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. 

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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?

Brain Break- Moving Statues

This is one of my favorite brain breaks for all ages. It gets kids up moving. It also makes them think about how the hold their body and present themselves onstage.  The other great thing about this game is it give focus to the students and you can play for as short or as long as you want.

This is a game I made up that is based on the game "Red Light Green Light." In this game I have the students find their own space in the room (or you could have the kids stand at their chairs). When I say so the kids move in their space any way they want to. I am pretty liberal with this, kids can sit, stand, lay down, jump whatever as long as they don't touch anyone else and they don't leave their area.

When I say "Freeze!" all the kids must Freeze in whatever position they were in. Let the students think about their pose for a few seconds. Then ask a few students who have great poses "What are you?"  The student then has to describe what type of statue they are "I'm a statue of someone break dancing" or "I'm a statue of someone shooting a boy and arrow" whatever they can think up that looks like their body.

After you have asked a few students what they are tell everyone to move again. Then freeze again pick students who have interesting poses. In the younger grades especially they like to copy each other and you don't need 12 kids all throwing a football. Highly praise the kids who give creative answers but remember all answers are correct and we want to encourage kids to make choices about their bodies and characters. This also helps build confidence about being silly and going big with their actions.

Continue around the room allowing kids to move and freeze until you have either run out of time or asked all the students what type of statues they are. If you have students constantly copying each other allow them to give two answers. "That's great, what else could you be?" This will force them to think about their body position in a new way.

This is the basic game, short sweat and easy. It helps get the kids up and moving, it encourages creativity, and it helps focus students. They really like freezing when you say freeze. Encourage kids to move in pantomime (silently) to minimize noise.

Alternative versions:

Dancing Statues: Play music while doing this game have the students move to the music then freeze when the music stops. Great preview for musical theatre where you want to teach how music affects the body. Play different types of music so and explore how the music makes you move in different ways (fast music, slow, hip hop, ballet etc).

Feelings Statues: Tell the students move like they are feeling different emotions ("move like you are frightened" "more like you are excited" "move like you are mad") then have the students freeze. Ask them to make choices of "Why are frightened?" "why are you excited?"

Speaking Statues: Play the game normally until the end. Instead of asking students "what are you?" ask them "what would you say" Students then have to respond in character. For example if they are a football player they might say "Hut Hut Hike"If they were a singer they might start singing a song, if they were a dancer they might start talking about moving into first position. This is a great way to transition students into a character state of mind and allow them to explore talking like several different characters.

Silly Statues: This is where you can really work on getting kids to be silly (great for the older kids who think they are too cool). Tell the students to move in very silly situations "move like you are in a bag of popping Popcorn" "move like you are on mars" "move like you are a penguin" When they freeze have the students tell you what their character is thinking. "Man that oil is HOT" "I can't believe there is no gravity on Mars" have fun and be as silly as possible we want students to become comfortable with getting laughed at and being silly.


These are some of the statue games I play. What games do you play that are similar? Do you have any advice for teachers using this game as a brain break? 

Improv Game- What are You Doing?

Every Wednesday I am going to label as Wacky Wednesday. This is day where I bring you one of my favorite Improvisation Games, Warm-ups or Brain Breaks. These are a must if you are a theatre teacher.  They are also great to use in the regular education classroom to get kids up moving and get the creativity flowing.

Improvisation: AKA Improv- I teach my kids that Improv is acting without a script. There are several rules you should teach regarding improvisation. We will cover these in a later post. 

Today I simply want to give you a fun game to play with your kids that helps foster creativity. This game is also great for teaching students the importance of say "Yes" in improvisation. One of the huge issues I have at the elementary level is students don't want to accept what is happening in an improv scene. For example one kid will say "Hey there is a scary Pirate Monster over there" the other student will then respond with "no there's not" UGH. This is so frustrating when this happens. And it happens way to often in my class. This game helps teach kids to accept what is said on stage.

Material: there are no materials for this game! It is free and easy to set up.

Time: This game goes very quickly. The first time you play I recommend going through the game at least twice so that everyone can get their creativity flowing (most kids are pretty conservative the first time they play) after that, this game takes as little as 5 minuets. A great brain break for students!

Before the Game: Divide your students into two even groups. Have the students line up on either side of the playing area (stage). I like to remind students about classroom appropriate behavior at this point. In my class if you say something inappropriate you are automatically out of the game, this usually keeps kids in the safe range. Make sure that you have already defined what counts as inappropriate behavior in your class (I don't allow any "bathroom" humor or play hurting/killing in my class). Then start the game.

Rules: For each round students must follow the below script. Students are encouraged to be as creative as possible with their responses. Once a student has performed they go to the end of the line (or sit down).

Student A begins the game by asking Student B "What are you doing?"
Student B responds with some type of creative activity: Water skiing on an alligator, Eating 10,000 jellybeans, Fighting a crazy shark. (Whatever silly idea they can come up with.)
Student A must then begin acting out whatever Student B said (how silly would you look trying to water ski on an alligator?) Student A must continue to act out the idea until they leave the stage.
Student B leaves stage,
Student C walks on stage (this is the next student in B group) Student C asks "What are you doing?"
Student A must respond with a new silly, creative action.
Student C begins performing Student A's action. Student A walks off stage
Student D enters from A team and the game continues back and forth.


Alternative Rules: I don't typically keep score when playing this game. It is fun enough without worrying  about who wins.  However if you want to add more variety to the game here are some great ideas.
Creativity Points: Give out a point for each student on the team who gives a very creative answer.
Acting Points: Give out a point for each student who commits to really acting out the action (facial expressions and full body movements needed to get the point).
No Repeats: Anyone who gives a similar action must sit out or loose points (eliminates the I'm Fighting a Crazy Shark, I'm fighting a crazy moose, I'm fighting a crazy dinosaur)
Time Limit: Set an amount of time students have to think about their response (for example you only get 30 seconds to respond). This moves the game along very quickly. I do not recommend adding this rule until your students are very comfortable with the game. This rule will stress out some of your students.

I am sure there are other adaptations you can add.  As I said before this game is great for getting students moving. It also helps improve students creativity. Be mindful when playing this game, that this is suppose to be a short fun game. It should not replace basic improvisations that you use in your theatre class. Do you play this game in your class? How does it work for you?