Now that I'm teaching a second class, and gotten a feel for what Mr. G is working on the students with, I'm starting to adapt his lessons to make them my own. I felt pretty good when Mr. G sent me back a note about my lesson plan that said, "Very cool. I'm glad you are making it more yours." :)
The Theatre I classes are in the midst of a unit on playwrighting. Mr. G has done a lot of preparatory work to help them have most of their stories figured out before they begin writing their scripts next week. Yesterday they answered questions about conflict and sources of conflict. I've noticed that the students take a long time to come up with ideas for what to write about. It causes them a lot of stress and it takes them a long time before they can start writing. I decided that I could have them sit there for 10 to 20 minutes thinking, "I don't know what to write about," or I could do some work with them to prepare them to write, and maybe they could feel comfortable starting to write sooner.
So, before completing a worksheet about creating the setting for their story, I wanted to give them time to think about and talk about their setting before they had to put pen to paper. Before the blank stares. Students are often hesitant to try something new, so I had no idea how this would go over. The plan seemed simple enough. Ask all the students to stand up and close their eyes. When people are not used to doing this, it's like you're asking them to go through special screenings with TSA. It took them a while to go along, but eventually most of them did. I led them through a guided imagery, taking them on a trip to NYC with their friends and family to see their play performed. They walked across the stage before the curtain opened, taking in the sights, sounds, and smells.
After we finished, I divided them into groups and gave each member of the group one minute to describe what they saw. I had a little happy moment when it took one group a little longer to get to their seats...because they were still talking about their play ideas. :) Today everyone in the class finished the written assignment before the bell rang, and everyone did a really great job on establishing the setting for their play.
I even noticed that when some of the students were talking to each other, they were talking about their plays. Beautiful!
Later, in Advanced Theatre, class went a lot better as well. We focused on dramatic metaphors. We started with a roll of tape, passing it around the circle and saying, "This is not a roll of tape, this is..." and then using it as something else, while describing what it is. One awesome one a student shared was, "This is not a roll of tape, this is a broken yo-yo." Would make a great metaphor. From there, we started talking about creating metaphors for each of the characters in the play we read last week. The student wrote one for each character on a separate index card. Throughout the stage, I placed another card with each of the characters' names on them, then they added their metaphors to each character. As one student beautifully put it, we then walked around and paid our respects. From there, we discussed what metaphors were meaningful to us and how they could help us. We finished our work by creating a metaphor for the entire show. The payoff came so many times throughout the lesson. Smiles on their faces. Excitement about their ideas. Moment of laughter. Moments of praising each others' ideas. That moment of understanding how they could use it. And finaly, when our newest student was picking up her stuff to leave, "This class is fun."
When I grow up, I want to be a teacher.
No comments:
Post a Comment