Key Stage 3 English · Reading

KS3 reading: plays in performance and comparing texts

Plays are written to be performed, and Key Stage 3 pupils learn to read them that way: thinking about how a script is brought to life and how different stagings can lead to different interpretations. They also learn to make critical comparisons across texts, and to study at least two authors in depth each year. Together these skills prepare pupils for the comparative and literary essays they will write at GCSE.

Drama, comparison and authors, explained

A play is a different kind of text from a novel, because the script is only half of it. Dialogue and stage directions are instructions for actors, directors and designers, who decide how the words are spoken and what the audience sees. The curriculum asks pupils to understand how the work of dramatists is communicated effectively through performance. That means looking at things like pauses, movement, lighting, costume, who is on stage and what the audience can see that a character cannot.

The curriculum also says that alternative staging allows for different interpretations of a play. A director can make Macbeth’s witches frightening, comic or strangely ordinary, set a Shakespeare play in a different period, or change who speaks a line, and each choice changes what the play seems to be about. Pupils are not asked to decide which production is the right one. They are asked to notice the choices, to explain what each one does to the meaning, and to say which seems most effective for them and why. Many schools help by acting scenes out, watching recordings and trying different readings of the same lines.

Comparison is the third skill. Pupils are asked to make critical comparisons across texts, which might mean two poems on the same subject, an older and a modern novel, or a play and a film version. A good comparison is not two summaries stuck together. It chooses a point of comparison, such as how fear is created, and then discusses both texts together using words like “whereas”, “similarly” and “in contrast”. Pupils learn to find both similarities and differences, and to link them to the writers’ choices.

Finally, the curriculum asks that pupils study a range of authors, including at least two authors in depth each year. Studying an author in depth means reading several of their works, or one long work closely, and noticing recurring subjects, styles and habits. Schools decide which authors to study, so your child’s choices may not match a friend’s. It gives pupils a sense of what makes one writer different from another, and it leads straight into GCSE, where they write about whole works and compare them.

Words your child will hear

Stage directions: Instructions in the script about movement, tone, setting or sound, usually in italics or brackets.
Staging: How a play is presented: the set, lighting, costume, sound, movement and the positions of the actors.
Interpretation: A reading of what a text means or what it is about. A director’s choices express an interpretation.
Dramatic irony: When the audience knows something that a character does not, which creates tension or humour.
Compare: To discuss how two things are alike and how they are different, using evidence from each.
Comparison words: Words and phrases that link ideas when comparing, such as “whereas”, “similarly” or “in contrast”. Teachers may call them connectives or discourse markers.
Author study: Reading and thinking about several works by one writer to see what is typical of their style and subjects.

What the National Curriculum says

In Key Stage 3, pupils should be taught to:

Read critically through understanding how the work of dramatists is communicated effectively through performance and how alternative staging allows for different interpretations of a play
Read critically through making critical comparisons across texts
Read critically through studying a range of authors, including at least two authors in depth each year

Objectives from the National Curriculum in England, © Crown copyright, used under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

Try it: comparing two ways to stage a scene

Macbeth is a play many schools choose at Key Stage 3. It opens with three witches meeting in “thunder and lightning”, and they chant together: “Fair is foul, and foul is fair.” Imagine two productions. In the first, the witches are bent, old women in rags in a dark, misty wasteland with loud thunder. In the second, they are three ordinary-looking girls in school uniform in a bright, empty room, speaking quietly. Compare the effects.

Decide on a point of comparison. Here it is how each production makes the audience feel about the witches and about what will follow.
Describe the first version’s effect. The dark, misty wasteland, ragged costumes and thunder make the witches seem ancient, supernatural and threatening. The audience expects danger and violence, and the weather suggests that nature itself is disturbed.
Describe the second version’s effect. Ordinary girls in a bright room feel unsettling in a different way, because evil looks everyday and normal. The quiet delivery draws the audience in, so “Fair is foul, and foul is fair” can sound like a secret rather than a spell.
Link back to the text. The line plays with opposites, so the audience senses that things will not be what they seem. The first production shows this with scenery and sound. The second shows it by mixing innocence with menace.
Form a judgement. Say which is more effective for you and why, using a comparison word such as “whereas” to keep both productions in the same sentence.

Both productions suggest that something sinister is coming, but in different ways. The first uses thunder, darkness and ragged costumes to make the witches seem supernatural and frightening, whereas the second uses ordinary schoolgirls and a bright room to suggest that evil can seem normal. I find the second more unsettling because it makes “Fair is foul, and foul is fair” sound like a quiet warning, which fits the idea that appearances are deceptive.

Common mistakes and how to help

Reading a play silently as if it were a novel

Pupils are used to reading prose to themselves, but a script is written to be spoken, and much of its meaning is in the delivery.

What helps: Read scenes aloud in different voices, or act them with a family member. Try the same line angry, then scared, then sarcastic, and ask which version makes the best sense.

Thinking there is one correct way to stage a play

Pupils may assume a teacher or a famous production holds the right answer, or that a modern setting “changes” Shakespeare.

What helps: Explain that every production is an interpretation. Ask what a choice makes the audience notice. A director who sets a play in a school or a battlefield is making an argument about the play.

Comparing by writing about one text and then the other

Describing each in turn feels natural, but it leaves the reader to do the comparing.

What helps: Pick one point, such as the way fear is created, and put both texts into the same paragraph with a comparison word. “Whereas the poet uses…, the playwright…” is a more useful pattern than two separate paragraphs.

Assuming a film version is the same as the play

A film usually follows the same plot, so it can seem equivalent. But a film can cut lines, add scenes, and use close-ups in ways the stage cannot.

What helps: Watch a short scene on film and read the same scene in the script. List three differences and discuss what each does to the meaning. This is exactly the comparison the curriculum has in mind.

How to help at home

Act out a short scene. Take a page of a play, give your child one part and read the other. Swap parts and try again with a different tone. Even a few lines read aloud show how much a performance can change.
Go to the theatre or watch a recording. A school production, a local amateur performance or a filmed stage production all work. Afterwards ask what the director chose to do with the set, the lighting or the costumes, and what they would have done differently.
Compare two versions of a story. Watch or read two versions of the same tale, such as a film and its book, or two retellings of a fairy story. Ask for two similarities and two differences, and why a creator might have changed something.
Follow one author. Encourage your child to read a second or third book by an author they liked. Ask what is the same, such as the kind of characters, the endings or the style of language. This is what an author study is, done for pleasure.
Practise “whereas”. When your family is choosing between two options, from holidays to phones, try describing both in one sentence with “whereas” or “on the other hand”. It sounds simple, but it builds the habit of comparing two things together.

Builds on

Years 5 and 6: Roots, prefixes and suffixes in reading
Years 5 and 6: Reading widely and recommending books
Years 5 and 6: Themes, comparisons and poetry
Years 5 and 6: Inference, prediction and summarising
Years 5 and 6: Figurative language, fact and opinion
Years 5 and 6: Discussing and debating books

Leads on to

Key Stage 4: Shakespeare, classics and Romantic poetry
Key Stage 4: Purpose, context, themes and characterisation
Key Stage 4: Evidence, bias and writers’ choices
Key Stage 4: Comparing texts and personal response