Curated OER
Dramatizing Your Story
Students write a script, planning and recording improvisations based on personal experience and heritage, imagination, literature and history.
Curated OER
Creating and Using a Checklist of Performance Techniques to Critique and Find the "Message" in Mass Media Performances
Students analyze and critique theater events by evaluating and constructing meanings from improvised and scripted scenes and from theater, film, television, and electronic media productions.
Curated OER
The Collaborative Works of Rodgers and Hammerstein: Show Business
Pupils study the work of Rodgers and Hammerstein in an historical context of the development of American musical theatre as an art form. Students explore "roots" of the genre as it evolves in last half of the 19th and first two decades...
Curated OER
Understanding Stage Design: Using Visual Elements to Provide Information to an Audience
Learners study about theatrical design by developing environments for improvised and scripted scenes. They develop focused ideas for an environment using visual elements.
Curated OER
Theatre Lesson Plan, Performing a Story
Second graders read the story, The Bundle of Sticks, and discuss the story elements within the story; setting, plot, conflict resolution. In this readers theater lesson, 2nd graders reenact the story in small groups, then reflect on...
Curated OER
Japanese Noh Masks
Students examine Japanese theatre and create their own face masks which display certain emotions, props, costumes and perform in improvisational theatrical games.
Curated OER
Soho Square
View the film Soho Square. Improvise sequences based around everyday locations and consider how theater and film differ in the way they engage an audience with the group of characters. Develop a group of performances using the extract...
Curated OER
Using Visual Art to Create Scenes
High schoolers review scene structure and the elements beginning, middle and end. They view a piece of art to stimulate an idea for a improvised scene. Students work in small groups, create and then perform their scenes for the rest of...
Curated OER
Spatial Relationships: an Over/Under Dance
Students explore the relationships of space through movement. Two perform movement improvisation based on over/under. The activity improves hand-eye coordination, cooperation, and communication skills. The timing of the dance also...
Curated OER
Teaching Acting Technique and Building a Character Through Cinema
Students review the style techniques related to the American Method Acting and practice using them in groups. Using various scenes from films, they try to recreate the scene using props. In groups, they discover the proper way to get...
Curated OER
Locomotor Dances
Students explore and perform locomotor movements. With partners, they combine the locomotor movements into a simple dance. The partner identifies three movements they observed. Students may be grouped into dancers for a performance.
Curated OER
Chicago On Stage
Young scholars view a film about the genres and disciplines of performing arts. They examine the theatre community in Chicago and the origins of theatre companies. They answer questions and discuss them to end the lesson.
Curated OER
Comedia dell' Arte Paper Masks
Pupils create masks from the Italian Renaisance theatre and use them in one-act plays they write. they analyze the role and development of theatre in world cultures.
Curated OER
Puppet Show
Students create a puppet show for a play. They choose the puppet characters they wish to enact the play and develop scenarios.
Mississippi Whole School Initiative
Dream Big...With Your Eyes Wide Open
For many people, Barack Obama's presidency was the next step in Martin Luther King, Jr's dream of America's future. Explore the dreams of Americans past and present, as well as the young Americans in your class, with a set of activities...
Curated OER
Make a Book Into a Movie
Turn your high schoolers into casting directors with this lesson, which focuses on turning a class novel into a movie. Choosing the cast for a movie based on a class reading, as well as designing a poster for the movie, helps young...
Curated OER
Landscapes of the Mind
Learners review Emily Dickinson's biography and examine themes and forms of some of her poems. They measure ways Graham integrates aspects of Dickinson's life and the themes and forms of her poetry into Letters to the World.
Curated OER
Expressions - Activity 1
Young scholars create wax sculptures of a full body using mathematical calculations and information gathered from a video in this excellent art project. The instructional activity can be used along or within the unit provided.
Curated OER
Reader's Theater: Presenting Asian Folktales
Students, working in groups, rewrite Asian folktales as Reader's Theater scripts. Depending on grade level, they visit Websites and copy assigned stories. Students then perform their versions for classmates.
Curated OER
Graphs of the Heart
Students study Greek literature. In this Greek tragedies lesson, students explore the dance-dramas of Martha Graham. Students study the choreography that brings ancient Greek literature to life.
Curated OER
Creating Plays from Children's Stories
Students explain how individual elements (e.g., plot, theme, character, conflict, etc.) comprise the structure of a play. They write an original one-act play with developed characters, specific setting, conflict, and resolution.
Curated OER
Truth in Advertising: When to Ask Questions
Learners view different commercials and ad campaigns that present opposing notions of "truth." Students use these commercials to evaluate what makes an effective public service announcement (PSA) or advertisement, then choose a national...
Curated OER
"Mind Reader" Math Trick
Students perform a math-based card trick and explain the concepts behind the trick. They video tape classmates performing the trick. Finally, they write a paragraph explaining the trick.
Curated OER
Scenarios: Beginning, Middle (incidents), End
Students investigate writing scenarios that can be performed. They examine the parts and levels of scenarios that can actually be performed.