Why might people take drugs?

In small groups, students will discuss the question, why do you think some teenagers take illicit drugs?

Working in pairs, students will then act out a 'freeze frame' (like a photograph) for each of these situations:

• Peer pressure into buying drugs
• Someone buying drugs
• The effect of drugs

Next, students will create a short poem which tells the story of how a teenager is tempted to experiment with illicit drugs. They will draw on all the knowledge gained from their research in LU1, 2 and 3. Here are some ideas for the narrative: 

• They may have taken the drugs to escape mental health issues
• They have taken drugs for the thrill of it
• What happens to the teenager after they have taken the drugs? Include details of the immediate effects and the longer lasting effects e.g. they look tired after taking the drugs, they might talk faster, they might become aggressive etc.

Students will go to the drama studio to rehearse reading their poems, considering how they can use their vocal skills to deliver the poem in an engaging way: tone, to convey emotion, pitch to communicate age, voice projection and articulation to be heard and understood, and vocal effects such as repetition, a change in volume, speaking in unison and stressing key words and phrases.

Thinking about how performing arts can be used to effectively communicate complex concepts, students will add elements of drama into their poems using a technique called Action and Narration. The purpose of this activity was to create a piece which will make a teenage target audience aware of the possible consequences involved with taking illicit drugs. Students will first watch the example clip (see Resources) and identify:

• Which vocal skills Anjalin is using to deliver the character’s thoughts in a believable way.
• Which performance skills Hannah is using to recreate the character’s actions?

In pairs, one person will read out their poem and the other will act out what happened to the character in the poem using mimed action. They will need to use their research so that their dramatisation of the characters is as accurate as possible.

Students will then carry out an evaluation but discussing whether their performance explained what can happen to teenagers who experiment with drugs, and how they could develop it further.