Comments | theater_ed: Middle school theatre challenges

falls2climb in theater_ed

Middle school theatre challenges

Jan 24, 2007 17:29

This is my first year teaching middle school theatre (and hopefully the only year, not my age level of choice, I taught two years of high school previous to this) and I'm encountering some large challenges with my sixth-grade classes at the moment. If anyone has any suggestions, I'd be very appreciative ( Read more... )

Comments 6

kateherself January 25 2007, 05:30:01 UTC

What about doing less performance based improv ( ... )

falls2climb January 26 2007, 00:53:56 UTC

The story game sounds like it might be useful with my group--thanks for the suggestion!

I do have a couple different Spolin books, although I haven't been impressed with them in the past (one was required reading for a college drama course). Maybe I'll pull them back out and take another look; it's worth a try, at least.

redhairedgirl26 January 26 2007, 01:54:38 UTC

Have you tried anything with puppets? You let the kids get all crazy creative and then when they perform it is the puppet and not them, it is crazy what kids will do and say behind a puppet.

I use paper lunch sacks and socks for the kids to make puppets. This year I just did a work shop on shadow puppets, but I teach high school, I don't know if the shadow puppets would be as successful.

falls2climb January 29 2007, 02:13:21 UTC

I like the idea of doing puppet stuff, I'm just at a loss as to how to extend it into more than a half-hour activity. The previous teacher at my school left her lesson plans, and she has a whole week's unit of puppet theatre, but doesn't explain it other than just penciling "puppets" into those dates. I've tried doing puppet activities with classes, but I'm not at all artistic and so the actual making of the puppets doesn't take very long, and then I've had a hard time convincing the kids to take it seriously to make the actual puppet show take longer than a few minutes. Even in middle school, my students seem convinced that puppets are beneath them... I've known adults and college students who have done amazing things with puppets so I know it *can* be done, I've just yet to figure out *how* to develop the concept into more than a 20-minute activity.

amberjel January 30 2007, 19:55:48 UTC

Puppets can work ( ... )

falls2climb February 5 2007, 02:26:08 UTC

I'm familiar with the rain game, but haven't tried it with this particular group of students--maybe I'll give it a shot and see how it goes. Thanks for the suggestions!