Time: 6-8 weeks
Ideas for dramas come from many different sources such as the imagination, pictures, media, day dreams, questions, and so on. In this unit, the students explore ideas and fictional situations that arise from wishes and dreams.
Sample Topic: "Wishes and Dreams"
Teacher Note:
Teachers may wish to combine this mini-unit with the Grade 3 Visual Art mini-unit entitled Memory, Sample Topic: Dreams, and the Dance mini-unit entitled Using Student Ideas as Inspiration, Sample Topic: Wishes and Dreams.
Suggested Resources:
Starter List of Activities
1. Introductory Activities
Read and discuss a book or poem about wishes and dreams such as the following:
Drawing
Refer to the Grade 3 Visual Art mini-unit entitled Memory, Sample Topic: Dreams. Have students create art works in response to dreams recalled or imagined.
Tableaux
Create tableaux to represent the students' art works or to represent an episode from the dream-related stories students have been reading.
Writing
Create a Wishes and Dreams Diary. Encourage the students to write down wishes or dreams and other imaginary events. Students may use these diary entries as ideas for dramatic episodes. (Note: Some students do not like to recall or tell about their dreams. In those cases, encourage students to record ideas imagined that could take place in a dreamlike world.)
Teacher in role
Enter in role as the dream maker, a magical being with the ability to make wishes or dreams come true. Wave a magic wand or utter a magical phrase that brings the students' tableaux to life. Invite the students to improvise the next few minutes of the situations that were represented in the tableaux.
Discussion
Ask students to create a list of wishes or dream events recalled or imagined. Select one or two wishes or dream scenarios to explore through small group improvisation.
Teacher in role
Enter in role as the dream maker who has the power to make the students' wishes and dreams come true. Select an example from the students' list to develop into a contextual drama.
2. Main Activities
Role
Visit a magical kingdom in which wishes and dreams come true as a normal part of everyday life.
Perhaps, for example, the students will travel in their imaginations to a distant land in ancient Arabia.
Teacher Note:
Teachers may wish to incorporate Arabic music as a background to the following narration to aid students in visualizing an Arabian desert environment. Several websites provide free public domain music downloads such as those found at the Belly Dance Museum at http://www.belly-dance.org/mp3.html.
Narration
Create a narration to read to the students during an imaging activity that will take them on an imaginary journey to a village in ancient Arabia . Teachers may write their own narratives or use an excerpt from a traditional Arabian story such as Sindbad: From the Tales of the Thousand and One Nights by L. Zeman. This picture book introduces the stories of The One Thousand and One Nights or Arabian Nights.
Imaging
Invite the students to lie on the floor, close their eyes, and imagine themselves as villagers in an ancient Arabian community that has been carved into the hillside on the edge of a vast desert. In the village are many people, palm trees, camels, tents, and a huge marketplace where traders are exchanging exotic foods, clothing, spices, and beautiful carpets. The students can imagine themselves as villagers shopping in the bustling marketplace. Guide the students to visualize finding a magic carpet in an old carpet seller's stall.
Mime / Parallel play
Invite the villagers to stand up and walk throughout the marketplace in ancient Arabia looking at articles in the traders' stalls. The villagers might select exotic foods to taste and try on articles of jewellery or clothing. Side coach the students as they meet an old carpet seller and purchase or trade something of value for a beautiful magic carpet. Encourage the villagers to take the carpets home to their tents or hillside caves.
When the villagers arrive at their homes, instruct the villagers to bring out their carpets and put them on the floor. The villagers should sit upon the carpets in a cross-legged position. If a student is physically unable to sit on the floor, he/she may simply imagine sitting on the carpet. Ask the villagers to think of a unique magical phrase or saying, similar to abracadabra that can command the carpets to fly.
In role as villagers on their magic carpets, inform the students that it is a hot summer evening in the desert village. Ask the villagers to repeat their magical words and fly in slow motion on their magic carpets across the desert sands, looking down upon the tents, villages, marketplace, and camel caravans below. Eventually the villagers arrive at a beautiful Arabian palace.
Teacher Note:
Prior to the next activity, arrange for an older student, parent, or other teacher to participate in role as an evil magician or other suitable adversary. The adversary will serve to create conflict or tension in the drama and will present the villagers (i.e., students in role) with a problem to solve.
Meeting/Teacher in role
Enter the palace in role as an ancient Arabian sultan, prince, or princess with a suitable ancient name such as Aladdin or Sheherezade. Remind the students through what is said during the meeting, that they are located near a palace in ancient Arabia where a group of villagers (i.e., students in role) are about to be visited by an evil magician or other enemy.
The villagers will learn from the evil magician that after twenty-four hours, if the villagers have not met the magician's demands, the village will be destroyed. Perhaps the magician or other enemy wants to confiscate all of the magic carpets.
Improvisation
Working in small groups, the villagers must find ways to delay the destruction of the village. Prior to the actual improvisation, assist the students in making a list of villagers and types of occupations that might have been found in ancient Arabia . The list might include weavers, tailors, writers, artists, musicians, cooks, camel farmers and trainers, spice traders, carpet makers, and so on. Encourage the students to assume different roles within the village during the improvisation. Students must come up with some ways of using occupational skills to outsmart the enemy in order to delay or avoid the destruction of the village. For example:
Select some of the students' solutions to explore.
Storytelling
Invite the villagers to gather in the courtyard to tell the stories of how the magician was outsmarted.
3. Concluding Activities
Tell the story of Aladdin and the genie in the lamp who granted wishes. Explore through drama some unintended consequences that might arise as a result of having one's wishes granted.
Refer to the Dance mini-unit entitled Using Student Ideas as Inspiration, Sample Topic: Wishes and Dreams.
Dance drama
Guide students in the creation of dances to incorporate within or following the students' contextual drama.
Invite parents/caregivers to view the students' visual art displays and dances. Encourage students to share one or two episodes from the drama if students are comfortable sharing their work.
Sample Topic: "Turtles – Imaginary and Otherwise"
Teacher Note:
Teachers may wish to integrate this unit with the Grade 3 Visual Art Mini-Unit entitled The Natural Environment, Sample Topic: Turtles and the stories in the Grade 3 English Language Arts curriculum such as Nanabosho: How the Turtle Got Its Shell and/or Changes by P. Condon .
Suggested Resources:
1. Introductory Activities
Research
Invite the students to begin a research project about turtles by generating a list of potential questions such as:
Have small groups of students discuss their research findings with each other. During discussion, ask students to write on the blackboard any question about turtles that students have not been able to answer. Encourage students to look in books and on the Internet to find the answer to one or more of the questions. Look in the CD-ROM, Wetland Explorer, to find some answers.
Invite a student to bring in a pet turtle to observe.
Talk about the characteristics for which turtles are noted (e.g., slow, determined, shy, kind, thoughtful, and patient).
Imaging
Guide students through an imaging activity as they explore turtle lives and habitats. Invite students to imagine the turtle's underwater environment using prompts such as:
Storytelling
Discuss why turtles might be of special interest to many cultures. Read about turtles in books such as A Turtle Called Friendly or “The Tortoise and the Hare” from Aesop's Fables. Tell a First Nations story about the creation of Turtle Island . Discuss stories such as Nanabosho: How the Turtle Got Its Shell.
Drawing/painting
In a visual art class, make paintings, posters or clay, sand, or snow reproductions of different kinds of turtles. Challenge the students to include details learned in the research. Display in the classroom. Make a mural backdrop of turtle habitats for the turtle display.
Dance drama
In a dance class, explore the lives and habitats of turtles through movement and dance. Prompt movement explorations with questions; for example, How would you move if you were underwater? Use action words to describe the movement qualities (e.g., float, swim, drift, dive, surface, and crawl).
Use the movement explorations as a starting point for a dance-making activity about turtles.
Invite students to participate in a contextual drama involving turtles.
2. Main Activities
Structure a contextual drama involving turtles that takes place in a lake and on the shore.
Meeting
Call a meeting of all of the turtles in the lake and explain that the community would like to hold a multi-cultural celebration and invite all of the different turtle species from far and wide. The invitations need to be distributed well in advance due to the length of time it will take for the turtles to make their way to the lake.
Role
Have each turtle (student in role) find out what his/her family's culture is by discovering what species of turtle students are (e.g., snapping turtle, tortoise, mud turtle, and so on).
Consider different kinds of “humanized” turtle characters: cool and collected turtle, wild and crazy turtle, intellectual turtle, and teenage mutant ninja turtle.
Invite the turtles to make plans for the celebration with food, movement, clothing, arts, and sports appropriate to each species. Ask questions such as: What food will each species of turtle want to eat? Will they have to stay in or near the water, or will they be happy on land? How can they best show off their beautiful shells to the rest of the community?
Teacher in role
As the turtles are busy getting ready for their celebration, enter in role as an animal from the neighbouring lake (e.g., a beaver, otter, or heron) and inform the turtles that they are in great danger. The neighbouring lake has been polluted.
Meeting
Call a meeting of the lake creatures to determine what to do about the pollution. Create a list of potential solutions.
Engage the students in various strategies as students attempt to find solutions to the lake's pollution problem (e.g., interviews with biologists and other experts or small group improvisations involving the polluters).
3. Concluding Activities
Role
Have the turtles meet to create an anti-pollution campaign.
Drawing
Create posters made by the turtles to raise awareness about pollution.
Meeting
Make plans to include a turtle Olympics during the celebration. What events would there be?
Parallel play/Mime
Divide into groups and have each group engage in a different turtle Olympic event.
Tableaux
Create tableaux of the turtles arriving at the lake, enjoying the festivities, and competing in the Olympic events.
Storytelling
Create a Pourquoi tale about How the Turtle Got Its Shell or Why the Turtle Moves So Slow. Include an episode where the turtle gets into trouble for doing something he/she was not supposed to do.
Drawing
Turtles have their houses on their backs. What else carries its house on its back? If you could have your house on your back, what would it be like? What would be in the shell/house? Design it.
Hold an architectural competition for the best house design. Have some students work in role as a panel of architect judges. The panel of architects must decide what characteristics make a good house. For example, the architects may look for strength, beauty, and comfort (i.e., cool in summer and warm in winter). Have each student give a short speech about the merits of his/her house design.