High School Acting Curriculum Guide
High School Acting Curriculum Guide
Thank you for your interest in our high school acting curriculum guide. We hope it sparks your creativity for all an acting class can provide your students and institution. This guide will help you create a curriculum that best serves your students, meets national standards and addresses issues of “relevance” for the arts.
You will see Notes to educators throughout, to offer ideas or resources. There are also links in blue to free and paid products on both our website and Amazon to support the curriculum.
What this Guide IS:
Vision and Overview- A “fill-in-the-blank” section to summarize your program.
Expectations- Classroom basics. Feel free to add your own here!
Standards and Objectives- A quick “fill-in-the-blank” for you to complete, with links to the Standards referenced in each Unit.
Organizing Questions- Also called “Lines of Inquiry” or “Inquiry Questions”. The “Why” of your drama program. These questions are meant to be covered in the complete course. Each Unit has its own Organizing Questions attached to it.
Syllabus Introduction- An overview of the Units that follow, including a list of resources mentioned. Fill-in-the-blank and make changes as needed for your course(s).
Unit plans for 4 separate Units. Feel free to rearrange them in any order that works for you and your students! Each plan includes: Texts, Organizing Questions, Assessment ideas, and National Standards.
Rubrics and Grading- This is sample language for you to adapt to your institution’s/department’s guidelines.
What this Guide is NOT:
Complete lesson plans for you to use “as-is” or hand to a sub.
Rubrics or Assessment templates
The way the templates are set up as is a GUIDE to an overall curriculum organized around a yearly and/or unit-based theme. They are not individual lesson plans with lots of ideas for you to implement. Rather, they are like a roadmap of how you can get from point A to point B in the time allotted. They include ideas for assessment and the National Core Arts Standards met in each unit, as well organizing questions for each unit. These questions can help you decide what activities to do, where you might be able to do cross-curricular work, or fit MYP/IB/AP key words.
They are the 1000ft bird's eye view of what you are teaching, to help YOU bring the creativity. Many theatre teachers are plenty creative. Where they need the support is tying it in to assessments, standards, documentation the school wants to see, etc. These guides are a way to do that.