Unit 4 — Performance
Description
This unit focuses on creating and performing original dramatic works. Students learn to write scripts, improvise, develop characters, and work as an ensemble. They apply imaginative, analytical, and process skills to create original dramatic works using simple costumes, props, and settings.
Essential Questions
- How can you apply imaginative, analytical and process skills needed when creating original dramatic works?
Learning Objectives
- Create original plays using script-writing formats that include stage directions and technical theatrical elements, demonstrating comprehension of the elements of theatre and story construction.
- Plan and improvise plays based on personal experience and heritage, imagination, literature, and history for informal and formal theater.
- Cooperate, imagine and assume roles, explore personal preferences and meanings, and interact in classroom dramatizations.
Supplemental Resources
- Acting for Kids: Episode 1 Video
- Drama Lesson Plans
- Glossary of Terms
- Acting and Improvisation by Judith Ackroyd and Jo Boulton
Visual Arts - Creating
Visual Arts - Presenting
Visual Arts - Responding
Students engage in conversations and collaborative discussions with diverse partners, integrate and evaluate information presented in diverse media formats, analyze how individuals and events develop over time, interpret words and phrases in texts, and write routinely for various tasks and purposes to support theatre learning and analysis.
Students explore how cultures express themselves through behavior and traditions, recognize how languages and cultural development shape society, and understand the importance of multiple perspectives in an interconnected world.
Students demonstrate movement sequences individually and with others in response to various tempos, rhythms, and musical styles, and correct movement errors through feedback to improve performance.
Formative Assessments
- Teacher observation: Use a variety of vocal tones and breath control to create a character's feelings and mood.
- Teacher observation: Use basic analysis skills to perform a character within a scene.
- Performance rubrics
- Performance task checklist
- Self reflection - Mapping ones journey
- Critique a performance of script using predeveloped criteria.
- Pair-share
- Peer evaluation and observation
- Analyzing primary source documents on the history of theatre in various cultures.
- Conduct short research projects on the cultural origins of theatre to support analysis, reflection, and research.
- Use technology to create a presentation
- Evaluate written reflections on theatre principles, including reports and journal responses, using a student-created rubric.
- Evaluate informal in-class performances and video evidence of student performances using observation, discussions, drawings, video, and simple student-created rubrics.
Summative Assessment
Students perform an original short play that they have written in small groups, demonstrating their ability to include script format with stage directions, develop distinct characters using vocal expression, and work cooperatively as an ensemble. The performance is assessed using a rubric that evaluates script elements, character development, and collaborative performance skills.
Benchmark Assessment
A script-writing task in which students create a short original play scene with at least two characters, including basic stage directions and dialogue. The assessment measures understanding of script format, character voice, story structure, and ensemble cooperation as covered in Unit 4.
Alternative Assessment
Students may demonstrate script-writing understanding through dictation to a teacher or peer, with an adult scribe recording their stage directions and dialogue. Character development and ensemble participation may be assessed through visual demonstrations, gesture, or simplified graphic organizers with visual supports rather than written responses.
IEP (Individualized Education Program)
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Section 504
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ELL / MLL
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At Risk (RTI)
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Gifted & Talented
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