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!