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Acting Out or "as the School Turns"
Students learn the idea of drama in their own lives; and then transfer that idea to the works of others in this series of lessons. They discuss the question of identity.
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Rocks, Minerals, and Fossils
Fourth graders do 5 different lab stations to explore rocks, minerals, and fossils.
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"Viennese Musical Clock"
Fourth graders learn about musical patterns as they play a game called fudge. Students are assessed based on whether they were able to identify and play a steady beat, use the appropriate form, and clap the rythmic patterns.
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Enhancing Literacy with Podcasting
Students write stories, print hard copies, and use the GarageBand program to add music and record the narrations. A handout to download, of instructions is included in this early-elementary lesson.
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Create An Ending
Students create a new ending for a familiar story that stand alone with a clear beginning, middle and end. As a class, students review a familiar text focusing on plot and character development. In small groups, students work...
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Social Roles
Young scholars role play in order to better understand the social roles of the Colonial period. In this Colonial period lesson plan, students guess what role the student is playing based on social role cards.
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DO YOU REMEMBER?
Students explore where a melody and melody fragments enter different voice parts, and adjusts dynamically to enable the listener to perceive these events. Each student uses a rubric to make critical evaluations of the performances.
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Moving Rhythms
Young scholars explore the elements of tempo, beat and rhythm. They create rhythm patterns and an original dance. In groups, students perform their phrases for their peers. As a class, they explore choreographic principles, processes...
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Locomotor Dances
Learners 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.
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Theatre: Meaningful Monologues
Students perform dramatic monologues. In this drama lesson, students write their own monologue and perform it in front of their peers.
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Theatre: Persuasive Explorers
Students act like a famous explorer. In this explorer lesson, students research an explorer and act out persuasive arguments in which that explorer might be involved.
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A Wing and a Prayer
Fourth graders improvise missing harmony accompaniment for a soloist performing "The Star Spangled Banner." Groups select several familiar melodies that they can produce while individual students take turns improvising a new harmony part.
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Dance
Students participate in different types of dances in which they explore time, action and other elements of dancing. They dance with a group or a partner and explore how to work together.
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Hard Rock - Lesson 1
Students perform any part of a four-part keyboard ensemble with musical sensibility in a "hard rock" style. They improvise a melody over student accompaniment.
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Just Dancing Around? Trisha Brown
Students view a video clip highlighting the work of choreographer Trisha Brown and read her biography. They complete a table to summarize her work and they discuss their answers.
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Art & Drama for Middle Grades
Students define humor and consider how people have different senses of humor and therefore different ideas of what is funny. They explore improvisation, cartooning, comics, body language and storytelling as the means to express humor.
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Yes But Dialogue Game
Learners work cooperatively to explore and practice dialogue improvisation.
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Story Telling
Students, through the use of 4 different improvisational exercises, discover how to tell effective stories. They chose 2 selections and perform them, using the interesting methods they learned.
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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.
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3-5: Rhythm Beginnings
Learners explore tempo. In this rhythm beginnings lesson, students differentiate between steady and unsteady beats. Learners clap a variety of tempo and then move to the tempo of a song.
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Childhood Through the Looking-Glass
Students learn about Lewis Carroll and the vision of childhood he created in Alice in Wonderland, then compare Carroll's Victorian world of childhood with the world of "Innocence and Experience" portrayed by the Romantic poet William Blake.
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Puppets 'n' Plays
Young scholars reinforce communication skills, create the puppets, write or improvise dialog for them, and put on a play.
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Creating Clinflict Through Gibberish
Young scholars explore ways to communicate and solve conflict. At the beginning of class, students must communicate emotions without using words. They brainstorm important relationships in their lives. Next, groups of young scholars...
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Applying Abstraction: Creating Five Sense Poems
Students in a dance class practice performing abstract movements. Using their five senses, they write a poem about one type of abstraction and perform it in front of their classmates. To end the lesson, they compare and contrast each...