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CAROLMACY
The Name Game
Moments to Notice:
In the following clip, children are asked to share their name and what about themselves they are proud of. Some are very sure of their answer, while others have to think. One child feels good about solving math equations, while another is happy they earned money from chores.
The Energy Game
Moments to Notice:
In the following clip, 2nd graders are turning a ball of energy into different things. Other children call out what they think it is. Live music adds a lot to this exercise.
The Role of Narrator
Moments to Notice:
After listening to the story of The Gingerbread Girl, the class is acting it out for the first time. In this clip, the children see a delicious cookie while on their playground at school. One of the actors lets the narrator know that he is going to swing very fast on the monkey bars. The narrator acknowledges the idea, the boy feels good about having suggested it, and the story moves along.
The Importance of Music and Sound
Moments to Notice:
Notice the look on the conductor's face when she hears the sound of a train whistle for the first time, and the ease with which children begin to dance to Irish music.
Preparing to Dramatize Poetry with Young Children
Moments to Notice:
With four and five year-olds, I often begin by asking children to spread out and to show me a little kitten drinking milk from a saucer or a bear hibernating in a cave. You can experiment, then, with putting groups of four together and asking them to show you a bear inside a cave, for example. "Show me how you can make a cave around the bear?" What we are doing is preparing children to be fish, caves, wind, and geese in the poems they are about to act out.
Dramatizing Poetry
Dramatizing a Story
Moments to Notice:
The actor who plays the helpful little engine improvises the way he comes down the tracks. As a result, the narrator improvises in response to his actions.
Moments to Notice:
In this preschool class, the children have just listened to the story of The Gingerbread Boy. Even though they are acting it out for the first time, they initiate on their own and use their own words. One child who volunteered to be a cow is frightened when she gets on stage, but a peer joining her helps her get through it. She did not moo, but she felt safe again and left the stage smiling. Success!
Moments to Notice:
The younger students need more prompts from the narrator and will
depend on those prompts to begin. In Parrots Over Puerto Rico by Susan L. Roth and Cindy Trumbore, children responded to everything the narrator said. In one instance, when we came to the part where human beings came to the island, the boys involved did something they had never done when we practiced the story. Once in their canoe, they all pulled themselves forward along the floor. Maybe it was the shiny stage. It is an example of children improvising in the moment.
Dramatizing a Lesson
Moments to Notice:
Whatever means of transportation you choose, going to "The Land of Community Helpers" (or of colors, of seasons, of nutrition and exercise) is a way to reinforce an objective in class.
In the following clip, four children are taking a train to visit "The Land of the Letter B." A conductor, who has traveled to such lands, is taking them on a guided tour. Before we began the story, children prepared by acting out different things or animals that began with the letter B.
Moments to Notice:
Moments to Notice:
Moments to Notice: I like to do a warm-up that is going to show up in the poem or the story we are about to dramatize. In this exercise, children are becoming seeds that will grow with rain and sun. In the story, the dreamer visits a farm and gets to experience the seeds growing.
Moments to Notice: I like to do a warm-up that is going to show up in the poem or the story we are about to dramatize. In this exercise, children are becoming seeds that will grow with rain and sun. In the story, the dreamer visits a farm and gets to experience the seeds growing.
Moments to Notice:
Moments to Notice: Early on in the story, one of the children in the
audience knocked on a bookcase. Instead of stopping the story and
saying, “Please don’t knock,” the narrator simply responds by saying
“No one was knocking.” This helps redirect a child as the narrator instead of the teacher, and continues the story along.
When it was time to become seeds growing in “The Land of Nutrition
and Exercise,” there seemed to be confusion about where the child,
whose role it was to be the farmer, had gone. It turned out that he was
curled up on the ground, and the narrator suggests that he had
become a seed, to which an audience member suggests that the farmer had been looking closely at the seeds, an even better explanation!
This might be the first time these first graders had gotten on their feet
to dramatize a story. If I were to come in and lead them through the same story the following week, we would see them become more confident and able to initiate both the dialogue and the action themselves. Some children will feel more comfortable than
others, while others may be self conscious or act out when given this type of freedom.
Moments to Notice:
In this clip, children have listened to the story and
are acting it out for the first time. The narrator is giving them prompts
regarding what to say, and, as mentioned, the prompts become less
frequent during a second dramatization because children will
remember the essence of what they say and will use their own words.
In this clip, the boy playing the tree is more interested in the watch he
discovers on one of his branches. If we were to dramatize the story
again, I might suggest that he pretend that the wind was blowing his
branches or something else that would help him to focus on his
character.
Moments to Notice:
It's always a great idea to reflect on what just happened, what children liked in a workshop, as well as having an opportunity to validate what the actors did.
Moments to Notice:
Whether you are closing a workshop with signed English or American Sign Language (the latter does not follow the same sentence structure as English), introducing this language to very young children is wonderful, and that interest will only grow and the children do.
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