Uu, Ee. We can take out the sound unless you want to do it. Okay lovely. Now just tilt your head to the side for me. And same again to the other side. Repeat that for me and back again and rolling all the way around. And back and back to normal, okay. Next thing I would like you to frown at me please. Bring those eyebrows all the way down and then take them up. Drop them down and back up and down, and up. Lovely. Okay. Now I would like you to chatterbox. By that I mean, Okay, do that with me. Three, two, one. You'll notice there's no sound of my teeth chattering, but it gives the image of a chatterbox. We're protecting our teeth. We're not going all the way down to clunk clunk, clunk. Okay. If you need to copy any of that again, please rewind and watch it through. If not, let's continue with the next activity. Okay. If you were to look closer, you can see emotion in the face go to the rest of the body. Okay, it's going to flow out from the face and into every other part of the body. And this is what we call body language. Okay, it's the way in which the body communicates its own intentions. And that can primarily be emotion, raw emotion. The actions of the person in the image might be telling us something similar to that face. Okay and this scenario is true. They're very closed. The face looks quite stern and quite cross and the body follows suit. Okay, so it's quite harsh lines in the elbow there and the arms are kept quite neat in close to the body. We're going to start exploring recognisable emotions through the body now, okay. So I'd like you to think about showing happiness, just like we did in the face, three different ways. But now transform that and let it evolve into the rest of the body. Okay, don't think about keeping all the energy up here let it flow out into the rest of you. Think about those traits of happiness. If someone you saw, let's say standing in front of you was happy, how would they appear from your perspective? As you practise this, think about what other people see. Okay and what their perspective is too. To them, would you look happy? Okay. Pause the video, give it your best go. Click resume when you are ready to carry on. Now we need to think about gestures. Gestures can be very helpful in communicating emotions to an audience. They can be tiny. They could be the most exaggerated thing in the world. But in essence, they are still a gesture. It should aim to compliment the emotions you're showing in your face and in your body. Alright. Facial expressions, body language and gestures, all go together very nicely. Take a look at the image. Do we agree that those hand gestures are complimentary of the emotion? Can you identify the emotion? If you said confusion, you'd be right. I don't know what you're talking about. Okay. Think about creating gestures for the following. "Hi." What sort of gesture would you do that? "No." What sorts of gesture might be used for that word? What if the comment was, "Come here"? What sort of gesture would you use that? And "Shhhh." What sort of gesture is appropriate for that? Do you have a wave in that? Do you have a "No", or a, "You can't do that." Do you have a, you can't see that, but okay. Moving forwards of the finger. Do you have a finger over the mouth? Okay. Various different ideas there for those quick examples. Now you're going to experiment with making a gesture and you can use your hands, your arms, or even your head to communicate the following. Anger. Excitement. Love. And pain. Okay, so come up with one clear gesture for each of those emotions. Use your facial expressions and body language to assist you in making them. For example, if we were doing one for, let's say confusion, a little while ago, and we had the gestures up here. If the face was doing this, we wouldn't necessarily understand that it was confusion Okay, so allow your facial expressions and your body language to assist you. Pause the video to complete this task and click resume when you are ready to move on. Which gesture would be best suited to being confused? Would we put our hands in fists? Would we put a hand on our head? Would we put hands behind our back or hand on stomach? What do you think? What's the most appropriate gesture there? Option one, two, three or four? If you said option two, well done. I think that's the most appropriate one, hand on the head perhaps. Lovely. Scenarios demanding physical skills are up next. So we need to think about what physical skills are going to be needed. Moments to explore physical skills. We've got scene one. You are at the till in the shop and cannot decide between three different snacks. You can only afford one. You've been choosing for 10 minutes. So imagine you were at the till in the shop and you cannot decide between three different snacks. You can only afford one. You've been choosing for 10 minutes. Explore your facial expressions, explore your body language and your gestures in an attempt to communicate your emotions. You need to pause the video to complete this task, click resume when you're ready to continue. So can you identify any emotion in your scene? Do you have indecisiveness? Do you have anger? Do you have excitement? Do you have frustration? Which one's the strongest there? And do you still have elements of others within your scene? Scene two, you are in the queue in the shop, someone in front of you cannot decide what snack to buy. You've been waiting now for 10 minutes. So now when you are in the queue in the shop, someone in front of you cannot decide what snack to buy. You've been waiting now for 10 minutes. Explore those facial expressions, the body language and gestures to communicate your intentions and your emotions. Pause the video to complete this task and click resume when you are ready to move on. Now, can you identify the emotion in that scene? Did you have any sadness? Was there any anger? Excitement? Even frustration? Was there let's say a combination between maybe two or three? Scene three, you are walking past a shop and you hear an argument of sorts coming from inside. Noises of a scuffle and silence. You stand still waiting eagerly for a sound. So now you are walking past a shop and you hear an argument of sorts coming from inside. Noises of a scuffle and silence. You stand still waiting eagerly for sound. I wonder what happens next. Use your facial expressions, your body language and gestures to communicate your emotions, just like we have done before, but in a new scenario. Pause the video right now to complete the task and click resume when you are ready to continue. So finally, what emotions could you identify within that scene? Was there excitement? Confusion? Sadness? Shock? Was there one prominent emotion there or a mixture of a few? Well done. Now we got to the end of the lesson. Let's just quickly summarise what we've gone through today and what we're going to see next lesson. So we've started to look at various physical skills through different stimuli. So we've looked at three different scenarios today, all centering around the same location, but in an attempt to explore different physical skills. We started off by looking at facial expressions to be able to determine where emotions come from. Then we developed that knowledge and understanding and pulled into body language as well, using those emotions in the body. And then we added to that knowledge and understanding with gestures, okay. So trying to make emotions easily recognisable on a stage, in a scene for an audience. Okay. Well done for all of your hard work today. I hope you've enjoyed some of the activities in today's lesson. I look forward to physical skills, part two, which is lesson four. Until then it's goodbye and take care. If you would like to share work with us, here's what you can do. Just ask your parent or carer for permission first, they can share your work on Twitter, tagging us with @OakNational and hashtag LearnwithOak. Until our next lesson, take care. Bye-bye.

In this lesson, students will explore physicality to create tension and suspense using slow motion and mime in a range of scenarios.

Physical skills part 2

In this lesson, students will take a section of text, appling knowledge of vocal and physical skills to communicate their emotions.

Combining skills

﻿Hello, and welcome to Drama. This is Practising physical and vocal skills Lesson Five out of five, Combining skills. My name's Mr. Wood, I'm the teacher for today's lesson. If you're ready, let's get started. For today's lesson, you're going to need plenty of space. So, make sure there's nothing in your area that's going to hinder you, nothing that's going to be dangerous. Clear the space and then we'll continue. So, you've started today's lesson with an intro quiz. Well done, if you've completed that. If you haven't had chance, you can go back and do that now. We'll start the lesson with a quick recap of what we did in our last lesson, Lesson Four and then we'll move on and spend the majority of our lesson, combining our previously learned skills in physical and vocal into new scenarios then we'll finish off with an exit quiz. Your keywords for today's lesson are, emphasis and that's this the stress given to a word to indicate particular importance. So, if I was to stress the word because it has significant importance, okay? Then there's a bit of an example of that. Tone, and that is a voice that expresses a particular mood or feeling. And then body language is the movement or posture used to show meaning, okay. Those three words we are familiar with so far. So, let's recap what we did last lesson. We started off the lesson by exploring still images and we did that through our physical skills. We looked at facial expressions, we looked at body language, we looked at gestures. And then we developed our knowledge of those skills by exploring them through mime and slow emotion. We then worked on creating a sense of tension from those skills and seeing how they would merge together, seeing how we let the tension rise and then how we identify the peak of tension, the climactic moment and then also the moment where that tension is let go. We developed our emotions through all of what I've just said. So, emotions come through in what we're trying to show and that's through the body predominantly. So, let's start by separating some of these physical and vocal skills. Have a little look, see which ones are just physical. Any ideas? Body language, gesture, facial expressions, mime. What about just vocal? Emphasis, tone, volume. However, there are two that meet both categories in essence. Pace can be the pace at which you speak, of course but it can also be the pace at which you move. And then slow motion you can generally use that in your physical qualities when we are enacting mime, but it can also be slowing down how you speak, okay? So, two very similar words there. If we could pull them apart, we'd look at pace being more vocal and slow motion being more physical but just be aware that they could be used as both. Let's get ready with our warmup. So, we'll begin with the vocal and we'll move into the physical afterwards. Can you repeat after me. The P sound being pushed out through the breath up through the middle and out through the mouth so it's /p/, /p/, /p/, /p/, /p/. Your turn. Lovely, we'll do that one again. So five P's, up and out through the breath, ready? /p/, /p/, /p/, /p/, /p/. Your turn. Now we'll move on to the letter /m/. Okay, it's again through the mouth this time but the breath is aiding it. So, /m/, /m/, /m/, /m/, /m/. Your turn. Lovely, and again, up through the body out through the mouth. /m/, /m/, /m/, /m/, /m/. Your turn. Okay now, /w/. Okay, this one, we want to get those cheeks filling with air and then spelling it out. So five again, in with the breath and out through the mouth. /w/, /w/, /w/, /w/, /w/. Your turn. And again, /w/, /w/, /w/, /w/, /w/. Off you go. Lovely, and last one, /l/, okay. This is to get our tongue moving as in quickly. We'll do five /l/s and then we'll move on, repeat and then we move on to the next bit. So, /l/, /l/, /l/, /l/, /l/. Your turn. And again, /l/, /l/, /l/, /l/, /l/. Off you go. Super. Now, Sandra has made an appearance yet again. So, Sandra sells seashells by the sea's shore. Say that for me. And again, Sandra sells seashells by the sea's shore. A bit quicker. Okay, quick is time, ready? Sandra sells seashells by the sea's shore. Super. Okay. Now, let's think about how we are saying different words using a different tone of our voice. And then again, this is very important for the work we've got ahead today. The word is hello, and the tone is of course happy. Hello? What if we made it sad? Hello? Angry, Hello! Confused, Hello? What if the phrase was, come back? You're ready, make it happy. Come back! Sad, come back. Angry, come back! Confused, come back. And what if it was, how are you? Happy, how are you? Sad, how are you? Angry, how are you? And confused, how are you? Lastly, who are you? Happy, who are you? Sad, who are you? Angry, who are you? And confused, who are you? Well done, and lastly Gunta grew great hearty greens. A bit quicker. Gunta grew great hearty greens. Even quicker, Gunta grew great hearty greens. Lovely, okay. The mouth should start to be warmed up. Imagine you're chewing a piece of gum. Try and get that chewing gum that's putting their teeth together, apart, or a sticky toffee. Okay, snapping it back in. Just protect the teeth. Make sure you're not clamping down on the teeth. And just get the jaws really moving around, we're chewing it lovely. Head to the side and the other side and again, back over. Okay, shoulders going back, big circles with the shoulders, make them as round as you possibly can, get wide and forwards. If they are clicking, that's a good thing. Just be careful with any injuries that you've got already. So I push them. If you know that there's something that you can't do just yet. Arms up to the side and back, big circles, a little too big. And then just be careful of your surroundings 'cause I know I've got a lot about me going forward that I don't want to knock. And then we're bringing those circles back round to something a little bit smaller. Super. Arms up, arms out and down. Shake your hands. And that's our warm-up done. So if you'd like to repeat any of that please feel free to go back in time to have a look again, if not, let's get started. So let's continue by combining skills in a new scenario. This is the text, "It was last Monday, I think. "People were walking up and down the busy high street. "I see this child looking upset." Okay, first thoughts, what are you thinking about this text? What does it tell us? There's a child, they're upset this person, on few days ago perhaps was walking up and down the street. There were many people there. Okay, so they were walking. Many people were there in high street and they see a child that's upset. So now I would like you to create a still image for me which uses your physical skills. And this image must show the life of the distressed child. So what they're going through at that moment in time, in their life. So consider your facial expressions, your body language and your gestures, to be able to communicate this idea of the child based on what we know so far. All we know is that they're quite upset, there in the high street. So pause the video, give it your best go, and click Resume when you're ready to move on. So what might the child be thinking? Now that you've got your still image, it might make a bit more sense to start unpacking this idea. Option one where is my mum? Option two I'm scared! Option three how do I get home? Option four I don't know what to do! What do you think? Which one of those options would be most appropriate to your still image of the child? Have a go now, adding this thought to your still image. So it's a developed still image with a thought-track. Using your vocal skills, add in an idea, something that the child will be thinking of at that moment in time, which will help communicate the character's intentions, okay. So perhaps give context as to why they are upset. For this, you need to consider your use of tone, emphasis, volume, and pace. Pause the video to be able to complete this and click Resume when you're ready to continue. Now a thought-track can add context to a still image. Do we think that's true, or do you think it's false? Three seconds. Of course the answer is true. We cannot absolutely add context through a thought-track. It lets us dip into the character's mind and hear their thoughts as if it's our own. It's very, very effective when developing a still image. So who might the speaker be talking to? Option one the child? Option two the mum? Option three the interviewer? Or option four a friend? From what we've heard so far, what opinion do you have based on this? "It was last Monday, I think. "People were walking up and down the busy high street. "I see this child looking upset "so I go over and ask what is the matter. "They say they cannot find their mum." Now I would like you to have a go at role playing the full text, as if to a friend. Think about the vocal and physical skills that you need to use. So the full text is, "It was last Monday, I think. "People were walking up and down the busy high street. "I see this child, looking upset "so I go over and ask what is the matter. "They say they cannot find their mum. "I said to them, It's ok we can find her, "if I lift you up, onto this table "look into the crowd, and let me know when you see her." Okay, so that's all you've got to say but I do need you to think about how you're going to say it and what physical skills you're going to use to help you when you deliver these lines. Pause the video to be able to complete this task. You might need to say this three or four different ways to be able to get a feel for how this character is coming through, okay, and who they are. Click Resume when you're ready to continue. Now that you've done that hopefully it's starting to build a picture in your mind of who the speaker is, and the scenario itself. How much of that text do you think we could show without talking? A couple of words? A sentence? What about the entire thing? 'Cause that's what we're going to have to go with next. Non verbal communication can say more than verbal can. There's almost a whole new language which is just to do with the body. That's the whole point of body language, it's a way of expressing yourself. It's very creative and it should be very plain. What parts of the story do you think you could gesture and mime? Okay, now that you've seen that, let's think about how we might be able to try and mime this ourselves. Think about using those mime and gesture skills from start to finish. "It was last Monday, I think. "People were walking up and down the busy high street. "I see this child looking upset "so I go over and ask what's the matter. "They say they cannot find their mum. "I said to them, It's ok we can find her, "if I lift you up, onto this table, look into the crowd "and let me know when you see her." Okay, so with those key words, let's say you're going to use them to guide you through. So think we've got to identify a time period adjusted back in time. There are other ideas we could explore there. I think that's a moment to reflect. People walking up and down the busy high street. Think about how you could show those people. Do you enact them walking past and then turn to become somebody else and then turn and then you're back into a position again? I see this child looking upset. We need to reference that child. We created a still image right at the start. So why don't you rewind, utilise that and then dip out of that character to come back to the speaker, or mimer in this scenario? Okay, and so on and so forth you can do that with the rest of this text. Pause the video to be able to do this and really consider your gestures your facial expressions, and your body language, okay. They are all so important to contribute to the effectiveness of the mind, okay? You don't need to talk for this one, this is purely physical. Click Resume once you've done this and you're happy, that what you've created is clear and communicates the key parts of this story. "It was last Monday, I think. "People were walking down the busy high street." You know, the dodgy one. I was only passing through. "I see this child looking upset "so I go over and ask what's the matter. "They say, they" lost their mum. Typical. One wrong turn, and I've basically set up a daycare centre and it was my day off. "I said to them, It's ok we can find her "if I lift you up, on this table, look into the crowd "and let me know when you see her." I have no time to waste, places to be and things to do. I wasn't about to let no child get in the way of that. Do you know how busy I am? I'm not letting a child get in the way of that. Now of course, I would like you to develop adding asides into this text. Think about speaking to this person the person that you imagine you speak to, to one side and then fix a certain point where you imagine your audience will be, and look at them directly address them when you do your aside. Now, it doesn't matter a great deal, what your asides are but try and link them try and keep them addressing the same idea. For example, if you've got someone who's being quite compassionate and quite caring in their emotive range to the speaker and then juxtapose by being quite brutal and being quite selfish to the audience, okay? So juxtaposing those ideas works brilliantly. You could also show a more caring side or flip on his head. So you don't seem like you care but to the audience you actually do, okay. So just experiment, have some fun with it really and see how you get on with regards to having an aside and sharing that connection with your audience because that's the whole point. Pause the video to complete this part of the task. And then you may need to try it for a few times and click Resume once you're ready to continue. Okay, how did you get on? I hope you've found a way to be quite creative with that with the way you put your asides. That brings me to this statement. An aside can go anywhere in the text. Do you think that's true or false? The answer is of course true. They can go anywhere at all, start, middle and it doesn't really matter. The more you add the more context we understand as audience. So what emotions might the speaker be experiencing as they say this text? Are there elements of fear in there for the child in question? Is that a sense of confusion? Do they understand what's going on? Is there more to understand here? Would that be more texts that we haven't yet heard? Is there concern, concern for the welfare of the child? Concern about the meetings they have or the appointments they've got booked? Think of how the speaker when address their audience in a different way to how they would address their friend. And we've looked at how they've addressed their friend. So now we want to contrast that, okay. We want to look at a new perspective and we want to consider new elements of this speaker's character. So now change your tone of voice between friend and audience. The text is copied in below but now really consider who you are speaking to. Before, we had the idea of an interviewer I think that would change the mood, wouldn't it? It would definitely bring in a sense of tension. Maybe we could explore that one step further. To do this, you need to pause the video, have a go try it out a few different ways see what different tones work better for what you want and your portrayal of the character, and then click Resume once you are ready to continue. Another statement for you to consider. Emphasis doesn't add character. Do you think that's true, or do you think that's false? Three, two, one, of course it's false. It can absolutely add a whole range of character. It shows us more about what they're thinking than anything else. It shows us what their real thoughts are, their inner beliefs, because if they stress a particular word in a certain way then it might tell us what they really think of that particular word. Say for example, it is child. You can say child in a soft way but you can also say child, which makes it sound negative. So it really does give us the character's opinion. Now, I would like you to experiment by adding in emphasis to certain words of this piece of text. You can choose to do this with your asides or a bit of both, if you'd like the challenge. So, we've identified the key parts of this story. We have added mime to a fair few moments. It helps us in our portrayal of the story itself. But now you can look at emphasising key parts. To do this, you need to obviously pause the video try it out multiple ways, just like the last task see what fits, you can be as creative as you like. Just click Resume when you are ready to continue. Okay, now you've added some emphasis to various sections of what you're trying to say. I hope that gives you a sense of character and I hope it builds up the idea of what's really going on here? How does this person interact with different people in the space especially when they're dealing with someone like a child? So, have you emphasised words that give off a particular opinion about that character? If so, brilliant, mission success. Now, we've reached the end of this lesson. We've got to the point where we need to wrap up and consolidate what we've done in this unit of work. So, today specifically, we have combined and continue to explore our vocal and physical skills in a new scenario. We have explored still images and thought-tracks. We have continued using asides to add context to a scene. The text has given us an appropriate platform to not only explore each individual skill but also allow each one to build off of the other so well done. And the entire units of work has been a mirror extension of today's lesson. Today is just a way of combining and consolidating the skills used in one-off sections, so well done. I've enjoyed delivering key aspects of this work and I hope you've enjoyed some of the activities related to it as well. As always, if you have created a piece of work that you are particularly proud of if there has been a task set that you have particularly enjoyed and you would like to share it with us Oak National we would love to hear about it. So, make sure, if you would like to do this that you ask your parent or carer for permission first whether you can share your work with us on Twitter and they can tag us using @OakNational, and #LearnwithOak. Until next time, I look forward to seeing you on a future unit, take care and goodbye.

Unit Overview: Practising physical and vocal skills

Lessons:

Vocal skills part 1

Vocal skills part 2

Physical skills part 1

Physical skills part 2

Combining skills