Since mid-December, my students have been working on writing play scripts for puppet shows. The holidays and other things (ie, the other parts of my curriculum) transpired to keep pushing the puppet show finales off into the distant future. The future is here … today and tomorrow, we either videotape the plays or perform them for younger grades in our school.
The cooperative writing groups had to write a play with the concept of an imaginary holiday built into the storyline, develop a clear plot, and create protagonists and antagonists to move the story along. It’s not always an easy process for young writers, and the plays are sort of mixed-quality (depending on the make-up of the groups), but it has been a blast again this year.
Now, we are ready (as we ever will be) to perform. Yesterday, we did rehearsals (putting off our Glogster work, which would have been difficult anyway because of shaky Internet access in our school) with me saying over and over my mantra: “You must be louder! You must be louder!”
I also took photos of the puppets on our hand-carved puppet stage and popped them into Animoto. Check it out:
After I videotape the shows (there are 21 puppet shows), I will create videos and create a website to host them. One of the negatives of puppet shows is that the performers don’t get to see their own shows, since they are behind the puppet theater. (You can see last year’s puppet shows here). I might even use my new Mac this year for editing the videos. Yikes.
Peace (with puppets),
Kevin
What you are doing is so important! I love the idea of young people creating their own plays, as I have been doing for 40 years. I have developed downloadable play scripts, too, which I find help them in all sorts of developmental ways; and a “Playwriting” manual for teachers which you may find interesting. Cudos to you for your good efforts.
Ronn
http://www.creativeeducationalsystems.com/web_files/Playsquicklist.html
Thank you, Ron.