Time: 6-8 weeks
This unit develops students' understanding of drama strategies and processes that may be used during contextual dramas.
Sample Topic: "Friends and Foes"
Suggested Resources:
Starter List of Activities
Teacher Note:
The following Starter List of Activities is intended to aid the teacher in planning units. The activities are described very briefly and are just a sample of the many activities that can be developed to explore the theme or topic. The activities are presented as introductory, main, and concluding activities to facilitate planning. Refer to planning contextual dramas for help.
1. Introductory Activities
Discussion
View the video and/or read the book entitled The Island of Skog in which a band of mice sail away from the dangers of the city in pursuit of freedom and happiness. The mice land on an island inhabited by a seemingly hostile Skog with gigantic feet. The themes of friendship and prejudice are developed when the two parties meet face to face.
Create a contextual drama about historical or contemporary friends and foes. Introduce conflict and tension through a misunderstanding that takes place.
Brainstorming
Create a list of experiences that have the potential for misunderstanding between or among friends. Some of the misunderstandings might lead to hurt feelings. Other misunderstandings might lead to humourous results. Some examples follow:
Small group improvisations
Have groups of students select one or two of the misunderstandings from the list created during the previous brainstorming activity. Create improvisations in role based on that idea.
Reflection
Discuss personal experiences of being misunderstood. What were the consequences?
2. Main Activities
Journey
Using The Island of Skog or another story about friends and foes as inspiration, develop a contextual drama about a group of friends (people or animals) who go on a journey to escape a bad situation.
Narration and Parallel play
Create a narration to read as the students go on the imaginary journey. Include, for example:
Use music to create an appropriate travelling mood as the students engage in parallel play. Accompany the students' journey with narration that tells of the travellers' experiences and challenges. The students may encounter a storm, for example, and dance or mime the event in slow motion. Or they may create tableaux of different events along the way. The travellers might meet strange and wonderful characters who may be either friends or foes.
Parallel play
The travellers arrive at a new location (e.g., an island or rainforest) where they discover inhabitants who appear to be very different from them. The rainforest inhabitants might be small, quick-moving, bird-like creatures or large, slow-moving, hairy creatures. Or, a group of island inhabitants might have skin that is multi-coloured, striped, or polka-dotted.
When the travellers arrive at the new location, they do not know whether the inhabitants are friends or foes.
Teacher in role
Introduce into the drama events that may be interpreted by the travellers as being hostile messages from the island or rainforest inhabitants. The inhabitants might leave notes or other objects outside the travellers' camp that could be interpreted as friendly or hostile. For example, a picture of a boat sailing on the water might be interpreted as telling the travellers to leave the island. However, the note could also be interpreted as welcoming their arrival. The mystery of the unknown can create an atmosphere of anticipation for the students.
Improvisation
Encourage the students to create a plan of action in order to introduce the travellers to the inhabitants. Explore in role the following questions through small group improvisations:
Hold a meeting with students in role as travellers to discuss each group's thoughts.
Improvisation
In role as the original inhabitants, work in small groups to explore their thoughts about the newly arrived travellers. Are the inhabitants afraid of the travellers? Do the inhabitants think the travellers are strange looking creatures? What are the inhabitants going to do about these new visitors who may be friends or foes?
Send out some spies from both camps to bring back information about the others. Ask the spies to observe the other group's appearance and behaviour and to take note of their language.
Teacher in role
Introduce conflict or tension into the drama by reporting a disturbing event such as food and supplies mysteriously disappearing from the various camps.
Meeting
Call a meeting with students in role to inform them about the disturbing event. Have the students present their suggestions for finding the answer to what happened.
Brainstorming
Conduct an inquiry to discover the cause of the mysterious event. Encourage students to brainstorm what could have taken place. If food has disappeared from a camp, there may be several likely explanations for the disappearances. For example, the travellers' pets or other animals may have dragged the food into the forest. Someone within the travellers' own camp may have hidden the food to keep it safe. The inhabitants might have thought the food was a gift to cook as a welcoming feast.
Tableaux
Create tableaux in small groups to show what happened to the missing objects. Do the travellers blame the inhabitants for the problem, and vice versa? Did anyone actually see what happened? Are the travellers afraid of the inhabitants or angry, or just curious?
Create another tableau to show what happens when the travellers and the inhabitants finally meet each other.
Captions
As each group shows its tableau to the class, invite the rest of the students to create a caption that might appear beneath the picture if it were to be published in a newspaper.
Tapping in
While each group is showing its tableau, tap some students on the shoulder and ask questions about what students are doing and what they are thinking. Remind the students that they must answer in role as one of the travellers or inhabitants. Prompt their responses with questions such as:
Reflection
Ask the students to consider questions such as the following in their reflections:
3. Concluding Activities
Discussion
Talk about the meaning of friends and foes. Discuss what makes a good friend. Remind students that sometimes people fear or dislike people about whom they know very little. What circumstances can help to create a foe?
Create new directions and endings for familiar folktales such as The Three Little Pigs , Little Red Riding Hood , or Jack and the Beanstalk .
Start with a story map and plan diversions from the traditional story along the way. Or, create a web by placing the story title in the centre and listing characters and events in other locations on the web. Ask students “what if?” questions to inspire diversions from the original story. If using the story of The Three Little Pigs, for example, have the students complete the stem, “What if…
Explore some of the students' new ideas about friends and foes through drama. Read stories about friends and foes that diverge from the original in unexpected ways such as Jim and the Beanstalk by R. Briggs.
Sample Topic: "Machine Worlds"
Teacher Note:
Teachers may wish to combine this mini-unit with the Grade 3 Music strand mini-unit entitled Our Environment, Sample Topic: Electronic and Mechanical Sounds.
Suggested Resources:
Starter List of Activities
1. Introductory Activities
Imaging
Read poems about robots or fabulous machines such as The Gooch Machine that is guaranteed to keep your teacher sweet.
Invite students to close their eyes and imagine travelling in time to a future where students encounter fantastic new machines that can perform great tasks for people. Talk the students through the experience while providing examples of fantastic machines to encourage the students to stretch their imaginations.
Following the imaging activity, ask the students to list some things students' own imaginary machines might be able to do.
Drawing
Have the students draw their imaginary machines from the previous activity.
2. Main Activities
Meeting/Mantle of the expert
In role as an important business executive, call a meeting of designers (i.e., students in role) and explain that the company is in a race with its competitor to invent a new machine that will be one of the greatest inventions of all time.
Explain that the students have been flown in at great expense because they are recognized as being the best designers and inventors in the world.
Inform the designers that the competitors are having a similar meeting at their high-tech factory on the other side of town.
Improvisation
Divide the class in half. Tell half of the students that they are working for the original company; tell the rest of the students that they are working for the competitor's company across town.
Voting
Invite each of the two groups to come up with a name for its company. The company name should suggest that the company is creative and futuristic in its designs. List the suggested company names, discuss each one, and vote on the best name for each company.
Divide the two companies into smaller groups.
Place the names of company clients in a hat or box (e.g., hospital workers, farmers, builders, police, firefighters, teachers, office workers, children, the elderly, and so on).
Have each group of designers select a client from the names in the box. Each small group must design a futuristic machine to make the client's work or life easier or more effective.
Brainstorming
Challenge each small group to brainstorm a list of the types of activities that its client performs. What are the activities that the client does? What challenges does each client face? What would make the client's work or lives easier or better?
Drawing
Using large sheets of chart paper and markers, ask each group to design its machine. Designers are also to include a list of the functions of the respective machines.
Role
Instruct the company designers to prepare a presentation to promote their inventions to the clients.
Role
Invite a few students from the opposing company to assume the roles of the clients while each group of designers presents its machine invention to its client group.
Invite the students who are in role as clients to challenge the designers with questions about the design and effectiveness of the machines. In what ways will each machine affect the client's life or work? What problems do the clients foresee with each design? What benefits do they see if they were to build and purchase the machine?
Create a display of each company's designs.
Flashforward
Take the students on an imaginary journey to a time in the future where all of their machine designs are in use. The future society is populated by robots and other fabulous machines that do the work of many or all of the people.
Present students with questions such as “What will people do with their time if all of the work is being done by machines? How will people buy products if they do not have jobs? Will people still need money now that machines are so efficient? Have the world's problems such as pollution, violence, or poverty been solved by these machines?”
3. Concluding Activities
Writing
Ask each student to write in role as a company client a diary entry talking about how the machine has changed his or her life for better or for worse.
Improvisation
Invite students to create scenarios where students' machines and others are in use in a futuristic society. Introduce tension into the drama by presenting situations where conflicts arise (e.g., perhaps some people in the community want to go back to the way things were in the old days before machines were doing everything).