One week break

We took last week off, as I was in tech week for "Guys and Dolls" a production with the Menomonie Theater Guild that I directed. It coincided with the end of the poetry unit. I am excited to dive back in this week. We are looking at the possibility of going to see a show at the Children's Theater in the cities, which I think would be an awesome experience for the students and teachers! I am also excited to jump into Folktales, Fairy tales and Myths!!

Poetry Lesson #2 Reflections a.k.a Whale Talk

We changed our original plan for this week, and I think it was a great move. Instead of beat poetry, the kids worked on their conversational poems. They were paired of in animal/human partnerships, and the teachers decided that all of the writing would be done before hand so that when I came into the classroom we could just focus on performance techniques - It worked beautifully.  Here is the format the teachers used for the students to create their poems:

Conversation Poem Planner

*Use the planner to create your conversation poem between the two characters.

Character #1 - Person Character #2 - Animal

Name: Rustling Cowboy Name: Wild horse

Hey wild horse, where are you? Watch out for my lasso, I think I need a ride! You better go quick, I have my halter and saddle. Sunset is coming and the moon will be in the sky!

I’m galloping on the trail, and looking at the view. Oh no! I better start finding a good place to hide. I’m running down the path fast so I don’t have to face that battle. Good luck catching me because I can really fly!

There were many different pairs, and the poems were great! 

I started class by asking the students; If you were going to be an animal in a play, what could you do to learn about that animal? Where could you go? What would you observe? How it moves? The sounds it makes when it is happy/sad? How it eats?  etc... 

I then showed them the following video (Starting at 2:40)

After this video, I asked the students - What did Dory do to communicate with the whale ? At first they said - "she made her voice sound like a whale voice " but I challenged them to go deeeper. HOW did she do that? The students then talked about pitch, pacing, etc... I also asked them about the krill at the very end. How were their voices different. I pointed out:

1.Whales are very large - they have a huge "Sounding Chamber" and can make a wide range of sounds. They also move very slowly through the ocean most days (or at least it seems slow b/c they are so large) so it makes sense when being a whale to have a big deep voice that can sing high and low, that moves slowly just like the whale

2. The krill are tiny, and they move incredibly quickly. It makes sense to give them a high, squeaky voice and for them to speak very very quickly.

I believe this worked well, and they got the concept! 

The Teachers and I then read poems from an online story book: Imitating the creatures speaking in the poem, and then asked the students to tell us how they observed us acting like the animal while reading.

It was then time to get the kids to work. They paired off in their groups, and we went around to help them and give them encouragement. They jumped right in and had a lot of fun!!

Knight Battling a Dragon!

Princess and the Mouse!

Gorilla and Zoo Keeper (check out those "Gorilla Arms!!)

Our Witch and Spider!!

I believe this lesson went extremely well, and I saw the kids coming out of their shells and really getting silly and having fun with voices and characters - I think it will really play into our fairy tale unit!!!

1st Poetry Class Reflections

We had a great time working on poetry last Thursday! The night before, I had the idea that a very simple way to bring a dash more theatricality into the classroom was to bring a beret and silk scarf for both myself and the teachers to wear. I thought that if we were going to have the kids wear berets and get into character, it would be great to have the teachers model that before hand! The kids loved seeing their teachers put on the beret and silk scarf and transform into a super cool poet - a little silly, and it gave them a bit more buy in.  It's these simple ways of incorporating theater and characterization for the teachers that I am trying to focus on more in this semester. I realize low pressure, creative, and exceedingly simple exercises/ costuming and modeling can in many ways be as, if not more, effective and useful to teachers who are already balancing a massive load of work.

I read some Shel Silverstein poems, using voice modulations to highlight the different poetic forms (aa bb or abab, etc)

Dramatic Poets Beret and Silk Scarf!

We then had the students pick an object from a bag, and, in pairs, come up with all of the words that they could that rhymed with that object. I added a challenge of trying to come up with words with more than one syllable (great one: Dice/Precise!)

Then, they had time to work together to write a poem about their object and use up the rhyming words they had come up with. This was a challenge, but many of the students really came up with some wonderful poems - I was very impressed... 

For their presentations, I had them wear a fancy scarf a'la their teacher and myself - as their first step in "poet-hood" I am really hoping we have our berets in time for this week!! 

It was great hearing them read the poems aloud - some of them were extremely enthusiastic, and others stood back and let their partners read. Even if they were not comfortable with reading their poetry aloud, they were proud of the poems they wrote.

Getting Started with the Second Semester!

My Teachers and I met yesterday in order to prepare for a Unit on Poetry. We are going to change things up a bit, and I will be in the classroom once a week now, for about 45-50 minutes in each classroom.
For poetry I remembered my team mentioning the idea of a 'coffee house' activity, and I thought it would be great for us to do this all out... If we give the kids black glasses, berets and give them a poet "Character" than the idea of improvising and coming up with rhymes on the spot and beat poetry would not be so intimidating!

To begin we are going to work on rhyming, as the previous poems the teachers have been working on with the kids have all been free verse.

First we will watch the video below:

I also like this one:

I will then read a rhyming story to the class.  Our main activities will be a game I came up with called "Hey Cool Cat"  This is where the kids will get to put on sunglasses and I will demonstrate with the teachers how to play. I would like to dim the lights and play a bit of jazz or something to really create a coffee house setting for the students. We may show them this video this week or next to let them in on the "beat poet vibe"

I say "Hey cool cat, where you at?" (in a cool beat poet character)

then the student responds  with an " I am" or "I feel" statement 

Students can then raise their hand to come up with a statement that rhymes. 

Between each statement the kids snap their fingers in "Applause" 

For example :

"Hey cool cat, where you at?"

Student 1: I am at the hill sledding with Bill

*snaps*

Student 2: We're having fun and I feel real chill!

*Snaps* 

I hope to encourage them to have fun and take a risk - and realize that sometimes it can be a stretch to make things rhyme, but it gets easier with time (see what I did there?) 

We will then have the students pull mystery objects from a bag and write a short rhyme story about it and read it to the class. (I would like to do this in first person, and have them embody the object/creature.

I am curious to see how the "Hey Cool Cat" game works, I think it has the potential to be a lot of fun, and We want to use it again the following week, adding rhythm to the mix!

The Wayward Blogger Part III

In order to prepare for our Arts Night "Living Timeline" we began work on learning  to create "Tableau Vivants"  or "Living Pictures. The kids LOVED just saying "Tableau Vivant" in a pseudo French accent.

To begin, we reviewed our 6 big questions that we did way back in the fall. Students came up to the front of the class and re-created the event happening in the photographs.

We then added another layer to the exercise, by having the students look at the image, re-create it, and then improvise a sentence or so about what they think the person would say at that moment - (by looking at the situation, body language, facial expressions, etc...)






The kids jumped right in with this exercise! They sometimes needed prompting and help when it came to improvising what the person would say.

 - This leads me to think that a simple round of improvisation games and exercises could really be a benefit for any number of projects.


The next week the teachers, the student teachers, and I  put together the images that we thought would be the best for the Arts Night Living Time Line.  Once the students were divided into groups, they were given there image. The great thing that the teachers did for this portion of the exercise was open up their classrooms, and mix up all of the third graders. This way the students were getting to work with others that they don't usually get to, and liven things up!

Once the students were in their groups, we worked with them to create a small script - with the help of a vocabulary sheet that reminded them of the things we studied in that part of the timeline. With a bit of guidance the students really went for it!

After some rehearsal, we videotaped each performance, so that the students could not only see themselves, but also, any of the kids who could not attend Arts Night would still be participating.

The whole video taping experience was great - I think the kids really got a kick out of it ! I will post the videos when I figure out how to get them each on here in a single video!

The Wayward Blogger Part II

I will pick up where I left off in my last blog, with our "History Timeline".

After Explorers, we moved on to:

4. Colonists

• For this lesson, we wanted the students to become familiar with one aspect of life of Pilgrims/Early Colonists, and then teach the rest of the class. The students would then be working on their presentation and reading aloud skills, as well as getting to try out the role of "Teacher" 

Students doing their research

• The group that I worked with was researching what it was like to travel across the Ocean, What they would have packed in their trunk, and how Colonial People would have greeted each other. We created a script, using colonial language, that the group performed, including teaching the class to bow and curtsy as they greet each other.



Working on our Colonial Greetings Script

• The students all got up and presented their information - Colonial Homes, Games, School, People/Greetings. They all did great work, and were using a lot of the techniques that we had been practicing as far as being good readers - Projection, Dynamic movement, etc...
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• I think that One way that we could have integrated theater a bit more was to really take a moment to have the students think about being a Teacher - What is the role of a teacher? How do they speak? What would you be like as a teacher?  We could also have set up the day where the students had to greet each as colonists for the rest of the day, or every time they talked to the teacher they would have to bow or curtsy - just to get a sense of how formal even every day tasks could have been.

5.American Revolution

• For the American Revolution section of our study, the students each researched a person from the Revolution (either a participant in the war, or from the era) and created a "Portrait" of that person, but with the face cut out, so that they could become the historic individual and tell about their experience in the first person. 
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Portraits and their speech bubbles!

• Many of the students memorized their presentations, including birth and death dates, which was impressive. 
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        A Few of our "Living Portraits

• The Main issue with this lesson was that, although the students learned about individuals during the Revolution,  It did not give them the over all base knowledge of the event itself, and why the Revolution happened.  This exercise will work best in the future as an ending piece of the unit. 

6. Immigration

• This unit was a lot of fun, and we did a lot of collaboration with Melody Brennan. Melody and I came in dressed as immigrants, to do an improvised scene about Melody's actual grandmother. We had a suitcase full of objects, and we touched on the who what when where why and how of immigration in the first person. This worked very well and the students really engaged. 
• I felt as though this was a great example about how I, as the teaching artist, should be pushing for the teachers to engage more in first person interpretation as an acting tool - which I hope to do in the future.  I was reminded that very simple role playing is all that is needed - I often need to remind myself that this can be a big step - and an extremely effective one.
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• I read an Immigrant Story the next day 'The Name Jar' - again driving home that storytelling is a way for us to share our culture, and our history - even if it is very recent history!
• The Students also created a Story quilt, as well as put themselves in the shoes of immigrants and "packed a trunk" of the items they felt they would need if they were going to be moving to a new place, away from home. 



Sharing family stories on her square of the "Quilt"



• This was the last unit in the History Timeline. We had built the scaffold of historical knowledge we would need to move on to Tableau, and creating our Living Timeline

The Wayward Blogger

I have not kept up blogging as I should. In a flurry of weekly preparation it was the element of my AIM work that suffered, and I am making a renewed effort to blog every week, even if it is short.

My last blog was in the last weeks of October, and I will do an entry or two to catch up on our progress.

My amazing team of teachers dove head first into our History Timeline work. we covered :

1. Native Americans

• We analyzed images of Native people and learned details about their homes and daily lives in different regions of North America.
• We then focused in on Menomonie, who was here, why our town has it's name, and re-enacted the steps to gather wild rice (Menomin)
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• We also looked at how Native groups told and recorded stories, creating "Buffalo" story skins

 I think this was a successful way to incorporate theater in the sense that Storytelling, in all of its forms is not only integral to theater, the way we preserve, interpret, and hand down our culture is often through storytelling.

I think a good way to have taken this exercise further would have been to have the children sit in small circles and then tell their stories out loud. Perhaps even pair off and see if they could tell the story on their partners blanket using the key they were given.


2. Vikings

• We followed the same outline for the Vikings, again learning about their home lives, as well as their stories, and how they recorded them:



Rune Stone and Rune guide



• We also talked about what their Viking name would be, their first name, then their fathers first name followed by son or dottir.  This was great and the kids were really excited to share their new names - their Viking self! 
• We also learned a ton about Viking long ships, what that journey would be like, why they looked the way they did, and how it would feel to travel on that ship: We used the "North Star" activity for the students to understand how following the stars helped the Vikings (and other travelers) stay on track. The teacher picks 5 students to be the Stars. they quietly decide which of them is the North Star. All of the seated students are the Vikings on their ship.The close their eyes, and the stars spread across the room. Then, the Vikings "Wake up" look around and memorize where the stars are. They then "Fall back asleep". Then, all of the stars move, except the North Star. When the Vikings wake back up, they need to point to the North Star, the Star that stays constant. 
• I also told a few folktales from the Viking era - again looking at how Storytelling is a way that many cultures keep their traditions alive - Through Oral History.



One student loving the story of the Chicken Troll!

3. Explorers were next on our timeline.

• We came up with a number of questions for the students to think about :
• What does it mean to explore? Why do people explore? How do they travel? What do they explore? Where do they explore?
• We then studied a map and profiled a few explorers and the countries they were from, and where they traveled to. 
• We then broke them into groups of three with informational packets, they would study one country and its trade goods, learn to say "Hello" in their language, create a flag, and then we were going to create the globe in the classroom, and the kids would trade "Around the world" with the other countries. 

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Negotiation for Saffron from India!

• I think this was fairly successful - managing all of the groups around the room was a challenge, I think that there may be a way to have each country come up to the front of the room to present about themselves, and establish trade I would be interested in looking at the elements of this that the teachers liked the most, and figuring out how to make it really work. It was fun to have them "Sail" across the room with their flags, and try to negotiate for the goods they wanted. They also were picking up the greetings of the different countries - which helped them form an identity and affinity with their assigned country.