Day #1: Introduction and Story Statues with Rory's Story Cubes

Hello and welcome! Today was my first day at South Jordan Elementary school. I am teaching theatre to Mrs. Bailey's 4th grade class and Mrs. Ormsby's 5th grade class. Today I reviewed the 4 steps to being a Super Star Student, which also demonstrate the structure of my 50-60 minute lessons with the students, so they will know what to expect when they come to my class. The 4 steps spell out S.T.A.R.:

S: Start out right. When they come to class, we will start off with a warm-up game or activity to energize their minds, voices and bodies in preparation for the upcoming activity. This will also help them with their collaboration/team work abilities.

T: Tune in. Every activity I give the students comes with a brief explanation and an introduction to the handout, where they will fill out all the information for the activity. I also give the students a sample, where I demonstrate the activity with my example and also give them a sheet with my example written out. This is so they can reference it when they are working in their groups, and limits the amounts of questions they may have for me. Tuning in thus prepares them to hear and follow the instructions, and to pay close attention to the example scene, possibly giving them ideas for their upcoming scene.

A: Attitude. In theatre, we also have to work in groups and it is important that the students have a good attitude as they share and select ideas to put in the scene. They will work with many different people in the class, with new groups every week. Also, the scenes are designed so that every student in the group (3-4 people in a group) can have at least one of their ideas selected for a portion of the scene, and that they can feel ownership over creating that part of the story.

R: Respect. So much of theatre is sitting and watching other people perform. So the students were instructed how to sit respectfully and to keep their mouths closed and their eyes on the performers when it is not their time to perform. They were instructed to say "3, 2, 1 action!" (and clap) with me to designate the start of the scene they are watching. They were also told to applaud at the end and when instructed, thus making all the students feel good about their work. They also learned to give a thumbs up when they are ready for their scene to start, and that the performance space is called the "stage" and the place where the audience sits is called the "house" in actual theatre spaces. This way they can learn to respect the spaces and make-believe that their classroom is a theatre.

ACTIVITY #1: Statue Stories with Rory's Story Cubes

Every class period will have a different activity, wherein the students will create a scene and perform it for the class at the end. Also, every activity has a worksheet/template, an example, a tool and a technique. Many activities will begin with a brief lesson, introducing new (or possibly reviewing old vocabulary that will aide in their storytelling development process, and strengthen their skills in their Language Arts core curriculum and in their theatre knowledge and abilities.

Today's activity was all about the basics. I wanted to see where the students were in their natural abilities to work together in groups, use their imagination, and tell stories. I told the students that these are the 3 main things you need to be good at theatre. So here was our activity:

Tool: Rory's Story Cubes

Technique: Frozen Images

These are Rory's Story Cubes. They are dice with random pictures on them. There are 9 in a box and they come in 3 separate types: Voyages (green), Actions (blue), and the Original set (orange, but picture are in black). These are featured in the picture below.

Each group (4-5 students pre-assigned by the classroom teacher) was given one of each cube, so 3 cubes total. They were instructed to roll them and create a short story based on the pictures they rolled. They had to tell this story in 5 parts (beginning, middle middle, middle, end) and have a frozen statue image for each. Just like a picture book, photo album, comic book, etc. They were allowed to move a little bit and make sound effects as well, but the entire scene needed to have no dialogue and no narration.

 

Here are some samples:

• Music notes, scissors cutting paper, and a pyramid.
• Dinosaur skull, cell phone, and butterfly + net
• Bandit, sheep, and a person shaking a present by his/her ear

Creating these scenes required the students to be very creative, practice telling a story through their bodies, and putting together ideas in a sequential order that creates a story. The scenes were about 30 seconds to act out and the students received about 20-30 minutes of preparation time. Sometimes I asked the students in the audience (house) to guess what the scene was about. Then the students who had just performed were asked to read the description of their scene, and we all determined how much of the story we were able guess correctly. The students were very supportive and encouraging of one another, and I am happy to say that everyone was willing to get up on stage and perform their part in the scene without reservations.

Here is the worksheet they used to fill out their scene, along with the sample scene, which also lists casting and basic costume/props for the students as references for what they could use or how to split up the roles in their scene. The worksheet and sample is meant for 3 students in a group, but it can all be modified to include all sizes of groups.

HERE IS THE SAMPLE:

THEATRE VOCABULARY WORDS OF THE DAY:  
Stage: the performance space.
House: the place where the audience sits and watches the show

The next activity, we will focus on the basic of storytelling, such as the 6 major questions all writers should ask themselves, and the R.O.O.T. of all stories. This lesson gave me great insight into how creative they are, how well they work with others, and their basic level of storytelling and acting. We will now build upon their current level of, and experience with, theatre and making stories.