First Graders spent the month of September working on the story of Little Red Riding Hood. We read a version of the story by James Marshall. After reading, we identified the characters and used a drama technique called "hot seating" to dive more deeply into the characters' thoughts and motivations. The following week, we worked on physicality and movement for each of the characters. The final week, we acted the entire story as a play and focused specifically on dialogue. I think the students really enjoyed portraying the characters and story line from this well-known book. Recently, we have just finished a unit that applied our ongoing knowledge of addition and subtraction to create mini original plays. Students enjoyed being the director (or "THE BOSS") as they worked to create, cast, and narrate their own stories that demonstrated their understanding of mathematical concepts.
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A lot has changed since this time last year. As of next month, I will be updating this blog from a variety of locations and with a variety of schools. This year, I am stationed at Northeast, Mac Arthur, Fitzgerald, and the new Waltham Dual Language School. You can expect to see pictures and updates from all of these places in the coming months right here in this space. You can also follow me on Twitter twitter.com/mrscharlesdrama for more regularly updated reports of drama goings-on! See you soon!
2nd Graders recently completed a unit on Jack and the Beanstalk. We began with a movement activity with the story that paired movement and sound with the original story. The following week, we read Kate and the Beanstalk by, Mary Pope Osborne and compared and contrasted it with the original story. Finally, students were challenged with creating an original "prequel" to the Kate story that showed a trick the Giant might have played on the knight to get the castle away from him. Scenes had to include a beginning, middle and end, as well as dialogue that made it clear what the trick was without actually telling us. Everyone worked so hard and came up with such funny and original ideas! The above pictures demonstrate just some of the fun that was had. Enjoy!
Third graders have just finished a series of in-role re-enactment dramas where they were able to delve deeper into areas of history that they have studied in the classroom and independently. First, we talked a little about pioneers and how life was different in the 1700's and early 1800's as settlers were moving west in search of new territory. Students participated in narrative pantomimes and solved real-world pioneer problems in groups as they experienced this period in history. Then, we jumped backwards in time to talk about the Wampanoags and Pilgrims in conjunction with the third grade field trip to Plimoth Plantation. In addition to exploring what it might have been like to be a Wampanoag during this time, we also created our own Plimoth Plantation in the library so that students could role play some of the jobs and life experiences that Pilgrims and Wampanoags would have had in the early 1600's. The unit culminated in a "living history" activity where the groups met for the first time and students tried their hand at exploring the thoughts and feelings of the different "characters" they had created. The above pictures are from our Plimoth Plantation experience. Enjoy!
Second grade has been focusing on pantomime (acting without sound or props) and used this technique in a variety of ways. We talked about setting and used pantomime to act out different places with some students as the directors and some as the actors. We talked about emotion words and used pantomime and expression to demonstrate different feelings as well as create scenes that involved one or two feeling words. We were even circus performers who created mini circus acts that followed prerecorded circus music from you tube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjedLeVGcfE using pantomimed juggling balls, lions, and other circus apparatus! Most recently, we read the book: I was a Second Grade Werewolf by, Daniel Pinkwater. After acting the story out (using pantomime) in our drama bubble, we decided to create our own spin on the story. Pictured above are some of our ideas! There are some very creative students in second grade!
First Graders recently worked very hard on a unit about animals. We used body movement and gestures to portray different kids of animals as well as their habitats. We played charades with our animals and created a paper plate mask which we used to participate in an in-role drama about our animals. Please enjoy pictures above of some of our amazing creations!
As of this week, first graders are finishing up a unit on Public Speaking. We worked on having good posture and enunciation, and making eye contact with our audience during our speech. I was very impressed with how well students did in this area as it is a daunting thing to get up in front of a group of people and present! Nice work everybody! Over the past tw0 months, second graders have been working on creating various types of work for presentation. We began with Law & Order-Fairytale edition, where we read and discussed Jon Scieszka's True Story of the 3 Little Pigs! which is a spin on the classic three little pig story, but told from the point of view of the wolf. Using the book as our springboard, we decided to put the wolf on trial and get to the bottom of what "really" happened. Students had a fun time playing the roles of the judge, jury, lawyers, defendants and witnesses. We had so much fun with our trial format, that we put other famous characters to the test as well. Goldilocks explained her reasons for breaking and entering. The wolf tried to convince us that Red Riding Hood was lying and he never ate her or her grandmother! We really had a great time getting to the bottom of some famous fairytales!
Now, after finishing up a unit on measuring that led into creation of our own original "Wild Thing" from Where the Wild Things Are, by Maurice Sendak, we are creating pictures and stories that we will share as we practice our public speaking skills. We are especially looking to improve our eye contact this year. For the first few months of the year, third graders have been working on the art of storytelling, as well as story structure and play structure. We examined the pieces of a story or play: Narrator, Cast of Characters, Conflict, Plot, and Beginning, Middle and End as well as worked on acting and creating with both original and scripted stories. Students improvised stories while their classmates acted and worked in groups to create short original stories by creating frozen pictures that represented the beginning, middle and end of their ideas. Above, you will see some examples of some of these ideas. See if you can tell what the story might be about based on the beginning, middle and end pictures!
To coincide with state and local elections, students in the fifth grade took part in the Most Wonderful Person of the Year campaign as a way to learn more about each other and practice public speaking skills! Each student was randomly assigned to be a campaign manager for one of their classmates. Their job as campaign manager was to interview their candidate to find out more about them and then write a 5 paragraph persuasive speech encouraging their fellow classmates to vote for their candidate in the election. Students also made posters for their candidates and came up with catchy slogans to draw voters in. On election day, all students presented their speeches, posters and slogans for a public speaking grade as well as to try to gain votes for their candidates. Special attention was paid to delivering speeches with lots of expression (or tone) to draw listeners in and hold their attention during the speech. All the votes have been tallied and the winners announced, so be sure to check in with your fifth grader to find out who won in their class and what made people want to vote for those candidates!
I can't believe the first week of school is almost over! What a whirlwind it has been!! I am so excited to see everyone again and get started on all the fun things we will be doing in drama this year!
I just wanted to take a minute and introduce a new face to the Whittemore Drama community. Michelle Mount will be teaching some classes at our school this year on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday mornings. She has 3 Kindergarten and 3 second grade classes here and has lots of wonderful things planned for her students. We're excited to have her on board! I'll be posting some updates about what we're up to here in drama, and hopefully get some pictures up soon too so you can see your performers in action. Please feel free to leave me comments on this blog too! I'd love to know what you think of what you see and what you'd like to see more of. Until next time.... |
Mrs. CharlesMrs. Charles has been teaching drama for 17 years in the Waltham Public School system. She holds a Bachelors Degree from Hofstra University with a major in Drama and a minor in Russian, and a Masters Degree in Theatre Education from Emerson College. She is also dual certified in Performing Arts K-12 and Elementary Education. Mrs. Charles has worked as both an actor and theatre technician for local and regional theatre companies in New York, Virginia and Massachusetts. Archives
October 2016
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