Key Elementary, Year One
Jackson – Jen Weisphal
Learning Objective/Exit Outcomes:
- Students will be able to correctly identify and use adverbs in a story format.
- Students will contribute to peer learning and collaboration.
- Students will use improv to develop their own stories.
- Students will listen and respond appropriately, forming complete thoughts and sentences.
State Standards:
ELAGSE5L1 Demonstrate command of the conventions of Standard English grammar and usage when writing or speaking.
- Form and use the perfect (e.g., I had walked; I have walked; I will have walked) verb aspects.
- Use verb tense and aspect to convey various times, sequences, states, and conditions.
TA5.RE.1 Engage actively and appropriately as an audience member.
- Participate as audience.
- Demonstrate appropriate theatre etiquette.
TA5.PR.1 Act by communicating and sustaining roles in formal and informal environments.
- Collaborate and perform with an ensemble to present theatre to an audience.
Integration Area/Subject:
Science & Theatre
Materials/Playing Space:
Playing space in front of classroom
Description:
The PAIR Specialist asked students to share what they new about Improv. The goal answer to the question is that improv is a form of theatre arts where the content is completely made up on the spot. The improv game, Conducted Story, is a game where a group of students creates a story beginning as any good story does with “Once Upon A Time.” The ‘conductor’ of the stories is the teacher. The teacher controls how long a student will add onto the story by pointing to them and when the teacher pulls her hand back, the student must stop telling their story, even if it is in the middle of a sentence! Pointing to another student, the story continues on where the last student left off. Student 1: “Once upon a time there was a lion who was walking down” Student 2: “the street to the circus. Then he ran into a girl lion and he” Student 3:, etc, etc. The PAIR Specialist emphasized that this story would be unique and exceptionally creative because it was not being created by a single storyteller, but by many, which means that the story would be something even greater because of collaboration. The PAIR Specialist also emphasized the importance of listening to make sure that the story stays connected and makes sense from beginning to end.
The teacher chose five students to create a story that had never been told before and would never be told again. This story had no boundaries and was a completely improved creation.
The teacher then chose five more students to play Conducted Story, but this time added a layer of information to the story being told. This layer was to create a story about the adverb “hopping.” Students created a story about ‘Hopping’ that included keys to support that word, such as playing on a trampoline, going into the sky and coming back down, etc, which showed their understanding of Hopping. In this version, the students ended up with a story where “Hopping” was being, like a person, who did actions that created visuals of hopping.
For the next round, the PAIR Specialist encouraged the students to consider the parts of a story “Beginning, Middle, and End” and elements that create a good story, “Characters, Setting, Conflict, and Resolution.”
The teacher also had a group tell a story about “slithering.” This group of students created a story about a snake slithering through a town, who kept biting people until Animal Control came and took the snake out of town.
Notes:
- Conducted Story is a great tool to gauge how much students know about a topic prior to teaching a unit and can then be used after teaching the unit to have students directly connect how much they learned from the first time they played Conducted Story.