What AO1 and AO4 actually reward in devising

Ofqual’s assessment objectives for GCSE drama are four sentences long. The mark schemes built on them are not, and the gap between the two is where most teaching time goes.

For the devising component, two objectives carry most of the weight:

• AO1 — create and develop ideas to communicate meaning for theatrical performance.
• AO4 — analyse and evaluate own work and the work of others.

(AO2 covers applying theatrical skills in live performance; AO3 is knowledge and understanding, and is generally assessed elsewhere. Check your specification — the weightings differ by board.)

What AO1 is asking for, and what it is not

It is not asking whether the idea was good.

It is asking for development: evidence that an idea moved. A student who had a strong idea in week one and performed it in week eight has not demonstrated AO1, however good the piece is. A student whose idea was ordinary and became something else through a sequence of decisions has.

The word doing the work is develop. Three things count as development:

Selection. Choosing this and not that, with the alternative visible. The alternative has to be visible or there is nothing to select between.

Refinement. The same material getting more precise. A scene that was four minutes becoming two, and the reason.

Response. Changing something because of what happened when it was tried. This is the strongest evidence available, and it can only exist if things were tried early.

What AO4 is asking for

Analysis and evaluation, and the two words are not synonyms.

Analysis is describing what happened accurately and identifying why. “The scene lost energy in the middle” is a description; “the scene lost energy in the middle because we both wanted the same thing and neither of us conceded” is analysis.

Evaluation is judgement against a purpose. “It did not work” is an opinion. “It did not communicate what we intended, which was that she had already decided; the audience read it as indecision” is evaluation, because there is a standard being measured against.

Students almost always produce description, occasionally produce analysis, and rarely produce evaluation without being shown the difference explicitly. It is teachable in about twenty minutes and improves marks more than any amount of rehearsal.

Where improvisation helps

Devising has a long, blurry middle where nothing is quite a decision, and that middle is where the log entries get vague.

Improvisation exercises break it into units. One run, one constraint, one outcome — which is the shape both objectives want. “We tried it with her not speaking; the pauses made him fill them, so we kept it” is AO1 selection and AO4 analysis in one sentence, and a student can write it because it happened at an identifiable moment.

The corollary is worth acting on: improvise early and often, and record it briefly each time. A group that improvises in week two has evidence of development by week four. A group that discusses in week two has notes about a conversation.

Two things that lose marks for the wrong reason

Undated, retrospective logs. Not because a date is evidence in itself, but because a log written at the end contains no failures, and a log with no failures cannot demonstrate response — which is the strongest AO1 evidence available.

Evaluating the performance instead of the intention. “The audience laughed” is not evaluation unless you say whether you wanted them to. The standard has to be stated before the judgement means anything, and students leave it out constantly.

The sentence worth teaching

One structure, used everywhere, and it produces AO1 and AO4 material without either being mentioned:

We wanted X. We tried Y. What happened was Z. So we changed to W.

Four clauses. Intention, attempt, observation, response. It is short enough to write after every session, which is the only reason it ever gets written.