This lesson uses tall tale read alouds to reinforce the common elements, or text structure, of tall tales. As the text is read aloud, students examine the elements of the book that are characteristic of tall tales. Then using what they've learned, they write and perform tall tales of their own.
Students will be creating a variety of poetry as well as analyzing poetry. They will work with Language standards and take a performance assessment at the end of the unit.
This resource was created by Emily Cameron, in collaboration with Dawn DeTurk, Hannah Blomstedt, and Julie Albrecht, as part of ESU2's Integrating the Arts project. This project is a four year initiative focused on integrating arts into the core curriculum through teacher education, practice, and coaching.
Performance Philosophy is an emerging interdisciplinary field of thought, creative practice and scholarship. The Performance Philosophy book series comprises monographs and essay collections addressing the relationship between performance and philosophy within a broad range of philosophical traditions and performance practices, including drama, theatre, performance arts, dance, art and music. The series also includes studies of the performative aspects of life and, indeed, philosophy itself. As such, the series addresses the philosophy of performance as well as performance-as-philosophy and philosophy-as-performance.
This activity focuses on retelling and performing a story that has been formatted from a traditional version to the setting of the Old West. When retelling a story to someone else, it is important to have the sequence and all parts to the story in correct order. The beginning of a story generally tells who the characters in the story are and what the problems may be. The middle generally explains what attempts were made to solve the problems, and the end generally has the solution, results, and how the story ends. For this activity, students should be familiar with the original tale so they will see the parallel between the original and the adapted version. As you are preparing to retell/role-play the story, you will need to discuss the main characters the students will be portraying and decide what simple props, if any, may be helpful in telling the story.
African-American theatre has a rich long history that is part of the heritage of this art form. This assignment gives students the opportunity to take a deeper dive into one topic personally, and benefit from other student's work in broadening their knowledge of this art form.Student will choose a topic from the choices provided, conduct research, and prepare & present their findings in a 5-minute presentation. The presentation may be done live in a face-to-face class, live in a synchronous virtual class, or recorded for an asynchronous class.
This resource was created by Jenny Motacek, in collaboration with Dawn DeTurk, Hannah Blomstedt, and Julie Albrecht, as part of ESU2's Integrating the Arts project. This project is a four year initiative focused on integrating arts into the core curriculum through teacher education, practice, and coaching.
Selected readings within an allegorical universe replacing American sovereignty with an Order of the Diaspora. Intended as a play on the sovereignty of the people spoken of in the Preamble to the Constitution lesson work.
Students use the model of the infamous Bill and Ted from the feature film "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" to "go back in time" to learn about deities in the ancient world. After researching, studying, and viewing reproductions of artworks that depict gods and goddesses, students transport their chosen deities to the modern world as characters they write about in a mock television talk-show script, which they enact for the class.
Learn about the physical characteristics of environments and act out the animals that live there!
You are the next contestant on the Take the Stage game show ANIMAL SURVIVAL where you will travel in a hot air balloon to the forest of North America, the savanna of Africa, and then take a submarine ride underwater in the ocean. To play the game, you will act out an animal that would live in each environment, and then write how the physical characteristics of each environment helps your animal survive.
Learning Objective: observe and describe the physical characteristics of environments and how they support populations and communities of plants and animals within an ecosystem.
This curriculum unit seeks to broaden the repertoire and pedagogical techniques utilized in directing middle school orchestra. It aims to do this by rethinking dominant pedagogical approaches, and reexamining which narratives are presented in the classroom and for what purpose. If the curriculum is successful, it will firstly help the teacher include counter-narratives in instruction in a seamless manner and provide a framework for restructuring instruction moving forward. In that way, this is not really a curricular unit as much as a way to rethink what, how and why we teach a performance class like orchestra. By introducing counter-narratives, the teacher reaches and motivates a more diverse student body and opens doors to dialog with students about history in a way that would not be possible without the inclusion of counter-narratives. This curriculum also encourages a different approach for teaching basics like rhythm decoding using the South Indian syllabic system called solkattu. When we present culturally diverse solutions to teaching the basics of music performance, we expand our students’ awareness of the world and offer them different ways of solving a problem. The curriculum also presents ways to structure orchestral rehearsals in a more collaborative way which not only encourages trust and teamwork between students, but also gives them agency over the final performance of the material. As a culmination of the curriculum, the final unit includes five original arrangements for the middle school orchestra, including a score with all parts and files related to each arrangement. The five pieces include two Civil Rights era anthems, a spiritual from the Bahamas, a South African Zulu folksong, and a popular song of community/fellowship. The teaching of all these pieces will ultimately help to present counter-narratives, open dialog, and develop trust and a sense of personal investment while broadening the repertoire of the orchestra.
This resource was created by Kayla Henery, in collaboration with Lynn Bowder, as part of ESU2's Mastering the Arts project. This project is a four year initiative focused on integrating arts into the core curriculum through teacher education and experiential learning.
Students will learn about the jazz singer Billie Holiday and the sociohistorical context in which she performed. They will learn how discriminatory statutes (called Jim Crow laws) affected daily life. They will also analyze how movement is created in photographs and the effect of a photographer's point of view on composition. Finally, students will photograph a musician, paying attention to what can be communicated through point of view.
Students will discuss the form, function, and decoration of an ancient Greek wine cup. They will learn about the importance of music in the daily life of ancient Greeks. They will discuss a page from a late-medieval choir book and compare and contrast the role of music in antiquity, the Renaissance, and today. They will create cups for a social gathering inspired by ancient Greek symposia, and create and perform a song, poem, or story.
Students will analyze scenes from the Trojan War that are visually depicted in an ancient object and an 18th-century painting. They will research an epic poem inspired by the Trojan War and write a literary response analyzing how themes and values in the poem reflect the historical context in which they were made. Finally, they will work in teams to reframe a tale from the Trojan War in a contemporary context -- visually and in poetry -- and recite the tale in a poetry slam.
A lesson on Logos, Pathos, and Ethos and how to use them.
Australian Aboriginal art is one of the oldest continuing art traditions in the world. Much of the most important knowledge of aboriginal society was conveyed through different kinds of storytelling—including narratives that were spoken, performed as dances or songs, and those that were painted. In this lesson students will learn about the Aboriginal storytelling tradition through the spoken word and through visual culture. They will have the opportunity to hear stories of the Dreamtime told by the Aboriginal people, as well as to investigate Aboriginal storytelling in contemporary dot paintings.
A short course in reading CAD drawings for Stage Managers
This open book by Catherine Schmidt-Jones has units on time elements (rhythm and meter), pitch elements (timbre, melody, and harmony), and the combination of these elements. The textbook is being provided in both PDF and html formats for download.
Children find favorite words, phrases, and sentences from familiar stories. Working together, they combine their words and phrases to create a poem. The poem is then shared as performance poetry.