The Arts: Drama
Thursday, 2:20 - 3:00pm
Our weekly drama/dance class offers students an opportunity to explore ideas, themes, concepts, their learning, the world, and themselves. Students must apply higher level thinking skills, awareness, their bodies and oral language skills to fully engage in our drama units. We aim to integrate all the Arts and make cross curricular and real world connections to make each week's expereinces richer for students.
Unit Objective
REVERSE INTEGRATION
This class is reverse integrated with the Grade 5/6 class who our students do Social Studies, Science, Library, Music, French and Physical Education with. We use either our classroom or the gym space for our weekply activities. This is an opportunity for students to work collaboratively with their peers and build a stronger bond with a class they already know. This time they are in our students' space. It also provides our students to engage with peers who have more developed literacy skills.
Using a familiar fairy tale we deconstruct compared different text versions of the story to explore the concept of perspective and how writing from a different perspective can distinctively change how a narrative is written, what information is mention and left out, how it is illustrated and ultimately received by the reader/viewer. The use of higher level thinking skills requires students to consider how perspective is communicated through the nuances of language, and visual art. Tying in the animated version of the story allows us to go deeper into media literacy and explore how music and voice also play a role in communicating emotion and perspective.
Background on "The Three Little Pigs" story in our class:
Students had watched, read through and analyzed a series of texts presenting different perspectives on the popular children's fairy tale, "The Three Little Pigs".
"The Three Little Pics" - Walt Disney animation
The traditional story with the big bad wolf hungry to eat little pigs who blows down the straw and stick houses. This wolf cannot blow down the brick house and defeated scurries away.
“The True Story of the Three Little Pigs” by Jon Scieszka (Author), Lane Smith (Illustrator)
Told from the Alexander T. Wolf's perspective who in need of a cup of sugar went in search of his neighbours, the pigs. Because of a cold, he accidentally blows down the pig's homes and because of the bad reputation of wolves, is accused of being 'the big bad wolf' hunting piggies.
"The Three Little Pigs and the Somewhat Bad Wolf" by Mark Teague
A lyrical story where 2 pigs spend their money on junk food, and the hungry wolf easily blows down their house. In the end the two pigs feed the wolf their junk food, and they all (inlcuding the wolf) move in with the third pig in his sturdy brick house and live happily ever after.
Exploring the Stories:
Students engaged in a series of discussion and drama activities including role play as various characters depicted in and or imagined tgo have been in but not seen in the various stories. Together the students constructed a list of characters which they felt were involved in the story in some way and added their own extensions.
Choosing a Character:
Two weeks ago, each student had chose a character from the story of the "The Three Little Pigs" to play in our dramatized improv trial. Each student constructed a character identity and wrote a character profile over the last two weeks.
Extra Supports
Students in our class had extra time to re-read the stories, work on their charcater development, and write their character profile.
Adaptation of “Act It Out: The Story of the Three Little Pigs”
http://www.oise.utoronto.ca/balancedliteracydiet/Recipe/50362/
Curriculum Connections:
Language Arts: Oral Language, Comprehension
Media Literacy
Visual Art
"Trial of the Wolf"
Exploring perspective through contrasting stories of
"The Three Little Pigs"
Drama Unit:
This Week: Trial of the Wolf
FOOD GROUPS
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Oral Language
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Vocabulary
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Motivation for Literacy
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Comprehension Strategies
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Text Structures and Genres
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Writing Processes and Strategies
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Fluency and Expression
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Text Structures and Genres
Today's Class will be an imagined enactment of a trial of the wolf. Students have chosen a role to play within the trial (one of the pigs, the world, lawyers, jury, witnesses etc) and each students has created a character profile for their character.
Using improvisation techniques students will go through the trial process. The jury will vote at the end of the trial and recommend a sentence or outcome.
Before their verdict is read, the class will vote as well. The verdict of the jury and the class vote will the announced at the end of class.
In the follow-up class the students will discuss the verdict, eachother's performances and what they learned from the expereince.
