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Part 1 - Class Dynamics |
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I start every school
year by dividing the class into teams of 5
students. These groups are of mixed gender i.e. 3
girls and 2 boys or vice-versa. I make the teams on
the blackboard with the help of their form teacher
who knows them very well. Each team needs to contain
a natural leader or extrovert style learner
and a shy student or introvert style learner
as they will both contribute a lot and learn off
each other. When the teams are formed, each team now
sits together and makes up a name for their team
e.g. the Peppa Pig Team. |
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The ideal class size is
15 so, as our classes contain 30 students, this
means that I work with half the class at a time. I
also have both student teachers and volunteer
language assistants working with me. The more adults
in the room, the better. I see each group once a
week which is not enough really but we manage. I
take the group to a large space where we can
make noise which is either the school hall
when it's available or the music room. I arrange the
chairs in a semi-circle which is extremely
effective at focussing attention on centre-stage.
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Part 2 - The First Term -
Storytelling, Devising and the Birth of a Play |
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Short plays are a
marvellous and naturally-ocurring consequence of
storytelling. |
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I start the school year
reading aloud stories to the class. I use a lot of
repeated phrases (Once upon a time...),
audience interaction (What noise do lions make?
Roaaar!) and repeated physical actions such
as representing the snapping jaws of a crocodile
with outstretched arms. I also like to have a couple
of songs on the go as they can be used in the
grand finale on play day. |
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For each new school year
and for each class I choose a connecting theme
e.g. fairy tales, stories about animals, folk tales
from Africa, the four seasons etc. Apart from
obvious cultural benefits, this has technical
advantages as well, for example the kids get
good at doing a crocodile and crocodiles turn up in
two or three of the plays. |
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Once the students are
familiar with a story, I do two things: |
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Retelling
the story: |
I give
enthusiastic volunteers the opportunity
to retell the story to the class. Three
students at a time do this so they can
help each other out and get good at
turn-taking and improvisation.
They use their own language, not their
teacher's and this is precisely the
language I want to use when I come to
write up the plays. Therefore, I take
notes of the phrases they use and keep
them safe. This will help the stories
sound natural and make them much easier
to learn for the students. |
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Role plays
or acting out (DEVISING): |
The other
great activity is giving the teams 5
minutes to prepare their own
representations of the plays. I always
notice how wonderfully creative children
are when it comes to representing the
world with minimum resources and again I
take notes of all their innovations for
later use. Also, I take a note of which
teams like a particular story and the
particular roles individual students
like. This information is vital for
casting. Giving the students the
opportunity to organise themselves is
also a good idea as they are better at
doing this than their teachers (because
they know each other and understand each
other better than adults do!) |
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Using a technique called
SENTENCE BUILDING, we practise essential
phrases from the stories at the beginning of class
as a warm-up. |
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Give each student a word
from a phrase you have in mind. Point to the first
student and say ONCE. Point to the second student
and say UPON etc until you have built up a sentence e.g.
ONCE UPON A TIME THERE WAS A LION. |
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Point to the first
student again and elicit ONCE. Then to each student
in turn to make up the sentence. |
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Repeat 2 so that the
sentence is more fluid. |
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Now ask the class, "Can
anyone remember all of that?" Encourage, help and
congratulate. |
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Allow others to say the
whole sentence too. There will be plenty of
volunteers. |
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During the first school
term, I cover three stories with each group
so that in a class of thirty, there is a total of
six stories. This means that the final
performance will last around 40 minutes including a
song at the end. |
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Part 3 - The Second Term -
Rehearsing, Working with Parents and Play Day. |
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Now, during the holidays
between terms, I type up the short plays
using the material I have gathered from the
students, the story books and my own ideas (It's all
about balance!). In class, we now dedicate 20
minutes a week rehearsing the plays. |
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I make a spreadsheet
of the cast for each play, showing the part and the
name of the student. I open new tabs with this
speadsheet: one is for the backdrops for each scene.
The class draw these backdrops on sheets of A4 paper
eg The African Savannah or The Bears' kitchen. I
then scan these and project them during the plays.
Another tab puts all similar characters together eg
princesses and monkeys so that it will be easier for
the parents to do the make-up before the
performance. Another tab is to organise the music
between the plays and another is for the props. |
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Also, I email the parents
and ask them to prepare the costumes for
their children's characters. Tell them not to spend
much money on this but instead be creative. At this
point, I also ask the parents if two people could
video the plays on the day of the performance. |
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Prepare the scripts
using both sides of A4 and give each student a copy so that they can
practise their lines at home. |
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Choosing a good date
for the play: we do ours on Family Day. All the
parents come in to school and they get all the
costumes ready and do the make-up. Parents love
doing this! You can also reclute students from your
middle school to help with the make-up too. |
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Remember that our only
goal is for everybody to have fun. If someone
gets in a muddle, jump up on the stage and help them
out or be a whispering tree as part of the set. This
is all about making memories for children and
their parents. |
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After the show, you will
have a class of experienced actors, costume
and make-up artists, sound and light engineers etc.
For this reason, I continue preparing short plays
with a class year after year and see how they become
more confident performing in front of an audience.
Also, the children become specialists at taking the
lead role, comic parts, the dance routine, designing
sets, lighting etc. This activity helps bond the
school with parents too. If you have any
musicians in the school, give them something to
do (if they want!). It is also good to get older students to
help with sound and lighting. Also, set design
is something which the students' art teacher might
be interested in. A dress rehearsal is also
good idea. In fact this can be used by whoever is
doing the video. This way they will be able to get close-ups
as well as pan shots. If the plays are a
hit, why limit it to just one performance? |
