lesson+plans

**The Word**

 * This unit describes how I handled reading Shakespeare with students in class using a variety of reading strategies.**



**The Action**

 * This unit describes how the students and I worked toward creating a performance of a Shakespeare play.**



Lesson Plan: Sonnet Drama (explained in The Word unit)
Sonnet Drama A lesson plan for using Shakespeare's sonnets as an introduction to dramatizing his longer works.

**Lesson Plans** (provided by Anne Heintz)
These plans may be used as stand alone lessons.


 * Creating a telenovela (Latin soap opera)**

Literacy skills: Reading, writing, planning, storyboarding, editing, co-writing, acting, directing

Population: I gave this workshop at Ann Arbor Public Libraries in October 2008. The workshop was offered to all youths under 18. The students who enrolled were either learning Spanish in school, or were Spanish speakers.

Duration: This workshop lasted for 8 hours. Students came for four hours each Saturday (with snack and lunch breaks).

Co-instructor: My co-instructor was Maite Zubia, who works in theater, as well as owns her own successful chocolates business: Maitelates

Day One:

Objectives:
 * Get to know the others in the group.Please see the toolbox for games.
 * Become familiar with //telenovela// as a genre.
 * Become familiar with //storyboarding// as a composing tool for film.
 * Gain practice in using a second language to write a scene.
 * Collaborate with others with differing levels of proficiency.
 * Gain practice in speaking and interacting in a second language.

Activities:
 * Play a couple games as a group.
 * Elicit student input as to what their understanding of "telenovela" is. Present models of telenovelas (I used a clip from Ugly Betty in English, as well as a clip in Spanish from a popular Columbian telenovela). As a whole group, define telenovela and describe uses and purposes.
 * As a whole group, compose the outline for a new telenovela in 5-7 scenes. The teacher can guide the group through this task, drawing or writing the main ideas and characters on a space visible to all.
 * In pairs, students draw the "central actions" for each scene on big pieces of paper. For more on storyboarding, see the video on tabletop storytelling in recommended viewing.
 * Put the big pieces of paper up on the wall and take a "tour": Starting with the first scene, each pair explains their storyboard to the group.
 * Each pair takes a scene (it may be the one they drew, or it may be another one) and writes the dialogue for what is there in the pictures. Some groups wrote in both Spanish and English; some groups challenged themselves to write in all Spanish, and used dictionaries and checked in with other groups and the teachers to get it right. In other pairs, one partner wrote in English, and the other partner helped them translate it to the Spanish. Depending on your group, you can help them to decide the "bi-lingualness" of the script. (Examples of fluid shifts in language may be found in popular music, such as reggaeton.
 * As a group, sit together in a circle and read the entire finished work. Each pair reads the scene they just wrote in order with the other scenes.
 * Each student gets their role for the filming day (i.e., a character in the play, an editor or crew member for lighting, set, costume, makeup).
 * The teacher (or a student) takes the script home and types it up and edits it all together. Each student receives a copy of the script before the next time we meet together. This may be accomplished using technology such as Google Docs. Actors should be tasked to review their lines and prepare to deliver them (many students may want to try to memorize). Editors and crew members should be tasked to prepare their design concepts.

Day Two:

Objectives:
 * Become familiar with basic storytelling techniques associated with filmmaking.
 * Speak and listen to second language vocabulary in theatrical contexts.
 * Use performance as a tool for revision in second language writing.

Activities:
 * Play a warm-up game.
 * Revisit the drawings. As a group, decide, based on your present surroundings, what can you do to best re-create what the students imagined? Scope out possibilities and decide on a shooting location for each scene.
 * Allow costume, set, and lighting crew to present their concepts to the group.
 * Designate a director for each scene (one of the students who is not in the scene).
 * Students may run lines for their scenes if they are not in scenes.
 * Film the scenes.
 * Debrief.

Resources I used:

Big sticky paper, pencils, markers, lined paper Youtube clips: Ugly Betty Season 3 premiere Video camera, tripod. If you are not familiar with video editing, there is a good chance one of your students is--you may designate a student as editor, responsible for putting the scene footage together into a program with title slides and transitions. IMovie and Windows Movie Maker are popular editing software and tutorials for these programs can be found on []


 * The "iconic line" and "iconic image" for use in creative writing units:**

The "iconic line" or the "iconic image" (for my understanding of this concept, I am indebted to Jenny Kemp) : I often introduce this concept in writing instruction as both an idea generator and a tool for maintaining focus. My favorite example to use of "iconic image" is the yellow bus in Little Miss Sunshine



In this movie, this bus works as an "iconic image." By observing the status of the image, the audience is able to symbolically keen the status of one or more characters with regard to that moment in the story's journey.

One of my favorite examples of "iconic line" always arises naturally when playing "Help me, help me" with students: it comes from //The Princess Bride//. It is the famous: "Hello, my name is Indigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die." This line is repeated many times throughout the movie: it states the essence of the character's driving force through time and space.

Iconic lines and images are fruitful for students to employ in their composing for a number of reasons: 1. Repetition. A composing principle across art forms: repetition soothes, comforts, deepens, builds shared understanding, and just really rocks in general (as evidenced by one of many like bands, The Hold Steady, whose attitude seems to be "Why say a line once, when you can say it over and over?" 2. Inclusion. Some students may not have the resources necessary to participate fully in a dramatic production, but if all they need to remember and perfect is one line or one image, then their contribution gains the utmost importance because the group has decided that that line and/or image is central to the meaning of the story.

Activities which employ an iconic image:
 * Ask students to draw 6 boxes on a blank sheet of paper. This is easily done by asking students to draw a horizontal line across the middle of the page, then two vertical lines at 1/3 of the page and 2/3 of the page. Ask students to number the boxes 1,2,3 across the top and 4,5,6 along the bottom.
 * Ask students to choose an object. It can be any kind of object. Students are to draw an object in transition in the 6 panels they've created on their page. The object must change its form or shape from Box 1 to Box 6. It must look fundamentally different in Box 6 than it did in Box 1. Boxes 2-5 should be used to show what the forces were that acted upon the object to engender the change and how the forces and the object engaged with each other. Common examples used are a seed to a flower, a clock at 12 to a clock at 6, a piece of homework attacked by a dog to dog droppings, etc.
 * Ask students to share their panels with the larger group. Students can first show the group the picture, but not explain anything yet. The teacher can ask the rest of the group (1) what they think is happening and (2) what kind of emotion they feel watching the object's journey. With a group oriented toward playwriting specifically, the leader can ask what "need" or "overarching desire" the object may have had, and whether or not the change fulfilled or thwarted this desire.
 * The leader may take notes so as to compile a list of common needs and desires and obstacles or supports for those desires, which students may draw from in writing their own plays. Then, finally, the original artist may describe their intent with regard to the drawing. This reinforces the idea that creative writing is often open to a number of interpretations.