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Our Curriculum
The Joyce Marshall Academy writes its own curriculum for study in accordance with Education Advisers and child-care experts. Our emphasis is on inclusivity in the Performing Arts and we place equal weight on education/qualifications and performance. We want our pupils to have the best possible start in the performing arts field and gain valuable qualifications, while trying new things and having fun!
Each term our students will be given the opportunity to work towards a performance, either as a formal performance or an informal family get-together, and also to work on material towards examinations and internal assessments.
Junior Class: ages 5-10
Our Junior curriculum is written in accordance with child-care and education experts and the government's guidelines for Early Years development, currently being phased in. The emphasis at the Foundation Phase is on 'learning through play', with a slightly more structured curriculum for Primary children, and we use the basic principles of these in our work. This means that although the children are guided in their activities, they are not completely restricted to what they can do within a certain exercise or activity.
Our performing arts activities in class are therefore tailored towards the following areas of learning which encompass both the Foundation and Primary Phases:
Personal/Social/Cultural: personal development the performing arts is invaluable for assisting with children's development in terms of confidence skills, individuality and self-esteem team work and group work; helping one another; many of our activities involve working as a team and helping one another. The children learn to work together towards a common aim learning about different backgrounds and cultures; history; traditions our storytime introduces our younger students to other cultures and traditions from around the world and they get to imagine and explore different backgrounds and ways of life.
Language and Communication: role play; stories; literacy skills the latest addition to our Junior class is 'storytime' where the children are encouraged to bring in a story of their choice, read it with their friends and act out, improvise and explore the characters and ideas in it. This is a crucial beginning for advanced devising skills and self-expression. Through language development, imagination and creativity, there will also a positive effect on cognition.
Creative: exploring music, art and drama; imaginative play this naturally forms the largest part of our work. We give children the opportunity to try out their voices and characterisation skills in singing and drama as well involving them in making sets and costumes and putting on regular performances. We cannot over-emphasise how this creative aspect has so many beneficial effects on a child's holistic development.
Physical Education: improving gross motor skills; using the body drama games and imaginative activities allow the children to move around the space using their whole bodies, exploring the world as animals or characters and by using different heights. In our Junior dance classes, children learn to use their whole bodies and develop grace and control. Our 'Shape Game' is particularly popular and enables children to learn about working both as an individual and a group, to create larger structures.
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Senior Class: ages 11-18
Our work with the Senior pupils centres more around individual creativity and transfer of skills, as indicated by the Secondary Curriculum and 14-19 Learning Guidelines.
We give our older pupils the responsibility and opportunity to express themselves in class (not just 'do this or do that' teaching), and produce original material, which gives them ownership of their creativity and more of a desire to develop their ideas both in performance and exams - where they have a say in the material they learn.
This tried-and-tested approach to teaching is extremely valuable for anyone hoping to persue a performing arts career. Many professional auditions and workshops involve a certain degree of original devised material, and we believe that by encouraging our pupils to try out their ideas in class, we give them an edge over other students and allow them to develop as 'thinking' performers.
We also understand that there is a great deal of difference between the needs of an 11 year old and 18 year old student, and therefore, we spend a lot of time one-on-one with our pupils and tailoring exercises to different standards, to ensure that every students gets the best possible performing arts education for them. | 
