Scripting Word Problems

Combining Theatre, Wrtiting and Math into one awesome lesson.

Math, my least favorite subject. I do not like math, when we had to take math in college I literally took a class that was nicknamed among the Fine Arts students as "math for actors and their goldfish." I do not like math, but I realize that I and my students need to be exposed to more math. So I am trying to step outside my comfort zone for some of my assignments this year.

Students love turning Math word problems into scripts. 

Last week my third grade students were working on elements in a script. They learned the parts of a script and how to compose simple scenes. Then it came time for the closing assignment. Students had to form groups of three and write a script. Typically I just let students pick their topics, but as I said I'm trying to push myself this year. So I walked myself down to the math teacher to see what they ere studying in math. Turns out in math my students were studying two things (oh good more challenge!) 

The students were studying 100s grouping and greater than less than. So when we set about creating our scripts they had a choice in topics.

Here is how I organized this lesson. I am including my instructions and one of my student's scripts. I will also link to my TPT store for the rubric download for acting and rehearsing.

Basic Theatre Rubrics

1. Choose a standard- students needed to choose what type of math problem they wanted to solve.

2. Write your numerical math expression- I am not sure if this is the correct terminology but basically have your students write and solve the math problem they want to tell a story about (7 groups of 100=700 or 27>25). If you want to control how hard a problem you give, you could also assign them a problem from a textbook or worksheet.

3. Brianstorm your story- this is where we start integrating in story elements students had to write out their characters, setting, and conflict. Beginning, middle, end, etc

4. Rough draft of script- have students write out their script. To help ease problems I make sure to tell them that each student is responsible for writing their own lines. Helps stop a lot of fights.

5. Check your math- this is a very important step that I skipped when I first was assigning this problem. Students sometimes get so excited writing their script, that their math goes wonky. 1,200 becomes 12000 or something else. Just make sure they go back and double check the math.

6. Rehearse the play- remind students about finding entrances and exits and useing levels to create stage pictures.

7. Perform the play- let students perform the plays and have the audience solve the math problems. 

I love how they use stage directions and that one of the characters makes a mistake in the math. These scripts don't have to be long, they just need to solve the problem!

Well this is my idea for math word problem scripts. I love that this assignment integrates math, writing and theatre. It was a great way to get some cross curricular lessons for my kids. I hope you will give them a try! Let me know if they worked out for you! What math problems did your kids solve?

Creativity part two

Now it is time for part two of my creativity post. You can check out the first part HERE. Most of these tips are tips that can work either for a classroom teacher or ideally, for a specials teacher who sees the same children year after year. This is definitely a process for building creativity. 

Start early

If you are a core teacher, start fostering creativity early in the year. If you set a precedent that creativity is acceptable, then students will be much more willing to continue being creative throughout the year. Students are always more willing to try new things at the beginning. They like to please their teachers early on. If you wait until later they will be much more concerned with their friends and looking "cool". 

For specials teachers, begin fostering creativity in kindergarten. I am always amazed at what Kindergartners can come up with when given the opportunity. This also helps set a precedent in your classroom. Student know that they must be creative in your room. This year is the first year that my 5th grade students will have spent all 6 years with me (they started as kindergartners in my program). Their creative ability is beyond any I have experienced before this. The fact that they have been being creative since kindergarten has really given them the confidence to push their limits. Their improvisational skills rival some 9th graders. So PROUD of them!

Start easy

Just like you scaffold core subjects like math and reading, you need to scaffold creativity as well. When you begin teaching creativity start with very simple tasks. Check out my creativity brain breaks for some ideas. I love to start off with games because kids think of  it as "fun" and not "learning;" it makes them much more willing to try new things. Once they have had some success with creativity, start assigning small assignments for them to get creative with. Make sure you work with them and encourage students to go farther. After they are good at small assignments, try a huge project. I love the bunraku assignment we use. Check it out here. This is a great assignment for students to be creative both in their writing and art. 

Give lots of opportunities

the more opportunities and ways to be creative, the more likely students will try. When creativity becomes part of their daily routine, students are more likely to integrate creativity. Try to make sure every day/week has at least one or two creative assignments. This does not need to be intense projects. It could simply be a simple game or writing assignment. But practice makes perfect, even in creativity. The more often they are creative, the more creative they will become. 

Praise

Students need confidence. When you are creative, you are very vulnerable. Students want to make sure they what they are doing is acceptable. The more praise you can give, the more confident they will become, the more likely they will be to become more creative. Students love praise. When they are really creative give lots of praise. Let them present/perform for the class or school; they will get tons of praise from the people who matter most (their peers). Find creative ways to praise the students. Have them display artwork in the building. Praise them in front of other teachers. Let them go and perform for another class. Try to do anything you can to get them excited about creating.

Have fun

Creativity happens when you are having fun. Don't be so serious. Sit back and relax!

It amazes me how creative my students are. I love teaching creativity in my classroom. I firmly believe that the jobs of the future rely on workers ability to be creative. If we do not take time to be creative now, students will never learn how to stretch their minds and push their limits. Even though creativity is not a specific common core standard, it is still one of the most important things we can teach our students. 

How do you teach creativity? Link up to this post in the comments and we can create a database of the best creative projects for students! 

10 Ways to Foster Creativity in the Classroom part 1

Testing season is upon us which means more stress and less time to post. It also means kids are flopping under the weight of standardized tests. I always feel so bad for my students during this time of year, all the students have to sit still and quiet for hours on end bubbling in these bubble, worrying about if they are choosing the exactly right answer. It is enough to squash anyone's creativity. So to counteract all the b-o-r-i-n-g I have come up with 10 ways to help foster creativity in your classroom and get kids excited about learning during this very boring time.
I am breaking this post into two parts to last the two weeks of testing. Enjoy the first 5 ways to foster creativity and then tune in next week for part two!

Create a safe environment

The first thing you must do foster creativity is to create a safe environment. Students will not be willing to express themselves if they are worried about being made fun of laughed at. They need to feel very very safe in order to be creative. 

-teach good audience behavior

 If you are doing any in class performances you must teach audience behavior. Everyone knows how scary it is to get up in front of people. If those people are your friends, and they are not being respectful, learning shuts down completely. I plan on writing a whole post about teaching audience behavior but for now I will just say this. Students should be seated, still, quiet, and always applaud afterwards. No talking and No teasing are musts!

-do not allow rude behavior

If students are rude to each other they will not be creative. If students are worried about being made fun of they will not be willing to try new things. Shut down rude behavior quickly and effectively at the beginning of the year. In my class rudeness (including boo-ing is automatic time out). Typically it only takes one or two examples for a class to get the picture that rudeness will not be tolerated.

-no sarcasm

This is directed primarily at teachers! I know that I can be guilty of it sometimes. When we interact with our friends we use sarcasm. Sometimes that sarcasm can leak out into our classroom. Unfortunately students do not understand sarcasm.  Try not to use sarcasm with your students. They take it as you being mean and it can make them afraid to try new things.

No wrong ideas

-try to make all reasonable suggestions work

At the beginning students will give probably weak answers. Accept and encourage students. They are trying out to see if answering is safe. If you automatically shut down an answer because it isn't that creative or its a little silly, kids wont try again.  Accept and encourage all responses.

-encourage students to go farther

We play a ton of creativity games in my class. During these games students are encouraged to push the boundaries of creativity. Once kids get used to being creative encourage them to go farther. Don't just accept the first answer, have them try again. You can check out a few great creativity games here. I love the silly statues!

Don't give an example/answer

- set the ground rules then step back

One of the hardest things that I struggle with as a teacher is letting go of control. However, if we want our students to become more creative they have to have control of their learning. When you are ready for your students to get really creative, give them an assignment, tell them the rules and then step back and let them work it out for themselves. Don't explain every detail of the project. It is ok if doesn't turn out exactly like you plan. This happens a lot to me when we do improvisation. Students know the basic rules but they are free to create within the rules. I can promise you that the way I think an improv will turn out is almost never what actually happens and that's ok!

- don't give the exact same supplies and materials to everyone. 0ffer some choice

This suggestion will lead to some amazing projects. I do this when we create our puppets and make up designs in class. Every student gets the same basic supplies but the specifics are up to the individual. When creating our puppets students first must create an original character, after they have a character they have a huge variety of supplies to choose from. Then end results turn out spectacular. 

As you can see from the picture, the puppets are all the same but each child got a ton of choice in the actual creation. Check out how to create these puppets here!

Offer problems that have multiple solutions

When creating projects, allows for students to have multiple solutions. Try not to have only one right answer. One of my favorite projects is go divide students into groups and allow them each to block the same scene.  When then get together and talk about how everyone had different interpretations of how to present a scene and why each idea was valid. Helping the students get comfortable not "Copying" off of each other is a huge struggle. Encourage and praise students who find new and different solutions to the project. If you want to start encouraging students to find multiple solutions, give them an adaptation of the  circle test from the torrents gifted test. In this test students are given a page of circles and told them to turn it into something. Having students find as many different solutions as possible will really help stretch their creativity. The game "What could it be" Is great for this!

Let the groups struggle

Group work allows students to be more creative then you ever thought possible. When you set up group assignments make sure that you give very specific guidelines and rules. You want to eliminate arguments about procedural items.  Once the groups get started try not to settle arguments regarding the creation or implementation of the project (obviously settle any disagreements regarding rule breaking or meanness). Encourage students to compromise (I hate the complaint- "They are doing my idea" ). Having students find a way to incorporate all ideas will help foster creativity. 

Well I hope you enjoyed part one of my 10 ways to foster creativity. Make sure you stop by next week for my last five ideas! What are some ways you use to foster creativity? Leave me a comment and maybe you will see your idea on the next post!

Using Greek Togas to Prepare for the Theatre SLO

This year I have had to start giving the dreaded SLO's (nicknamed slows in our school). For those who haven't experienced an SLO yet let me give you a rundown. A SLO stands for Student Learning Objective. They are basically tests for the classes that aren't typically given state tests. Students are given a pre-test at the beginning of the year and then are expected to grow X % amount by the end. In my county these tests are all multiple choice. That means that students have to show growth not by their acting but by text analysis and their ability to answer questions on acting. I have mixed feelings on the SLOs which I will get into at a later date but for now I want to focus on how you engage and excite your students while covering the seemingly boring topics. I have a very very limited amount of time to get my students to show 35% growth (only 40 minutes a week = 27 hours total a year) that is a lot of growth per hour. So I try to pack a ton of punch into each lesson. For the next few weeks I am focusing on the following topics: theatre history, rehearsal process, script analysis, and character analysis. My plan is to start off with Greek theatre and then hit the highlights of other major history eras. Each week students will get a crash course in a new part of theatre history. They will learn a little about the time period then perform a scene or adaptation from the time. Hopefully threw performing in several types of plays, the students will learn a lot about the rehearsal process, script analysis and character analysis, and a little about theatre history. It is not a perfect plan but I have to work with what time I've got.

Greek History

For Greek history I had a few facts that I wanted students to know by the end of the lesson

- Greeks were the first people in western civilization to perform traditional plays

-Greeks invented the chorus. I also wanted them to be able to explain what a chorus was and how it was used by the Greeks.

-the first actor came from Greek plays- Thespis. They also made the connection of why our drama club is called the Young Thespians

-Greeks performed the plays for religious ceremonies. We also very very briefly touched on Greek Gods and Goddess, luckily they had already covered that in their ELA class.

King Midas and the Golden Touch

I lucked out something major this year with my 5th grade ELA teacher. She and I just happened to pick the same story to study in both of our classes. This doesn't happen very often but when it does it sure makes life easier. I am trying to be much more organized and actually plan out these happy coincidences but it is a slow process. She had previously taught King Midas and the Golden Touch, I just so happened to have a wonderful Readers Theatre adaptation of the same story, so my script analysis portion took very little time for this play.

Since the students had already read the story and new the basic plot we could move right into our rehearsal block. I cast the play being very mindful to cast people who weren't often my leads as main characters. This was a great way to force my tech students out of their shell. We rehearsed the play being very mindful of blocking and characterization for this play. After we had rehearsed the play twice (this play really only lasts about 4 minutes so it was great for my time frame), we took a break to discuss the characters. We also talked about the differences between the short story they read in class and our play. 

Then it was time to have fun, I had put on a Greek play a few years ago, so I had already purchased a ton of white bed sheets. If you don't have any, run to goodwill and get some. You will use them all the time. I gave each kid a sheet and taught them how to wrap a toga. The kids loved putting on costumes for the play. After they were dressed it was time for the Final Performance. Students were graded on their ability to follow the correct blocking, project their voice, act in character and follow the script. The students had a wonderful time and learned a ton. I am hoping that if I keep this same format up for several weeks they might just learn a thing or to?

SLO breakdown

For my SLO students must know the following information.

-Order of rehearsal process (audition, casting, read through, blocking, finishing rehearsal, final dress, performance). With this assignment the students were able to experience casting, read through, blocking, finishing and a final dress/performance).

- Character analysis: Use history to create character- This one is obvious, we talked about Greek performances and choruses then performed one.

-Character analysis: Internal/ External traits based on text- Each student had to describe their character and use the text to prove it. Being able to use textual support is a huge push on our new Common Core so my ELA teacher had already been covering this in class. The kids were great at reading the lines and proving their character choices "My character is a young girl because in the script she says "Daddy play with me" and that tells me she is still young enough to want to play with her parents"

-Acting/ Rehearsal: Blocking- I had students talk about stage pictures and how you avoid lines. We also talked about how since King Midas was the lead he would often be at the top of our "triangle"

-Theatre History: Students learned a ton about Greek history in this lesson. They were even able to give me the highlights in our exit slips!

-Technical Theatre: Costumes- Students learned how to create a toga, while creating a toga isn't necessarily on the SLO it is always great to remind students about "historically accurate"  costuming. I know these togas aren't actually historically accurate but we were working with the time and money we had. :)

How do you all teach theatre history? Have you found Readers Theatre to be a great way to engage your students in reading and text analysis?

3 Free Theatre Arts Integration Strategies that Work

My school is great! My principal has really embraced the idea of arts integration throughout our entire building. She really wants to make sure that all teachers have the tools they need to be able to integrate the fine arts into the core Curriculum. She has even brought in professional artists in each area to give professional development. It's great. What's not so great, the advice i always hear from the theatre pd. For some reason every professional development i attend that talks about integrating theatre into classroom falls back on one vocab word: tableaux.

I hate tableaux! There I said it. For those that don't know a tableaux is a frozen stage picture. Students can create a picture of anything, a scene from a play, the food chain, a land-form, a story, a moment in history. It's all very helpful, but I am one of the few theatre teachers who cannot stand tableaux. I realize that if you are a core teacher, making the kids freeze is a lot less scary then letting them move. But really isn't moving part of the fun?

Since I hate tableaux so much, it makes me so sad to see professional development that only encourages teachers to have the students freeze. I decided I had to do something about it. So I now present to you: 

3 Theatre Arts Integration Strategies that Work

Story Time Freeze

This is for the teacher that loves tableaux, who is scared to let the students move much. Every story has a beginning, middle, and end. Whether that story is a moment in History or the food chain. Have students create a frozen picture of the beginning middle and end of their story. This not only gets students thinking about the order of a story but also has them work on transitions and how characters and things change throughout en event.

Pantomime

If you don't like noise, but don't mind a little chaos, pantomime is for you! Pantomime or mime is when you act without words. Having students try to convey a topic without using their voice takes a lot of creativity. For example, how could you act out the signing of the deceleration of independence without words, how could you show the parts of a cell and their jobs without words? This activity is great. You can always have the students explain their performance afterward (or they could write about it). I love pantomime as a well to demonstrate knowledge.

Press Conference

This is a great differentiation strategy. Choose a few of your advanced students to be your character (parts of a plant, planets, members of parliament). These students will answers all the questions in character. All of your other students will be the reporters that interview your guests. You can either have the students submit their questions or let them ad-lib their questions. Your interviewers should ask their questions. You can then have them write a newspaper article about the interview. 

Download my free lesson plan guide with more information on these strategies. Don't forget to follow my blog and TeachersPayTeachers site for more awesome freebies.

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Brain Break: Silly Suspect

Premise

The premise of the game is simple. A police officer is interviewing a suspect about an unknown crime(let the kids make it up). The suspect is very silly though and can only say one word. This game results in hilarious conversations between the officer and suspect. 

Rules

Police officer can only ask classroom appropriate questions. The suspect can only answer using the silly word. Encourage your suspect to use nonverbal communication and vocal inflection to communicate the answers while only saying the one word.

Twist: have a competition between your two actors, the first one to giggle or break character looses.

Students should try to ask silly questions that make the answer seem even more outrageous.

Steps

Before the game write out several silly words on index cards (see silly words below). 

For each round choose two students to perform. Try to pick a quieter student for the suspect. This makes it easier since they already know what they are going to say. It also helps students build confidence in front of an audience and sets the student up for success. Pick a confident or gifted student as your police person. This will push those students to develop their creativity and improvisation skills.

Suggested words

You can really use any silly word you want for this game,but here are a few suggestions.

Apple

Wackadoodle

Lalalamoooo

Pizza

Mommy

Baby doll

Zipitiy 

Puppy dog

Blah blah blah

Guitar

Candy

Penguins

Hocus locus

Brain Break: What Can It Be?

What can it be? Is one of my favorite creativity increasing brain breaks around. It works for any grade level and can be played for as long or as short as you like. This game is super easy to set up and will have the kids thinking creatively and critically in no time!

The premise of the game is simple, give the students an object and say "I know this is a ------, but what can it be?" Students then use their creative and critical thinking skills to come up with as many different ways you could use the object and demonstrating that use. I only have two rules for this game 1) must be class room appropriate 2) you can't repeat what someone else said. 

Here is how the game is played at my school. 

First everyone comes and sits in a circle (you could have them stay that their desks but I like to get them closer together for the game). 

Next bring out any random item you have. I like to start with very nondescript items (length of fabric, a stick) and move towards more specific items (toothbrush, pencil)

Then tell you students "I know this is a ------, but what can it be?" ( if this is your first time playing you night want to give a few creative examples to get the thinking flowing).

Finally have the students answer the question one at a time acting out their answer. (For example the stick could be a baseball bat- act out swinging a bat, a dog stick - play fetch, or a curling iron - act out curling hair). The round is over when either everyone in the circle has passed or you run out of time.

For me this game is all about creativity. There are no wrong answers. If they can act it out and it's class appropriate, it counts. After the first round, if students can't think of an idea I let them pass their turn, but in the first round all must compete. This also forces some kids to be very creative. If possible I try to set it up so my more creative/gifted kids get the item near the end of the round, while my quieter students get it first.  I like to have the class compete against itself to come up with the most creative answers. Our towel is the winner at 55 different uses!

This game is great because it is simple, yet very funny. It really makes the kids look at items in a different light and try new ideas. Below are several of the ways the kids came up for what a towel can be! (unfortunately I was not taking notes they day we played with a towel, so several of the answers have been forgotten).

A skirt

A dress

A head wrap

A blanket

A pillow

A shawl

A hula costume

A rope

A whip

A mask

A parachute

A backpack

Rapunzel hair

A table cloth

A picnic cloth

A ghost costume

A trap

A foot warmer

A belt

A jump rope 

A tug of war starter kit

A necklace

A bracelet

A sleeping bag

A dog toy

A way to hide from penguins (the white towel in snow)

A band-aid

An animal carrier

A sweat rag

A super hero cape

String to a really big guitar

A door mat

A dog drying device 

I hope your class likes this game! How many ways did you all come up with for using a towel?