Drama Project: The Snow Queen and Other Fairy Tales
At the end of my past two years of teaching, I've done fairy tale drama projects with the students. They are in grade two, and for some it's their first real exposure to acting by moving their bodies and manipulating props. They have however worked on voice projection, expression and eye contact before both in reading and during oral presentations. This project is always fun for the students, as they see how various oral and presentation skills can come together in a different way. Not to mention, the video is burned to a CD and it's a good memento for students at the end of the year.
This year, we performed The Snow Queen. Last year it was Aladdin, Rapunzel and Jack and the Beanstalk. Students themselves get to choose the story they'd like to do, so they have a very vested interest. We will first brainstorm ideas, then choose one or several ideas. Afterwards they are put into groups, then cast into parts (with their input) and we brainstorm a list of props they can bring in from home. Students are told the proper way to ask for props from home, and that they must respect the answer "no" if that is the response they receive. Making them responsible for the props gives them some ownership over the final product. Of course if props are not brought in we try to find things that will suffice, in the classroom.
Last year I opted to not use a green screen for the end of year film (I have filmed "guess that character" game shows with green screen before). This year I was blessed in having a smart board, which meant that I was able to backgrounds up on there. While less professional looking than green screen, it meant that moving and acting and camera movements could be more comfortably done. (with green screen I find the camera has to remain in a fairly constant position on a tripod, while students walk in and out of the scene and remain at one level most of the time).
Teaching two different English classes, it's always interesting to see how the products differ, even when the scripts are the same. Unfortunately, I was unable to get permission from all the parents, to put the videos on youtube, which is why there's no product to show.
The videos always have a title screen with music, a series of scenes with many cuts as students are prompted right before they have to say their lines, ending credits and this year also featured student pictures and outtakes. There are a lot of camera cuts, as students are prompted with one or two lines before going on screen. Students also had the chance to respectfully make suggestions for acting and/or line delivery during the lulls between takes, by putting up their hand. Students also sometimes shared ideas on how to execute certain scenes (like the boat scene), and how to make it appear that the river was going faster (we borrowed scarves from the music room). In order to successfully execute a project like this, filming rules were established before and if rules weren't followed the filming was ceased for that day.
This year students wanted to "do Frozen" given that movie's popularity. They were told that we aren't going to remake movies, rather focus on making stories that were books first, into a movie. I also suggested that we might do The Snow Queen which Frozen is loosely based on. Unfortunately the only copy in the library was not appropriate to their language level, and was also very long. As a result I went through and changed that version (a version by Ken Setterington, RL 4.9) into more age appropriate/ELL appropriate language. Although there were no pictures in my version, I have a passion for read alouds, so I was easily able to take my version and make it interesting and fun with intonation, expression and movement.
Once students had been read the story. The next step was to write the script. While the results of the video cannot be displayed, the simplified story and script are linked below. If you would like to borrow the idea or the scripts feel free.
This year, we performed The Snow Queen. Last year it was Aladdin, Rapunzel and Jack and the Beanstalk. Students themselves get to choose the story they'd like to do, so they have a very vested interest. We will first brainstorm ideas, then choose one or several ideas. Afterwards they are put into groups, then cast into parts (with their input) and we brainstorm a list of props they can bring in from home. Students are told the proper way to ask for props from home, and that they must respect the answer "no" if that is the response they receive. Making them responsible for the props gives them some ownership over the final product. Of course if props are not brought in we try to find things that will suffice, in the classroom.
Last year I opted to not use a green screen for the end of year film (I have filmed "guess that character" game shows with green screen before). This year I was blessed in having a smart board, which meant that I was able to backgrounds up on there. While less professional looking than green screen, it meant that moving and acting and camera movements could be more comfortably done. (with green screen I find the camera has to remain in a fairly constant position on a tripod, while students walk in and out of the scene and remain at one level most of the time).
Teaching two different English classes, it's always interesting to see how the products differ, even when the scripts are the same. Unfortunately, I was unable to get permission from all the parents, to put the videos on youtube, which is why there's no product to show.
The videos always have a title screen with music, a series of scenes with many cuts as students are prompted right before they have to say their lines, ending credits and this year also featured student pictures and outtakes. There are a lot of camera cuts, as students are prompted with one or two lines before going on screen. Students also had the chance to respectfully make suggestions for acting and/or line delivery during the lulls between takes, by putting up their hand. Students also sometimes shared ideas on how to execute certain scenes (like the boat scene), and how to make it appear that the river was going faster (we borrowed scarves from the music room). In order to successfully execute a project like this, filming rules were established before and if rules weren't followed the filming was ceased for that day.
This year students wanted to "do Frozen" given that movie's popularity. They were told that we aren't going to remake movies, rather focus on making stories that were books first, into a movie. I also suggested that we might do The Snow Queen which Frozen is loosely based on. Unfortunately the only copy in the library was not appropriate to their language level, and was also very long. As a result I went through and changed that version (a version by Ken Setterington, RL 4.9) into more age appropriate/ELL appropriate language. Although there were no pictures in my version, I have a passion for read alouds, so I was easily able to take my version and make it interesting and fun with intonation, expression and movement.
Once students had been read the story. The next step was to write the script. While the results of the video cannot be displayed, the simplified story and script are linked below. If you would like to borrow the idea or the scripts feel free.
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