Sample Lesson Plans
Early Elementary - Life Science Drama Integration
Overview: This series of Sensory Drama Workshop will encourage students of all abilities, particularly those with sensory processing challenges and/or sensory-seeking behaviors, to engage their minds, bodies, and imaginations in exploring the lifecycles and habitats of our world’s critters. This unit was designed for Science for Kindergarten Science, Art and Core Curriculum standards and was implemented at Lowell Elementary School, Seattle, WA.
Big Idea: Sensory Drama can help us practice saying yes to new experiences (sights, smells, textures, sounds, and social interactions), even ones that may seem scary at first and peak our curiosity about the world around us.
Grade Level: Kindergarten
Duration/# of Sessions: 1 hour, 8 sessions
Needed Materials or Space: Open space, preferable to have chairs and tables pushed back, some sort of costume piece (hat, scarf, glasses) for becoming “Pickle the Zoologist,” drum
Objectives:
A few demonstrable outcomes:
1. Practice listening to others ideas as well as instructions.2. Actively participate in exploring an imaginary worlds using body, voice and imagination.
3. Engage is critical thinking while building on details and prior knowledge.
Expectations of Students:
Opening Ritual ( Bang the Drum, say your name)
Three Agreements: Be Kind, Be Safe, Be Curious
Brain Dance Warm-up
Show Me How You Feel About Game
Travel Ritual
Animal and habitat exploration
Habitat Song
Travel Ritual
What Do You Remember?
Cool Down
Closing Ritual (Bang the Drum, say how you are feeling)
The Following is a lesson plan for Session 2 of the 8 week Residency
Needed Materials or Space: Open space, a handful of pipe cleaners, handheld mirrors, pictures of Giraffe and Kangaroo, drum
Instructions:
DAY 2: The Grasslands
Breath- ss, shh, ah
Tactile- hmm, ah
Core/Distal- grow and shrink
Head/Tail- rollercoaster
Upper/Lower + Resonators:
-Head - Bees
-Nasal -Girafe
-Arms - Narwal
-Chest - Gorilla
-Hips - Rattlesnake
-Knees - Mountain Goat
-Toes - Turtle
-Pop up - Squirrel
Body Half- elbow to knee
Cross Lateral- hand to shoulder, hip, knee, feet
Vestibular- roll head to both sides
Show Me How You Feel About (5 min)
Formative Assessment Checkpoint for Objective #1:
Objective: Practice listening to others ideas as well as instructions. Criteria: Students will share and receive ideas by using whole body listening - calm body, eyes on speaker, quiet in the room. Method/Tool: Room scan, verbal reflection
Travel to Meet Pickle (5 min)
Criteria: Students will provide ideas and explore them with body and imagination
Method/Tool: room scan and verbal reflection
Exploring the GrassLands (5 mins)
Big Idea: Sensory Drama can help us practice saying yes to new experiences (sights, smells, textures, sounds, and social interactions), even ones that may seem scary at first and peak our curiosity about the world around us.
Grade Level: Kindergarten
Duration/# of Sessions: 1 hour, 8 sessions
Needed Materials or Space: Open space, preferable to have chairs and tables pushed back, some sort of costume piece (hat, scarf, glasses) for becoming “Pickle the Zoologist,” drum
Objectives:
A few demonstrable outcomes:
1. Practice listening to others ideas as well as instructions.2. Actively participate in exploring an imaginary worlds using body, voice and imagination.
3. Engage is critical thinking while building on details and prior knowledge.
Expectations of Students:
- Students will control their bodies and maintain safe space
- Students will give and receive ideas and instructions using whole body listening
Opening Ritual ( Bang the Drum, say your name)
Three Agreements: Be Kind, Be Safe, Be Curious
Brain Dance Warm-up
Show Me How You Feel About Game
Travel Ritual
Animal and habitat exploration
Habitat Song
Travel Ritual
What Do You Remember?
Cool Down
Closing Ritual (Bang the Drum, say how you are feeling)
The Following is a lesson plan for Session 2 of the 8 week Residency
Needed Materials or Space: Open space, a handful of pipe cleaners, handheld mirrors, pictures of Giraffe and Kangaroo, drum
Instructions:
DAY 2: The Grasslands
- Opener: (10 min)
- Go around and drum the drum one time, say name, everyone repeats.
- Today we are going to be actors, actors use their body, voice and imagination to make something called DRAMA true. Right now are we in your classroom, sitting on Ms. Busch’s carpet? Yes, that’s REAL true. But we are going to be using some DRAMA true today, DRAMA true is when you imagine something is true, so in drama true, we are sitting one a beautiful, fluffy clouds, use your body and imagination try to feel it with your hands.
- Before we jump into DRAMA true, first we have to warm up the things we use to make it, our body, voice and imagination, just like you do in gym class. There are three things we need to remember:
- Be Kind - Ask students for examples
- Be Safe - Acknowledge safe space, and physical boundaries of space
- Be Curious - What does it mean to be “curious?”
- Brain Dance Warm-up:
Breath- ss, shh, ah
Tactile- hmm, ah
Core/Distal- grow and shrink
Head/Tail- rollercoaster
Upper/Lower + Resonators:
-Head - Bees
-Nasal -Girafe
-Arms - Narwal
-Chest - Gorilla
-Hips - Rattlesnake
-Knees - Mountain Goat
-Toes - Turtle
-Pop up - Squirrel
Body Half- elbow to knee
Cross Lateral- hand to shoulder, hip, knee, feet
Vestibular- roll head to both sides
Show Me How You Feel About (5 min)
- Have students sit while you explain the instructions. Place the drum in the middle of the circle and tell them the only rule about this game is that they can not touch the drum.
- Explain that you will ask a series of questions and they will show you how they feel about that thing by using a frozen, silent, body and voice.
- Use the example of Broccoli and model the expectation, then have them stand and try. This questions can be a mix of “get to know you questions” and questions about “animals” Ex: “Show me how you feel about Turtles in 5,4,3,2,1.” “Show me how you feel about snow days in 5,4,3,2,1.”
- Walk around the frozen pictures and verbalize the body language you are seeing. Ex “I see open mouths, and hands reaching.”
- Ask one question to start, then ask students for three people to ask their own questions and notice what they see.
Formative Assessment Checkpoint for Objective #1:
Objective: Practice listening to others ideas as well as instructions. Criteria: Students will share and receive ideas by using whole body listening - calm body, eyes on speaker, quiet in the room. Method/Tool: Room scan, verbal reflection
Travel to Meet Pickle (5 min)
- Ask students to tell you what job your friend Pickle has and what it means!
- Today Pickle is going somewhere hot and grassy, what kind of things show we bring. Take some suggestions and mime using/packing items (sunscreen, hats, etc)
- Remember and perform travel ritual.
- When you get there, what do you see and how do you feel? Model exploration, using body, voice, imagination to paint a picture of the world around them.
Criteria: Students will provide ideas and explore them with body and imagination
Method/Tool: room scan and verbal reflection
Exploring the GrassLands (5 mins)
- Ask Students if they know where we are, the first word of this habitat starts with “Grass!” Take ideas and then tell them it’s called a “Grassland.”
- Ask students to sit in a circle, and you will bring around some spiky grass for them to touch, be careful it’s sharp! Take a handful of pipe cleaners and walk around the circle for students to touch.
- Take out a picture of a Kangaroo, Pickle ask students what they know about kangaroos. “oh if you look now there’s a couple there, follow me and we can follow them, hop with both legs like this” Models a two legged hop, and leads students around the classroom and back to the circle.
- Oh man, it’s hot and I’m thirsty, let’s go to the watering hole for a cool drink of water.
- Give each student a spray with the spay bottle.
- Distribute mirrors to see there reflections, prompt silly faces!
- Notice that you see some animals at the watering hole too. Show a picture of an elephant and tell them that just like you they also use sun screen, but they use mud. Prompt students to use their trunk to put mud on their whole bodies!
- TA (in role as Pickle) “Oh, Look over there, what are those animals with the really long necks?”
- Show picture of Giraffe. Tell them that Giraffes use their tongue to reach leaves that are really high up on tall trees. In fact, giraffes tongues can be 18 to 20 inches long! That’s as long as your whole arm and sometimes, even longer. How long is your tongue, stick your tongue out and look around!
- Now use your arms like one long giraffe tongue! Prompt students to stick their tongues out and use their hand like a long tongue.
- TA and Classroom teacher (if they would like to) will walk around the circle with their hand held just above students heads. Students stay seated, but prompt students to reach one at a time with their long tongue to pretend to grab a leaf off TA’s arm.
- Pickle will lead “The Habitat song/chant.”
- “The Habitat song/chant: Habitat, Students repeat: Habitat, Have to Have a Habitat. X3 Living things depend on that, it’s their special home.”
- “The Grasslands are a habitat a very special habitat. Show me with your body what the weather is like (Students show if it’s hot/spiky grasses) Raise your hand if you remember what animals live there: (take some ideas from students and then return to chorus)
- Remind students that a habitat is a place where an animal lives, and it provides them with things they need like, food, water and shelter. The Grasslands are a Habitat!
- “The Habitat song/chant: Habitat, Students repeat: Habitat, Have to Have a Habitat. X3 Living things depend on that, it’s their special home.”
- Lead TA: Sample Dialogue: TA (in role as Pickle) “Thank you for coming with me to the… wait where are we again? Oh right, the grasslands! I need to send you back to your teacher, but will you come back next week? We are going somewhere really cold, so you’ll need a coat!”
- Use Travel Ritual to return to the classroom and sit in Carpet Spot positions.
- Closer (2 min)
- Ask students to share aloud what they remember from their DRAMA true adventure. “Next week we are going somewhere very cold, where do think it might be?” Ask students to point to who in REAL true played the characters.
- Go around with the drum, drum the drum one time, and say how you feel.
- Formative Assessment Checkpoint for Objective #3:
Objective: Engage is critical thinking that steers the direction of the adventure. Criteria: Making equitable choices that furthers the story for the whole ensemble. Method/Tool: Verbal Reflection
Upper Elementary - Social Studies Drama Integration
This lesson was taken from a unit on Devised Scene work, the prompt being a poem from Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse:
Skills and Knowledge:
Students will know...
Enduring Understanding:
Hook:
Sensory walk through: mill and seethe through the room, stop, change direction etc. Then tell students that they walking through the following as you describe it:
Soft, green grass,
Brown crunchy grass
Spiky grass that cuts like razor blades
Walking on dust
Wading through ankle high dust
Fighting through knee high dust blowing in your face, getting in your mouth and eyes and ears, you can feel it as it hits your face.
Freeze
Body:
Ask students to gather around a series of pictures that we will lay on the floor and to name observations and feelings they have from looking at them. Afterwards sum up the following information and relay it to them.
The Dust Bowl was an ecological and human disaster that affected parts of Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado. "Dust Bowl" was a term born in the hard times from the people who lived in the drought-stricken region during the great depression. The "Dust Bowl Days" also known as the "Dirty Thirties" took their toll on the people of this region of the country with the many extremes of weather: blizzards, tornadoes, floods, droughts, and dirt storms.
Hand out one the following facts and have them create a tableau for each fact:
Watch 10 min clip about the Dust Bowl, from 12:00 to 18:17
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i768Fbtw9Y
Read the poem Dust and Rain out to class from Out of the Dust:
Bringing a red dust
Like prairie fire,
Hot and peppery,
Searing the inside of my nose,
The white of my eyes.
Roaring dust.
Turning the day from sunlight to midnight.
The wind screamed
The blowing dirt ran so thick
I couldn’t see the brim of my hat
As we plunged from the truck,
Fleeing
The dust swarmed
Like it had never swarmed before.
My father groped for my hand
Pulled me away from the truck
We ran
A blind pitching toward the shelter of a small house
Almost invisible
Our hands tight together
Running toward the ghostly door
Pounding on it with desperation
Put each of student in a corner of the room, turn off the lights and play the sandstorm clip, have them act out what it would be like to fight through a sandstorm and find each other and play 2:45 to about 3:30 of the sounds of a sandstorm.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcgC9Y0e00w
Have students sit on the floor and have them think of a moment in their lives that they were scared for themselves or family, have students share.
Using the rest of the period create a silent scene or movement piece, need to see what happened before, during and after Dust and Rain.
Cool Down: What’s one word to sum up your feelings about what we did in class today?
Assessment: Based on the scene students created today, they will create a character bio (name, age, most treasured procession, greatest fear, life dream and diary entry of the day and storm and will be evaluated on their incorporation of elements learned in class.
Skills and Knowledge:
Students will know...
- What the ecological factors were that caused the dustbowl
- The major events in the Dust bowl
- The effects of the dustbowl on people, environment, history
Enduring Understanding:
- Students will recognize the human turmoil caused by the events of the dustbowl and the resilience required of the people involved, as well as the enduring love and humanity that sustained them.
Hook:
Sensory walk through: mill and seethe through the room, stop, change direction etc. Then tell students that they walking through the following as you describe it:
Soft, green grass,
Brown crunchy grass
Spiky grass that cuts like razor blades
Walking on dust
Wading through ankle high dust
Fighting through knee high dust blowing in your face, getting in your mouth and eyes and ears, you can feel it as it hits your face.
Freeze
Body:
Ask students to gather around a series of pictures that we will lay on the floor and to name observations and feelings they have from looking at them. Afterwards sum up the following information and relay it to them.
The Dust Bowl was an ecological and human disaster that affected parts of Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado. "Dust Bowl" was a term born in the hard times from the people who lived in the drought-stricken region during the great depression. The "Dust Bowl Days" also known as the "Dirty Thirties" took their toll on the people of this region of the country with the many extremes of weather: blizzards, tornadoes, floods, droughts, and dirt storms.
Hand out one the following facts and have them create a tableau for each fact:
- The simplest acts of life — breathing, eating a meal, taking a walk — were no longer simple.
- Children wore dust masks to and from school
- Women hung wet sheets over windows in an attempt to stop the dirt.
- Farmers watched helplessly as their crops blew away.
- The blowing soil of the Dust Bowl caused dust pneumonia; doctors began to see the elderly, children and infants with coughing spasms, shortness of breath and body aches.
Watch 10 min clip about the Dust Bowl, from 12:00 to 18:17
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i768Fbtw9Y
Read the poem Dust and Rain out to class from Out of the Dust:
Bringing a red dust
Like prairie fire,
Hot and peppery,
Searing the inside of my nose,
The white of my eyes.
Roaring dust.
Turning the day from sunlight to midnight.
The wind screamed
The blowing dirt ran so thick
I couldn’t see the brim of my hat
As we plunged from the truck,
Fleeing
The dust swarmed
Like it had never swarmed before.
My father groped for my hand
Pulled me away from the truck
We ran
A blind pitching toward the shelter of a small house
Almost invisible
Our hands tight together
Running toward the ghostly door
Pounding on it with desperation
Put each of student in a corner of the room, turn off the lights and play the sandstorm clip, have them act out what it would be like to fight through a sandstorm and find each other and play 2:45 to about 3:30 of the sounds of a sandstorm.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcgC9Y0e00w
Have students sit on the floor and have them think of a moment in their lives that they were scared for themselves or family, have students share.
Using the rest of the period create a silent scene or movement piece, need to see what happened before, during and after Dust and Rain.
Cool Down: What’s one word to sum up your feelings about what we did in class today?
Assessment: Based on the scene students created today, they will create a character bio (name, age, most treasured procession, greatest fear, life dream and diary entry of the day and storm and will be evaluated on their incorporation of elements learned in class.