Final Performance

It was the big day today: the day of our final performance! And boy was it exciting! We spent a few minutes after the kids came in from recess to get their costumes on and they looked great!

And we had to take a crazy picture because why not?

The performance went really well and the parents thought their performances were darling (and pretty funny too!). It was sure fun for me to see the kids 100% focused. Something about performing in front of their parents and peers boosts their ability to listen and remember their lines!

Doug (one of my Arts Bridge mentors) came up to me afterwards and said "Are both of your classes THIS good?" He was very impressed by the kids performance and their creativity!

Another one of my favorite moments was when the boy who played the fish in the Anansi play came up to me afterwards and asked if he got to keep the fish head he made. When I told him he could, he was absolutely thrilled! He LOVED that costume. Who knew putting to pieces of posterboard together over your head in the shape of a fish could be so fun??

And now, without further ado, here are the two performances from Ms. Kawakami's 2nd grade class. Watch and see for yourself just how great these kids are!

Anansi the Spider:

The Twelve Dancing Princesses:



And the next two videos are the recordings of two of the kids' original stories. They wrote these two stories themselves!





It was a wonderful 11 weeks (or so) and I learned so much from this second grade class! I'm very sad it's over and I can't go back to their class anymore but I'm so glad I had this fantastic opportunity to work with these kids!

Thanks so much to everyone who makes the BYU Arts Bridge program possible. It has truly blessed my life and has given these students so much joy and satisfaction in their accomplishments! Theatre is a fantastic way to help students better understand core curriculum and the world in general. I sure gained a lot from this experience and I know the students did too!

Props and Final Dress Rehearsal!

That's right, today was our last rehearsal before the big performance! Woot! So we had all the kids put the final touches on their costumes, we reviewed the stories, and then went to the Kiva to practice!

Wow, there is SO MUCH SPACE in there! I'm used to working with a half of a classroom (if that) so this area was great!

I also introduced what props were to the kids and showed them some of the props we would be using. My sparkly branches were a hit!

Here are a few pictures from the Anansi dress rehearsal:

And here are a few great shots of The Twelve Dancing Princesses:

We've got a few kinks we need to work out before our performance on Wednesday, but overall I think today went very well! Our storyteller (she tells both stories) is so adorable and does a great job reading the stories for the actors to hear.

I think the costumes also turned out wonderfully and I can't wait to see what the parents say about them as well!

Week 8--Storytelling

This week I decided wanted to implement some of the feedback I got from Doug Allen when he came and observed me last week. So I started by moving the desks towards the center of the room so we would have more space on each side of the classroom to work in. I also thought this would help the kids by changing up our regular routine with something a bit different.

Once we had the desks moved, I separated the class into their two different groups. On opposite sides of the classroom I had 2 posters waiting where I instructed the children (before we separated) that we were going to write/draw the story from the following week on the poster.

I had the kids raise their hand and say what came next, and if it was right, they got to come write it on the poster (but they only had 10 seconds to do it). The rest of the group and I would count down from 10 so the kids had something to do while waiting.

Here's Ms. Kawakami's group's poster up close:

After we got the whole story on the poster, we started acting out the story and I wrote down the people who were in charge of narrating the different parts of the story.

Earlier on (before I separated them into 2 groups) I told them about a little activity we were going to do after we got done using the posters. I told them about the story behind Native American "Talking Sticks" and the traditions behind them. Basically, when someone was holding the stick, they could talk and they are the only person who could talk.

And here were our talking sticks:

PVC pipe wrapped with colorful tape

The Talking Sticks worked great, except they would've been even better if I would've used them during the poster activity. The kids needed a little more practice to solidify exactly how the talking sticks worked, and introducing it a little earlier on would've been better in making it run smoother.

Becky said that I was already improving in my authoritativeness already just since her comment from the last class so I was glad that she saw some improvement.

Today I figured out that they need some sort of a script to read from. The story is just too complicated and they need some sort of reference point for what comes when and next. So I'm going to be working on that.


Next week is costumes so we'll be putting together the costumes over Christmas break for when the students come back. I've got some good ideas and it will make the kids very excited. Stay tuned!

Week 7--Body Movement and First Final Performance Rehearsal

I had a great time today in Mrs. Kawakami's class. I feel like my lessons always go so smoothly in her class because it's my second time through it.

Today was all about body movement, so we warmed up first! I went through all the different areas of the body (feet, legs, hips, arms, shoulders, neck, face, etc) and moved them in different ways. Then we did a levels activity where I counted from 1-10 and depending on how fast/slow I did it, they had to get from laying down on the ground to standing straight up. Then when I counted back down, they had to get all the way down to the ground by the time I got to 1.

Their favorite part was the second time through when I mixed it up and counted really fast at first and then slowed down or vice versa. Kids love it when you try to trick them.

The next activity we did was called "Talk With Your Body." The kids spread out around the room and use different positions movement, and levels to portray different ideas like:

• I'm tired
• It's freezing in here!
• I'm so excited for Christmas!
• I'm scared

while reminding them to think about what happens to your eyebrows/mouth/eyes/legs/arms etc. when you feel all these different things. Then you pause them and have them look around the room (with their eyes only) to see the unique ways other kids are portraying the same thing. They LOVED when I pointed out the dramatic things they were doing, the more specific I was, the better!

Then we played "Character Sculpt" where I drew 2 names out of the class jar and one student is the "clay" and the other is the sculptor. The sculptor draws out an emotion (like last week's activity) and they have to shape the "clay" in a way that the class can tell what the person's feeling just by looking at the position of their body. I was impressed with all the different ways the kids came up with portraying the emotion. The kids loved it and wanted to do it longer. Looking back, next time I would probably split the whole class up in pairs and have them all pair up and do the activity.

Then the last part of the lesson, I had Mrs. Kawakami split up the class into 2 groups and we started rehearsing for our final performance! Here are the two stories we'll be performing:

I just LOVE this story and it lends itself VERY well to a performance!

This is the best one I could find, although our version is going to be closer to the original Grimm brother's tale.

We read the stories, assigned parts, acted out the basic storyline, and had the kids use their bodies to tell the story. I was amazed at just how excited they were to jump into the story.

When we were choosing parts, I had one boy who wanted to be the shoes. THE SHOES? I was very curious as to HOW IN THE WORLD he was going to do that, but I wasn't going to stop him. He ended up grabbing a big pillow from the classroom and he ended up being the collector of the shoes. Pretty awesome little guy.

Also, all the boys who were not in the beginning (because it's the Princess part) volunteered to be the "old lady" even though I gave them the option of being an old man. Yeah they all wanted to be an old lady. Not sure why they think it's so fun, but apparently it's all the rage in 2nd grade.

At the end of the hour I had with them, they were enjoying the story so much that they were hoping they could perform it for the rest of their class. We were out of time, so we couldn't, but I promised them that they could do it next week. Imagine that, they were so excited about the stories, they wanted to perform it right then! It's a theatre teacher's dream come true!

Week 4--Poetry and Fairytales

Today the goal was to introduce some poetry and get the kids started on their individual fairy tales! They need to get writing them so we can start rehearsing them!

I love that I get to teach these lessons twice, because I find out what works/doesn't work the first time and I can make it better then second time. So this time, my hook was using the dice to create stories. I put different characters, places (for setting), and problems on the dice (I doubled up--the problems and the characters were on the same die).

The kids loved rolling the dice and we had fun making up stories with the dice. I found out that second graders do have the capability of coming up with ideas for the story, but they still need some help connecting all the different aspects together. The first time, they rolled the dice and I weaved the story together and had them give ideas as to how we could incorporate the

First we started by reading the story of Sleeping Beauty (I found this version in one of my favorite childhood collections of stories). The kids were very engaged in this story and were even guessing who the "old lady" was in the story. They thought she was the old Evil Fairy, but they were surprised to see it was the good fairy in disguise.

We then compared that version to a poetry version by Ken Nesbitt:

Sleeping Beauty pricked her thumb,
started feeling overcome.
Probably she would have died
as the witch had prophesied,
but the fairies had her blessed
so she just got beauty rest.
For a hundred fifty years
she missed balls and film premieres,
till Prince Charming came along
singing out a cheerful song.
Kneeling down he kissed her cheek
hoping that she'd wake and speak.
Sleeping Beauty raised an arm
reaching for the snooze alarm
and her waking words were these:
"Just need five more minutes please."

We talked about the different aspects of a poem (shorter, rhyming, words are more important because there are fewer, etc.) and I had the kids pick out some of the words they thought was the most important in the poem. We then made them more important by using our voices and bodies. Next time I would do more modeling in this area so they had a better idea of what I wanted them to do.

We then we played a game I wish I could take credit for (my friend, Alicia Harrison came up with it) called FairyTale Telephone. Each student writes down one thing for each category, folds down the paper, and then passes it to the next student. He/she then writes something down for the next category and then passes it to the next person, etc. By the end, they should have a variety of things written down that make for a very interesting story! Here's a few that they came up with:

And by "snack," the 2nd Grader meant "Snake"

From here, the kids then kept the one they ended on and they will be able to use it in their story writing. They are free to change whatever they want about the paper they ended up with, but this gives them a starting point in case they don't have anything to start with.

This time doing this activity, I started looking at what the kids had wrote (mainly to make sure they had written something and were actually ready to pass it) but they were pretty excited about showing me their answers, and I loved seeing all their different ideas. 

I think this will give them a good starting point in writing their own fairytales and I'm excited to see next week what they come up with. They seemed very excited about it so I think it was a success!

Week 3-- What is a Fable?

I finally got to head back to Mrs. Kawakami's class today. They've been out of school for the last month (they have year-round school). So the kids were pretty excited to see me and I was glad to be there again!

Since we had such a long break since I had visited their class last, I reviewed with the kids what fairy tales and folk tales were. I was pleasantly surprised to find that they remembered almost everything we had talked about!

We then did a game I called "Fairy Freeze." I didn't think I would need my wand for this, but wouldn't you know it, those kids asked where my wand was! Ha! This was an exercise where I would call out animal movements like "waddle like a penguin," "soar like an eagle," "scurry like a mouse" or "sleep like a lion!" They loved it and all of them got so into it by making noises and everything!

I wanted to get them moving with this activity and also give them an intro into talking about the animals in our story, a lion and a mouse.

From here, we came back to the rug and I pulled out my lion and mouse puppets. I asked Mrs. Kawakami to choose 2 people who had been great students that day that got to come up and help me. One student got to be the mouse and the other got to be the lion. I then passed out some string for 5 students to be the "hunters" in the story. I told the story and helped the kids with the puppets tell the story by telling them to make the noises at the right time, and make the puppets do what they need to in the story, etc.

At one point during the story, the lion roars for help when he's been caught by the hunters, so at this part, I told the boy who was playing the part to roar like the lion. His roar was small and quiet and the class giggled. So I said "I think you can do a better roar than that!" And I was right! He gave me a great roar and the rest of the class was so thrilled!

We then talked about the elements of fables and I asked them what the moral of the story of the lion and the mouse was.

From here, I split them into 3 groups by having them do a toe-to-toe exercise and I gave them each a poster where I explained to them that they were going to write everything they knew about fairy tales/folk tales/fables (depending on which poster they got). They could write or draw anything to do about the genre they got.

The writing on the posters part turned out fine, although it seemed as though I learned that I needed to give more instruction about what a fable is because the fable group had a hard time coming up with things to write on their poster.

Once they were done with that, they were to come up with a story that fit in their genre to perform for the class. This was a pre-assessment for me to see how well they performed in front of their peers.

The performances were fantastic though and I was impressed with the kids' enthusiasm and creativity. One boy was cast in the fairy tale group's version of Cinderella as the Fairy Godmother! He surprised us with a stunning British accent and hilarious conversation with Cinderella about her purse.

The British Fairy Godmother and Cinderella

The other two groups chose "The Three Little Pigs"and "The Tortoise and the Hare."

...and the tortoise WINS!

Overall, the activity was a bit crazy in the rehearsal phase. Next time, I would change it so there are only two groups that perform or talk to Mrs. Kawakami beforehand and see if we can split our time between 3 groups. I think we both relied on Becky because she was there, but it would've been a bit hectic without her.

We finished by talking about the differences between the 3 genres and the elements we saw in each performance. When we talked about each one, I displayed the corresponding poster on the board and I think that helped solidify the differences in the kids minds.

It was sure an eventful class!

Week 2--What is a Folk Tale?

The first three weeks I have set up so that each week we learn about each of the kinds of stories we'll be dealing with in this unit: fairy tales, folk tales, and then fables. So this week I needed to introduce the wonderful world of folk tales and I decided to do it through the story of the Three Little Pigs. (*note: the line between folk and fairy tales is VERY blurred. I realize that this story can be classified as a fairy tale, but for our purposes today, we're treating it as a folk tale.)

So today I started the kids out with a game called "Ice Wizard." It is similar to the activity we did last week in that I use my magic wand although this time  when you say they all turn into something, then they melt onto the ground and turn into something else (i.e. animals, dancers, basketball players, soliders, robots, aliens, mermaids, kings, etc.). The kids LOVED "melting" on to the ground. It was a great warm-up!

I then had the kids all come back to the rug and I assigned them all a part in the story of "The Three Little Pigs." I didn't worry about having only one person play each part, I just let however many kids wanted to play the part play it together and they were totally content with that (I think the warm-up game really helped them see how they could all be something together, like pigs, princesses or whatever).

Then once everyone had a part, I started telling the story of the pigs going out to seek their fortune and told each group of "pigs" (Pig 1, 2, and 3) to go to different corners of the room. Then I told the story of how the wolf visited each pig (after they all built their straw, stick, and brick houses...respectively) and the wolves visited each pig until the very last house where they fell into a boiling pot of water. They had so much fun, they wanted to do it again!

I can't tell you how delightful it was to see all the "pigs" huddled in the corner of the classroom giggling as they waited for the "wolves" to come to the last brick house and fall into the boiling pot of water!

After we had our fun acting out the story of The Three Little Pigs, we came back to the rug and read "The TRUE Story of the Three Little Pigs"

After which, we talked about the HUGE differences between this story and the one we acted out. I also asked the kids to help me identify the following things in each story:

• The problem and solution 
• The sequence of events 
• and the central message.

Then, I reminded the kids of the telephone activity we did last week where the object was changed the more times we told it and related that to folk tales. Folk tales were originally told by word of mouth, so that's why there are so many different versions out there. And we read a second version of our folk tale:

This is a great book because it takes a huge spin on the original story because the "big, bad pig" uses things like sledgehammers and dynamite to knock down the wolves' houses. Not to mention the plot twist in the end when the wolves befriend the pig. The kids got quite a kick out of this version and comparing it to the other two versions!

For the final part of this lesson, I had them do a mini assessment where they each got to create their title for their own version of "The Three Little Pigs" story. Once they had an idea of how they would change the story, they wrote it on the board.

The kids loved being able to change the story however they wanted. My favorite adaptation? "The Three Little Wolves and the Grim Reeper Pig."

I think this was a great way to teach kids about how these stories work and it got their creative juices flowing as well. It was exciting for me to see them feel ownership over how they would rewrite the story, and they were excited about it--some even said they wanted to actually write that story!