Welcome
The Ulster Academy of Speech and Drama is the first independent speech, drama and communications examining body in Ulster. Our aim is to train and produce a cohort of outstanding speech and drama teachers throughout Ulster so that children completing the Academy’s new speech, drama and communications syllabus will receive an exceptionally high standard of tuition. The aim in setting up this syllabus is to introduce children from four years of age to an interesting and varied programme that will instil confidence in speaking, foster a love of poetry and drama and provide the life skills required in an ever-changing social and working environment where adaptability and active learning have become a prerequisite for happiness and success.
By creating this syllabus, the Ulster Academy will help to:
- advance the full and harmonious development of the child, with due allowances made for individual differences.
- place at its centre the importance of activity and guided-discovery learning and teaching methods.
- encourage teaching methodologies and learning through an integrated curriculum and through activities related to the child’s environment.
- develop the child’s basic skill of communication.
- increase his/her ability to use the two instruments of expression-body and voice-thereby helping him/her to acquire poise and confidence.
- increase his/her experience of life by entering imaginatively into all kinds of situations in a ‘safe’ environment once removed from reality through the use of the fictional lens.
- give him/her opportunities to enjoy co-operative artistic endeavour.
- develop his/her vocabulary.
- create a learning environment that places the child at the centre so that the hunger for knowledge comes from the child; leading to intrinsic motivation rather than the adults dictating the learning outcomes in a predetermined manner.