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Printable activity on Music/Math skip counting

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Printable activity on Music/Math skip counting

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The Music Mouse Printable (1st - 2nd Grade)

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Try a math activity that focuses on skip counting by five's to 100.

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Students learn how to solve music and math problems by finding patterns.

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11 Music Lesson Plans For Elementary | Dynamic Music Room

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Need some inspiration? Check out these 11 Music Lesson Plans For Elementary.

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Teaching music to elementary students can be great fun. Children of this age are usually very responsive to learning music. They are young enough to learn through play, but compared to toddlers, they are already old enough for more complex group activities. There are so many music activities for elementary aged children, and the kids usually love going to music lessons. But you need plenty of energy to teach this age group successfully.

Music is very physical, especially at this age, and the children need to learn through a range of different short activities and games. Here we present six fun and engaging music activities for elementary students that you can try out in your classroom.

What You'll Learn?

1. Get Rhythmic with Syllables

2. Play or Sing Along with Solfeg.io

3. Use Flash Cards for Visual Clarity

4. Practise Conducting

5. Link Pitch to Movement

6. Music, Movies, Feeling

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1. Get Rhythmic with Syllables

Introduce young children to the simple rhythms found in familiar words. There are many ways to teach this activity. Mark Warner suggests beginning with the words Tea and Coffee.
TASK:
Split the class into two groups, one for Tea and one for Coff-ee. Each group repeats their word.Tea takes the duration of a quarter note (crotchet) value while Coff-ee represents two eighth notes (quavers). Encourage the groups to say their notes out loud together while listening to the resultant blend.

Further developments include introducing new drinks such as Coca-Cola, which has the same rhythm as Coff-ee Coff-ee, or Cream Soda with the rhythm of Tea Coff-ee. This is also a great way to introduce musical notation, because you can show the students how to read and write rhythms made of quarter notes and eighth notes using the words Tea and Coff-ee.

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2. Play or Sing Along with Solfeg.io

Make use of new technology in your music classroom. Open our music teacher's software Solfeg.io and search for Children's Songs. There are many songs that are ideal for teaching to elementary students.

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Choose something seasonal like Witch, Witch for Halloween, or a song related to one of their favorite stories like Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

You can listen to the song together before singing or playing along. Better still, you can select elements of the song, such as voice, piano or percussion, to play as a solo. Once your class has learnt the song they can sing along with the backing track as a minus one.

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3. Use Flash Cards for Visual Clarity

Flash cards are a great way to introduce visual aspects of music learning to your class. Elementary students respond well to the clear, simple shapes. Download some flashcards for musical notes and simple rhythms or make your own.
TASK:
‍ Show one flashcard at a time and ask students to clap the rhythm or play it on simple percussion instruments. Once your students are confident, try putting two cards side by side to create a longer rhythm. Taking this a step further, you can use flash cards to reinforce rhythms that you have already taught using the activities above.

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4. Practise Conducting

Let students take turns to act as the conductor in this fun activity that teaches good musical communication and dynamics.

Give the students simple instruments and explain that you will make gestures. Tell the students to respond. So if you raise your arms they should make a loud sound, and if you lower your arms they should play quietly.

Teach them signals for starting and stopping. Then you are ready to conduct your class. Encourage the students to pay full attention as you gradually conduct them more quickly and with more stops and starts. Once they are familiar with the activity, allow the students to conduct their classmates.

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5. Link Pitch to Movement

This is a physical game that is a great way to burn off energy when your class can't sit still.
TASK:
Tell the students to stand up and make sure they have enough space to move around on the spot. Play your instruments (any pitched instrument is fine), and tell them that if you play a high pitch they must reach their arms up high into the air.

If you play a low pitch they must curl up into a ball. And if you play a medium pitch they must stand up with their arms pointing outwards to the sides. Play slowly at first and gradually increase the speed. This game is sure to make your class laugh and teaches them to recognise and respond to different pitches.

6. Music, Movies, Feeling

Musical soundtracks are an important part of every movie. This activity teaches children about the role of music in movies, while also helping them to connect music to feelings. Elementary students will enjoy watching their favorite movies as part of the class.

Assuming you don't have time to show a whole movie in your lesson, play a selected part of a movie that your students will like. We suggest playing a clip where the musical soundtrack creates an atmosphere and shows a simple feeling such as love, sadness, tension or happiness.

Discuss the movie with your class and encourage them to make the links between what is happening on screen and the soundtrack. Talk further about how music can trigger different feelings. This is a great way to help children to identify their feelings, as well as learning about music in movies.

These six elementary music classroom ideas will liven up your lessons. They each introduce different aspects of musical knowledge through fun games. We have included activities for teaching:

Many of these activities can be adapted to include your students' favorite songs. As elementary students typically have short attention spans, you may find that using several different activities in one lesson is the best way to keep them focused. Whether you teach using flash cards, apps, movies or movement, you are sure to enjoy using these activities in your classroom.

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6 Fun Music Activities for Elementary Students | Solfeg.io

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Teaching music to elementary students can be great fun. Children of this age are usually very responsive to learning music. They are young enough to learn through play, but compared to toddlers, they are already old enough for more complex group activities.

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You only need to know a little bit about music to begin teaching your students to read notes and make music-no instruments required.

Hero Images Inc. / Alamy Stock Photo

"I just don't know where to start!" is usually the response I get when I ask educators how confident they feel teaching music.

Despite continued cuts to the arts across the curriculum, schools are doing their very best to think of innovative ways to ensure that our children experience the fundamental lessons that can be learned through the expressive arts, but music is arguably the hardest subject to teach for a teacher who didn't grow up playing an instrument. As many musicians say, music isn't something you learn to play-it's something you learn to feel.

Instructions for crafts can be found on Pinterest, artwork replicated from Instagram, and dance moves conveyed to students with YouTube videos-all of which can feed into the listening and talking skills children are developing. Add in the imaginative play children do during breaks and recess, which is a form of drama.

But then there is music. There's a lot of value in having young kids sing along to alphabet songs and older ones rap the times tables. However, in order to develop a true understanding of musical structure and rhythm, teachers need to provide their students with much more depth in the study of music.

If the thought of teaching music sends shivers down your spine, here are a few lesson ideas that should help.

Lesson 1: Beatboxing

Teaching pupils to beatbox will develop their musical counting ability while also teaching them about timbre and rhythm. A basic beatbox pattern is: b t k t, where the b replicates the bass drum, t sounds like the hi-hat, and the k acts as a snappy-sounding snare drum.

If you're totally unfamiliar with teaching music, a vital thing to be aware of is that music is written in bars. Each bar has a set number of beats within it. You can begin with having students simply count in bars of 4 (one, two, three, four; one, two, three, four; one, two, etc). Once they have grasped the concept, you can begin to replace the numbers with the letters above. The ultimate goal is for students to move beyond producing the letter sounds and create the noises of a drum kit using mouth movements.

Once students have mastered this, lessons can be taken in a number of different directions: You can ask your students to make up their own beatbox patterns in bars of four, or create short poems in pairs and perform them-one student reciting and the other beatboxing-or even replace the sounds with body percussion movements for a more dynamic and active performance using the whole body (e.g., stamp, click fingers, clap, click fingers).

Lesson 2: Walking Music

This lesson can be taken outside on a sunny day for a change of scene. Draw seven parallel lines on the ground to create an eight-beat walkway that students can practice walking across in time to a strict tempo. You'll need to think about the age and ability of your students, as this will determine the size of gap between each line and the speed at which you expect them to walk. When it comes to tempo, slower is better to start off-you can always speed it up later, but starting quickly and then having to slow down can be demoralizing to some students.

Once they can walk in time, you can use chalk to add words or beatbox sounds and create short but effective walking compositions. For example, using the letters from the beatboxing lesson, a k can represent a hand clap-when a student steps in a box where you have written a k, they clap their hands.

Lesson 3: Notation

Building on lesson 2, if you're able to teach your students musical notation, you can create note trails that pupils can follow and play with their feet. Notation may seem intimidating, but you really only need to teach four pieces of notation to achieve some great musical results: half beat, single beat, double beat, and single pause are the terms I use to teach these to beginners.

Clapping out these beats while counting in bars of four, students should be able to quickly pick up the length that each note represents. Begin by clapping four single beats while counting the numbers 1 to 4 aloud. Then move to clapping two double beats while counting the numbers 1 to 4 aloud. Finally, clap eight half beats while counting the numbers 1 to 4 aloud. You can then challenge pupils to create their own four-beat bar of music using notation. They'll soon realize that the total value of notes always has to add up to four (for example: half beat, half beat, double beat, single beat).

Ensuring that students work with bars of four beats will keep things easy and a constant rhythm can be established, thereby reducing cognitive load. Within the same lesson your class should be able to clap along to scores like this:

If you have a stairwell, you can transfer your lesson from the floor to the steps, with each step representing one beat. My class ended up turning a whole corridor into a musical walkway, with a trail of notes leading from the main entrance to the classroom door. It served as a fun way to prime students for learning.

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Fun Music Lessons for Elementary Students

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You only need to know a little bit about music to begin teaching your students to read notes and make music-no instruments required. Hero Images Inc. / Alamy Stock Photo "I just don't know where to start!" is usually the response I get when I ask educators how confident they feel teaching music.

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Drama lessons while teaching online

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Picturing your future self activity-Drama, Arts

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Students create an image or a collage of how they see themselves in 10 years and reflect on steps they can take to achieve the financial future they want.

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By bbbpress
The following lesson plan is an abridged excerpt from the new book Teaching Playwriting: The Essential Handbook, a step-by-step guide to fostering creativity in your classroom. You can learn more and instantly download the entire 108-page resource by clicking here.
The first step to becoming a great playwright is the ability to step inside a character and find his or her voice. Monologue writing is a great way to practice that skill.

The interactive activities below will help you provide your students with the tools necessary to create a compelling monologue that rings true to their characters.

Warm-Up: Talk for a Minute
Speaking as Themselves
Have students pair up for this activity. One student is "A" and the other is "B". Each student has one minute to speak on a given topic. Their mission is to stay on topic to the best of their ability and to talk for the entire sixty seconds without stopping.

If A goes first, B's job is to listen and keep track of A's speech habits. Does A pause a lot? Use "ums" and "ahs" repeatedly? Are there words she repeats more than others?

Once the minute is up, it is now B's turn to speak on a different topic and A's turn to listen and pay attention to B's habits.

After the second minute is up and both partners have spoken, open a discussion up on what students noticed about their experience when speaking to and observing their partner. Was this a hard/easy activity? Why? Were they able to stay on topic?
Speaking as a Character
Tell them that they are going to do this exercise once more, but this time, they will speak in the voice of a given character. To prompt them, you will provide part of their first sentence. This time B will start and the character they must voice is either a king or a queen. Write on the board the beginning of their first line and give them one minute to speak.

Example: As king/queen of this great nation of ours and all its people, I feel it is my duty to discuss...

You can either give them the topic or let them choose. After the minute is up, it's A's turn again. Give them a completely different character. Here's a possible first line prompt:

Example: So I said to her, "I may be a slow-witted giant with a nasally voice, but there isn't a thing I don't know about..."
Possible Topics:
- volleyball - eggs - summertime - air balloons - chores - herbs & spices - camping - the circus - school lunch - worms - water - ghosts - the letter "M" - rainbows - recycling - the moon - school safety - normalcy - dreaming big - goodness - respect - peer pressure - cyberbullying - acceptance
If they are able to stay on task without laughing, kudos to them!

Once again, discuss the experience as a class. Was it harder speaking as a character as opposed to speaking as themselves? Easier? Why? Did their use of language change when speaking as royalty or a slow-witted giant? How? How could this activity help us when writing for our characters?

Introduce: Monologues

Ask students, "How many people speak in a dialogue?"
Vocabulary: Dialogue - A conversation between two people or more.
Once correctly answered, move on to "How many people do you think speak in a monologue?"
Vocabulary: Monologue - A speech made by one actor.
They've already spoken two monologues today, but now they will write a monologue for a character. The character can be one they developed from any of the Creating Character lessons or be wholly original. However, only characters with a completed The Eight W's of Character Development worksheet (worksheet D) should be considered so that there's biographical information already in place.

WOMAN:  This is mad crazy. Look at all this money. This is going to take care of everything. I can't believe it. Oh, well, I better believe it. Looks like this is my lucky day.

Ask students what they learned about the character or situation from this monologue. They will most likely suggest that the woman is young because of the use of "mad crazy" and they may suggest that she won the lottery. Ask them if they know the latter for a fact. Generally speaking, they may guess about the situation, but there are not many concrete facts offered in Monologue A. All we really know is that a woman now has some money and that she may be young. Next read the second monologue.

CARRIE ANN:(Looking at something in her hands) Cherries. Cherries. Cherries. Cherries. Ohmygod. Cherries-Cherries-Cherries-Cherries. (pauses for a moment and takes it all in) Can this be what I think it is? Can this be real? I happen to tell a random stranger about my problems and like a guardian angel he swoops down to save the day. Oh, um, maybe I should get him some coffee. Do guardian angels even drink coffee? My God. Lucille is going to be fine. This kind of money is going to make everything fine. I need to call Dr. Angelo and schedule us in like now. And when Frank gets in - whenever he bothers to roll out of bed - I'm going to walk into his office, look him straight in the eye and tell him, "you can take this job and shove it 'cause I quit!" And if Lucille gets better - when - when Lucille gets better, I'll take her to Florida and enroll her in one of those fancy schools and we'll go to Disney World everyday. This man - this-this-this this angel - has no idea that today he saved not one life, but two. Yeah, maybe I should get him some coffee. He can have all the coffee he wants.

Ask the following questions after the second monologue:

What's this woman's job?

How do they know that?

Where does the scene take place?

What does she mean by "Cherries. Cherries. Cherries. Cherries"?

Who is the man she refers to?

Why does she say he's her guardian angel?

What does the man give her?

Why does he give her something?

Who is Lucille?

What might be wrong with Lucille?

What's the name of the doctor?

What's the name of the woman's boss?

What's the woman's relationship to her job?

After you have thoroughly reviewed the second monologue with the class, reveal that these two monologues are for the same exact character in the same exact situation. In Monologue A, however, we learn only a little information whereas in Monologue B we are given so much more.

Show the pictures of House A and House B (worksheets E and F) introduced in the Creating Character I lesson and point out that Monologue A is like the version of the sketched house while Monologue B is like the version of the detailed house. Which version do students think audiences would appreciate hearing more?

Lastly, read the third monologue.

CARRIE ANN, the WAITRESS: Wow! I was telling this middle-aged customer with a moustache all about the fact that my daughter needs an operation and then when I gave him the bill, he told me that he had enough money to pay for the cheddar cheese omelet, hash browns and orange juice he ordered, but, unfortunately, he didn't have enough to give me a tip because he only had ten dollars on him and the bill was $9.96, so he offered me a scratch-off lottery ticket instead. I was kind of bummed. I really need my tips because Frank, my boss, pays me and the other waiters so terribly. I figured I'd win maybe five dollars at the most or nothing at the worst. But oh, well, at least he was a nice customer. Then I scratched the ticket off and I won the whole jackpot. My twelve-year-old daughter, Lucille, is now going to be able to have that surgery she needs on her kidney and everything is going to be okay!

Like the second monologue (B), the third monologue (C) offers a lot of details, but to some extent, it offers too many. Audiences like to feel smart in figuring some stuff out on their own, so try not to spoon-feed every detail to them.

Before they start writing, review with the class the difference between outer and inner monologues. Take a moment to go over the differences, perhaps providing a brief example.

Outer Monologue: When the character speaks directly to somebody and that other person is aware of being spoken to.

Inner Monologue: When the character speaks his/her thoughts out loud either to the audience or themself.
Monologue Focus
While it might be interesting to have a character share a random monologue about the time he slipped on a banana or the time he took a trip to New Jersey, remind students to keep their monologue connected to the character's journey. Carrie Ann's second monologue is about the moment she realizes she'll be able to afford her daughter's operation. A monologue about how she organizes her sock drawer just isn't relevant. Keep monologues focused. Other words of advice to share with your students:

1) Monologues often happen at heightened and impassioned moments or an important moment during the play or your character's life.

2) There should be a convincing reason why the character giving an outer monologue does not get interrupted by the person they are speaking to. Again, passion or anger or somebody who really needs to speak from the heart and be heard are useful here.

3) Monologues should reveal something about the character.

4) Keep your monologue present and active, so it's not a character just telling us about a story they remember.

Activity: Write and Share Monologue

Give students a moment to review the character that they have created and the corresponding Eight W's worksheet.

Have students single out a critical moment when their character has something important to say.
Examples:
The moment when...

...Dr. Angelo tells a stunned Carrie Ann that her daughter needs an operation. (outer monologue)

...Lucille is in the hospital again and Carrie Ann tells herself that she will stop at nothing to make this a better world for her daughter. (inner monologue)

... Carrie Ann, filled with anger, walks into Frank's office to give him a piece of her mind and to quit her job. (outer monologue)

Before they write their monologue, have students answer the following three questions at the top of their page:

Question 1: What moment are you writing from your play?

Question 2: Why is this a moment for a monologue?

Question3: Is this an inner or an outer monologue? If outer, who is your character speaking to?

Monologue lengths vary, but if students are writing by hand, I tell them to aim for three quarters of a page single-spaced.

Lastly, remind them to incorporate passion and details, and to use language that is specific to their character.

Give students 7-10 minutes to write and revise.

Have students partner with a neighbor. Student A briefly provides context and pertinent backstory, then reads their monologue to Student B. After A finishes, B comments, mentions details that stood out and asks questions if anything was unclear. Then it is B's turn.

While this is going on, walk around the room and skim a few monologues that aren't currently being read aloud to look for potential examples to share with the rest of the class.

Afterwards, ask for volunteers to share their monologue with everybody. If you don't get any volunteers, read a few monologues that stood out to you while you walked around. But usually, there are volunteers. Before they read, have them provide any pertinent details that are useful for the audience to know.

Reflection: Kings speak differently than giants. And giants speak differently than you. Despite the differences, we can always imagine what it would be like (and sound like) to be somebody we are not. Just as a city kid probably wouldn't say, "y'all come back now, ya hear" or a grandmother wouldn't say, "what's poppin', yo?" the words we give our characters to speak should be true to that character. And the moment they speak a monologue should be a moment where they have something important to express.

Follow-Up: No piece of art is necessarily perfect the first time through. Have students revise their monologue with a minimum of three changes or additions. At the bottom of the page, ask them to write down the reason why they made each change. Additionally, have them list what happens immediately before and after the monologue.
Have a comment or suggestion? Leave it below! To download 20 additional chapters just like the one above, check out Teaching Playwriting: The Essential Handbook, a 108-page step-by-step guide to teaching playwriting in a classroom setting. Written by Sophia Chapadjiev, Artistic Director of the Young Playwrights Festival at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center.

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How to Write a Monologue - Free Lesson Plan from "Teaching Playwriting"

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By bbbpress The following lesson plan is an abridged excerpt from the new book Teaching Playwriting: The Essential Handbook, a step-by-step guide to fostering creativity in your classroom. You can learn more and instantly download the entire 108-page resource by clicking here.

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Drama Activities for K-3

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Written by Cassie (Teach Starter)

Primary school teachers really do it all! Although, there can be a few key learning areas that sit a little outside of our personal comfort zone (for me, that would be science and mathematics). However, teaching drama in the primary classroom needn't be one of them.
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Fossicking through a list of "40 Drama Activities for Kids" trying to find one that will work in a Drama lesson for your class is surprisingly time-consuming. This post will show you how you can make simple adaptations to already familiar learning activities, in order to explore how voice, facial expression, movement and space can be used to create role and communicate meaning.

This transferable approach will make planning K-3 Drama lessons easy, by illustrating how you can teach the basic elements of drama in a way that you are comfortable with, using familiar content drawn from almost any key learning area!

8 Drama Activities for Kindergarten to Year 3

1. If You're 'Something' and You Know It

This twist on the traditional children's song uses voice, facial expression and movement to communicate emotion. The beauty of this drama activity is the ease with which you can increase or decrease the complexity of the actions and emotions your students enact.

For example:

If you're happy and you know it, smile wide.

If you're excited and you know it, jump up high.

If you're tired and you know it, time to yawn.

If you're angry and you know it, stamp your feet.

You could use these Recognising Feelings Flashcards as a visual prompt for each instruction. These are great for younger grades and cater to the more visual learners in your class.

Check out our Feeling Synonyms Poster Pack and Developing Characters Poster Pack for more "If You're 'Something' and You Know It" ideas!

2. Yes, Let's!

This is a great improvisation game for younger students. You can introduce the concept of using movement to show who or what they are (role) in a fun and easy way.

Use this fun classroom drama activity when teaching verbs! Give each student a verb flashcard to use as inspiration for the movement they lead the class in.

3. Make Your Own Fruit Salad

This activity is so easily adapted to most any theme, context or story you are exploring with your class. For this example, I have selected fairy tales but you can play this game using any relevant theme or narrative!

To make your own "Fairy Tale Fruit Salad":

1. Make a circle of chairs with one less chair than the number of students playing the game.

2. Select three or four fairy tale characters, e.g. Big Bad Wolf, Wizard, Queen.

3. Allocate each student a role by going around the circle, naming each a Big Bad Wolf, a Wizard or a Queen.

4. One student stands in the middle and begins the game by picking out a certain role or characteristic of a role. For example, they may say "Everyone who is a Queen!" or "Everyone who has brown fur!".

5. All of the students who are playing that role, or have that characteristic, stand up and move to a different empty chair. The key here is for students to move as their character would. This can be lots of fun depending on the theme and the roles that you choose!

6. Whoever doesn't make it to an empty chair remains in the centre and calls the next character name or characteristic.

7. Students can choose to shout "Fairy Tale Fruit Salad!" and everyone must stand up and find a new chair.

Provide prompts and supports for your students as needed. Older students may easily remember the three or four character names, while younger students may benefit from having the selected characters drawn, written or displayed on posters.

You could even create nametags, or find small costume items or props to give each student to help them remember their role.

These Fairy Tale Character Posters make a great reference point or prompt for "Make Your Own Fruit Salad", for fairy tale Readers' Theatre activities and any other fairy tale related classroom activities!

4. Capture the Treasure

This drama game is a variation of the traditional game 'Grandma's Footsteps' and an excellent introduction to the dramatic elements of role, movement and, for Years 3+, the element of tension.
Choose Your Own Unit-Specific Adaptation
"Capture the Treasure" can be adapted to a specific context in order to connect to your current units.

Select a "treasure" object that is related to a relevant topic or theme.

Identify three or four main roles or characters that can also be connected to the theme.

Allocate a character to each student, and when students move towards the Guard, their movements and their frozen action poses must be ones that their character would do.

For example, if your unit theme is family, the roles could include a grandparent, a baby and a pet dog! (Remember, your students can use movement to take on the role of most anything - animate or inanimate.) Older students may enjoy trying to embody and come up with frozen action poses for things like a car, a tree or rain!

Have a go at presenting your class with a context and characters for this game. You may be surprised by just how creative and spontaneous your younger students may be!

5. Follow the Story

You can use this classic game to teach students about the dramatic element of movement. The basic concept of 'Follow the Leader' can work beautifully by adding a contextual twist.

1. Students stand in a single line with a designated leader (you may like to have two shorter lines if you are comfortable to set boundaries for and manage both groups).

2. The leader decides where the line will go, and how it will move.

3. All of the students in the line follow the leader, copying their actions.

How to add a relevant context:
You can add in a suitable layer of context from any unit you are doing with your class. This turns "Follow the Leader" from a simple physical game into a "Follow the Story" drama learning experience that explores improvisation, voice, movement, space and even the creation of tension, situation and role.

Begin by using these great movement word wall cards to explore all the different ways students can move their bodies.

Ask students to come up with a situation that will become the imaginary world that their line is exploring or travelling through. Establish this by choosing a place, describing what it looks like and what features it may have (water, mountains, trees, sand, a building with small or large rooms etc.). The more detail you come up with before the game, the better!

Students can select a character or role that the leader (and subsequently the entire line) can take on when moving through this imaginary place.

Movements and actions should then reflect the character, and the type of environment the character is in.

6. Snake Sheds its Skin

This physical drama game is great for showing students how a large group can together use their bodies to create a single character (in this case, the character is a snake!). While it can be a little tricky to explain, once students know and understand how to play this game, it is always a favorite!

7. Traffic Lights

Traffic Lights is another classic children's drama game with endless possibilities! In the traditional version, the teacher calls out a color and students complete the action associated with that color. For example:

"Red!" - students freeze

"Orange!" - students stand on one leg

"Green!" - students walk around the space

Increase the complexity and add curriculum connections by modifying the calls and actions. You can make the actions specific to a situation or to characters from a familiar narrative. You may even like create actions that connect with key terms from a mathematics or science unit.

For example, when teaching students how to tell the time you may like to use some of these variations:

"Clockwise!" - students walk in a clockwise direction

"Anti-clockwise!" - students walk in an anti-clockwise direction

"AM!" - students stretch up to the sky

"PM!" - students lay on the floor

There is really no limit to how you can adapt the Traffic Lights drama game!

8. What Are You Doing?

"What Are You Doing" is another excellent improvisation activity for primary school students (Hello again, verbs!), and one that is a slightly more challenging game than "Yes, Let's!".

Building the confidence of students to speak aloud can be supported through whole group improvisation activities like this. Students practice projecting their voice and using movement to communicate meaning in this fun mime activity.
Add a familiar context from any key learning area in order to turn this game into a drama lesson activity.
Again, you can layer in context by asking students to take on a role from a story, a poem or most any context you are exploring in your current units. The actions they initiate should then reflect a part of the story. In doing this, your students will be using voice and movement to create a role and to communicate meaning about a situation, all of which are fundamental elements of drama.

At the risk of sounding reminiscent of Mr G from Summer Heights High, the elements of drama can be explored through almost any subject matter!

Drama is, essentially, the study of how people understand, relate to and communicate ideas about an idea or an aspect of a world (animate or inanimate, real or imagined).

For this reason, it really is one learning area with key concepts that can be explored using context from a seemingly "unrelated" learning area.

Now I'm thinking just how much fun a "Move Like a Minibeast" brain break would be at the end of a science lesson!

Hopefully, this post has illustrated how easy it can be to take a familiar children's or classroom game and create an adaptation that provides both you and your students with means to explore the elements of drama!

Drama Games for Kids - Printable Activity Cards

To get you started, we've created a set of 17 Drama Games for Kids activity cards! Simply download, print and laminate the cards for use when you need a Drama lesson warm-up idea, or a brain break for your students.

Do you know a teacher who might enjoy this approach to teaching K-3 Drama? Use the buttons under the title of this post to share it with them via email or on Facebook!

You may also like to check out more Drama games and activities listed in our blog post "Drama Games for Kids: Years 4-7".
Make your classroom buzz! Subscribe to Teach Starter and access thousands of curriculum-aligned resources and digital learning tools. Get Started

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Drama Games & Activities for Kids - Hand-picked by a Drama Teacher

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Written by Cassie (Teach Starter) Primary school teachers really do it all! Although, there can be a few key learning areas that sit a little outside of our personal comfort zone (for me, that would be science and mathematics). However, teaching drama in the primary classroom needn't be one of them.

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Creative Drama Lesson Plans

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Activities that get students moving can keep them engaged and provide an outlet for their pent-up energy. Getting students up out of their chairs makes learning or reviewing content fun and memorable.

Just make sure you take a few crucial considerations into account when choosing movement-based activities for your students.

Time and space: Think about how much time you will be able to allow for these activities, and how much space you will need based on your class size.

Comfort: Don't forget how certain activities make students feel. We want to encourage them to step outside their comfort zone at times, but some might have learning differences or specific struggles that need accommodations or adaptations.

Behavioral issues: If you're worried about students getting off task, strategically assign pairs for certain activities. Another option is to hold them accountable for their behavior through a participation grade or by keeping score. To increase their motivation to do well, think about including a prize like extra-credit points if you think it might help.

These four activities will get your students moving:

1. Concentric circle sharing

Students stand face-to-face while in one of two concentric circles so they can rotate around the circle, changing partners every few minutes. This is a fun way for students to share homework responses, to quiz each other as exam prep or to play characters from a novel or historical figures. Here's how to do it:

1. Divide your students into two groups.

2. Have one group stand in a circle. They should be shoulder-to-shoulder and facing outward so you can see their faces.

3. Tell each person from the other group to stand in front of a person from the inner circle so they are face-to-face with their partner. Together the two groups form two concentric circles. Since you will stand outside the circles, you will see the backs of everyone in the outer circle because they are facing inward to their partners.

4. Once they all have a partner, stand on a chair to fully observe students.

5. As the facilitator, you decide when the inner or outer circle rotates two people to the left, one person to the right or however you want to do it.

Benefits: This activity keeps students moving and interacting with classmates they might not otherwise get to work with because of your seating arrangements. It also encourages immediate engagement since it's a series of peer-to-peer interactions that are brief but meaningful. You can listen and watch students to see how well they understand the material, how well they're working together and if there are key concepts that multiple students aren't quite comprehending.

2. Four corners

Don't be afraid to get creative with this activity, which uses the corners in your classroom. You ask a question such as "What group are wolves, cats, and hamsters all a part of?" and then students have to walk silently to whichever corner represents the correct answer.

1. Make sure each corner of your classroom has plenty of space for students to cluster in it, and there are no hazards like loose cords or things they could knock over.

2. Label each corner with a sign that fits the activity. Focus on concepts like historical eras, animal classifications, parts of speech or character traits.

3. If you have more than four answers for them to choose from, get creative and put an empty space in the middle of the room with a sign on the floor for them to sit around, or put another one against a wall halfway between two corners.

4. Tell your students they must be silent when you ask the question to the class and when they're moving to and from the corners. Consider including a participation grade if you're worried they won't stay silent.

5. Call on students standing in the correct-answer corner to explain why they think it's the correct answer.

6. Congratulate them for being correct and go on to the next question.

Benefits: Four corners lets students practice multiple-choice questions in a fun way that gets them moving around the room. Although it can be easy for students to follow their friends vs. think their answers through, they will quickly see that that doesn't always work. Asking students to explain their answer provides time for discussion and gives students recognition.

3. Review ball

Each small group has its own ball to toss back and forth. Every time a student tosses the ball to another, a vocabulary word or term is called out. It's pretty basic, but challenges can be added to make it more interactive and to encourage teamwork.

1. Divide the class into small groups and give each one a ball.

2. Post the terms for them to review on the board so they are visible at all times.

3. Demonstrate the activity by calling out a term and tossing the ball to a student at the same time. As soon as the student catches it, he or she should quickly state the definition and then toss the ball to another person, calling out a new term at the same time.

4. Once all terms have been covered, groups should go back to the ones they missed.

5. When they feel like their group has them down, tell them to speed it up and see how quickly they can do them without mistakes or long pauses.

6. They can also try doing it while balancing on one foot, jumping up and down, or doing something else that adds more excitement.

Benefits: It's easy to ask students to turn to their neighbors and quiz them before an exam, but this activity makes review much more lively and builds community. Students have to work together and help each other. You can even have them pick team names or create a team chant to help encourage each other.

4. Sentence relay

Students take turns writing one word on the board at a time to collectively create a complete sentence. This fun relay gets students thinking creatively about sentence structure. It can be done with English learners, elementary students or older students if you start the sentence relay with a scientific term learned, a historical event studied, etc.

1. Divide your whiteboard in half and write the first word of a sentence twice, once on each side.

2. Call up five students to form a single-file line on one side, and five more students to form a line on the other side.

3. The goal is for either team of five to create a sentence together as fast as possible, but it must make sense and be grammatically correct.

4. Each person can write only one word and then must pass the marker off to the next person.

5. They can include punctuation marks when appropriate, but if any are incorrect, the team must start over.

6. Consider doubling this if possible and having two games going at once on either side of the room. That'll get even more students involved.

7. This game works only if students stay completely quiet during the relay. One way to ensure this is to award points to the left side of the class vs. the right side for each relay.

8. When it's done, you can discuss each team's sentence as a class. If one sentence is incorrect, you can talk about what makes it a fragment or what could be changed to correct it.

9. Ask the observing students to suggest other sentences that could've been created.

10. Change participants so everyone gets a turn to be part of a relay.

Benefits: Every student is involved without being put on the spot for too long. For more advanced teams, their sentences might be longer, meaning each student might take two turns to get to a complete sentence. By doing so, they have to think about compound and complex sentences, the proper use of commas and how to avoid creating a run-on sentence.
Kara Wyman has a BA in literature and a MEd from the University of California-Santa Barbara. She has worked with adolescents for a decade as a middle school and high school English teacher, the founder and director of a drama program, and a curriculum designer for high school and college courses. She works with 13- to 19-year-old students as a project manager of a nonprofit organization.
Tags: Early Childhood and Elementary (Grades: PreK-5), Engaging Activities, Middle School (Grades: 6-8), New Teacher

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Fun & Interactive Activities for Kids in School | Resilient Educator

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Activities that get students moving can keep them engaged and provide an outlet for their pent-up energy. Getting students up out of their chairs makes learning or reviewing content fun and memorable. Just make sure you take a few crucial considerations into account when choosing movement-based activities for your students.

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Physical activity that amplifies learning can have a powerful effect on retention and engagement-it's also fun.

Allison Shelley for the Alliance for Excellent Education

When researchers at Texas A&M University gave standing desks to 34 high school students, they discovered that after consistent use, standing while learning delivered a significant boost to students' executive functioning skills-the sorts of cognitive skills that allow kids to manage their time, understand and memorize information, and organize thoughts in writing. Even small amounts of movement, this emerging research revealed, can deliver a positive impact on learning: Neurocognitive testing of the standing students, the pilot study notes, showed a 7 to 14 percent improvement in their cognitive performance, a noteworthy impact for such a simple intervention.

Infusing classrooms with physical activity-or at least the option of some movement, at student discretion-isn't just good for kids' bodies, it's also a powerful tool for improving learning and focus and reducing classroom management issues. And yet, from kindergarten through high school "students spend most of their academic lives at a desk," says educator Brad Johnson for The Washington Post, an arrangement that is meant to increase their focus and academic productivity, but can actually create kids who are "bored, off-task, disruptive or otherwise disengaged."

There are many smart, innovative ways to build movement into lessons and the research increasingly supports getting kids moving in schools to promote better physical health, provide the types of breaks that reset our cognitive processes so that we can learn anew, and even link our physical bodies to our cognitive insights to encode learning more deeply. From intentionally aligning curriculum with movement to improve retention, to planning frequent and active brain breaks to clear working memory, here are more than a dozen ways educators and researchers are pairing learning with movement.

INTEGRATING MOVEMENT IN THE CURRICULUM

Incorporating gross and fine motor activities across many subject areas makes a lot of sense, particularly to teach foundational concepts. In math classes, for instance, you can create chalk grids on the playground and have children walk sloped lines, stopping to discuss and walk the line's "rise" and "run," or you can use hand and arm gestures to teach a broader range of mathematical concepts like tangents and cosines. Here are a few more ways educators are injecting movement into lessons.

In Science, Becoming a Liquid: Science teacher and instructional coach JaShan Wilson turned social distancing requirements into an opportunity for her students to "use their own bodies to model movements, test phenomena, and engage with the curriculum."

For lessons on matter and particle movement, for example, she asks students to "act like solids, liquids, or gases," and then "switch it up as in Simon Says until all students sped up, slowed down, or vibrated in order to represent how matter moves." For a unit on energy, Wilson's students examine the transfer of energy by making wave movements with their arms. "The more energy they apply, the higher the amplitude," Wilson notes. Engaging students in these "human labs," as Wilson calls them, delivered impressive academic results: Her students did better on formative assessments and "continued to utilize the movements and reference the activities, which showed how they connected the concepts to them permanently."

Playing Basketball Math: In a six-week study involving 757 Copenhagen elementary school students, researchers had half the students do math while playing basketball. The other half studied math in class as usual, and played basketball solely as a regular gym activity.

The kids who played while doing math did tasks like "counting how many times they could sink a basket from three meters away versus at a one-meter distance," and then added up the numbers, says Linn Damsgaard, one of the study's authors. Among the students who played basketball while doing math, the researchers reported a 6 percent boost in math mastery; a 16 percent increase in intrinsic motivation; and a 14 percent improvement in "perceived autonomy," or self-determination, compared to peers learning in the classroom.

Student Thespians: When researchers asked 8-year-olds to mimic the words they were learning in another language by using their hands and bodies to act out the word's meaning-by spreading their arms and pretending to fly while they learned the German word for airplane, for example-the students were 73 percent more likely to recall them, even two months later.

In ELA and social study classes, having kids partake in skits may feel like it's inviting chaos, but the body will often remember what the mind forgets-and getting students to act out historical events or scenes from works of literature can help them remember the information, grasp the basic elements of drama, or provide them with a new opportunity to listen to the sounds and rhythms of written and spoken language.

Drawing It Out: Even indifferent or unpracticed artists benefit by drawing what they've learned, a 2018 study concluded, resulting in retention rates that were double the rates of when kids wrote or read.

When a student draws a concept, they "must elaborate on its meaning and semantic features," the researchers explain, while engaging "in the actual hand movements needed for drawing"-a rich mixture of cognitive and physiological activities that encodes learning more deeply and is a "reliable, replicable means of boosting performance."

The drawing doesn't have to be expert-level: even stick figures or crude shapes accompanied by annotations will do, and data visualizations work similarly to hand-drawn pictures. You can assess learning by allowing kids to try one-pagers that demonstrate their understanding of a topic through art; incorporate more graphs and statistical modeling into math and science classes; have students draw models of solar systems or cells in science classes; or let students create travel journals to document any learning journey graphically.

ACTIVE BRAIN BREAKS

Research shows that when students take brief, active breaks throughout the day, it increases productivity, creativity, and social skills. "When we take a brain break, it refreshes our thinking and helps us discover another solution to a problem or see a situation through a different lens," writes Lori Desautels, an assistant professor at the Butler University College of Education. "The brain break actually helps to incubate and process new information," says Desautels.

So plan for frequent breaks (we've included a few ideas to get you started) and keep them active and social-a brisk walk around the perimeter of the classroom, a quick stretch, an energizing freeze dance.

Brain breaks for younger students: Try wiggle breaks where kids stand and wiggle each arm and leg in succession or opposite sides, where kids blink one eye while snapping fingers on the opposite side and then reverse the exercise. For energizing breath, have students pant like dogs with their mouths open and tongues out for 30 seconds, hands on the belly, then breathe briskly for another 30 seconds with mouths closed. Easier still: invite kids to jump in place like they're on a trampoline; or keep it really simple with a quick crab walk around the room.

Brain breaks for older students: Try a wave, starting at one end of the room with students standing and raising their arms; or have them get out of their chairs for a whole-body stretch or for a brief walk around the room. They can also pass a ball around for a quick game of catch, practice a few yoga poses like tree pose or warrior II, or very simply, ask them to hop on one foot, then switch to the other foot for a minute or two.

MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT MOVEMENT WHILE LEARNING

Doodling, Fidgeting, and More: There's often confusion about movement that is not directly related to learning. While drawing a plant cell or creating a pictorial representation of a scene from a novel will deepen retention and result in more durable learning, when students doodle during lessons-by drawing elaborate cartoons while an unrelated lesson is in progress, for example-the research, and the cognitive science, suggests that learning is compromised.

In a 2019 study during which students were asked to doodle-which the researchers defined as "drawing that is semantically unrelated to to-be-remembered information"-while they learned, they showed "poorer free recall for words encoded while free-form doodling compared to words that were drawn or written."

Multitasking divides our attention, a finite cognitive resource, and makes us less proficient at both tasks. But there's a wrinkle here, too: There is some evidence that activities that require very little attention, like fidgeting or listening to soft background music (but probably not loud or attention-gobbling music), don't divide our focus to the same degree. Being tolerant of a certain amount of fidgeting or a pair of headphones is an important accommodation for students who might otherwise need to get out of their seats entirely, or might struggle with focused, demanding tasks like homework. In the end, the more distracting any task is to the lesson, the less likely learning is to stick.

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More Than a Dozen Ways to Build Movement Into Learning

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Physical activity that amplifies learning can have a powerful effect on retention and engagement-it's also fun.

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Contains many lesson plans

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Three lesson plans to teach science through movement Third-graders at Mt. Eccles Elementary School create a glacier dance. A group of third-graders

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Social & Emotional Learning (SEL)

Bringing dance into the classroom with simple exercises can help elementary students develop social and emotional learning skills.

Pegaz / Alamy Stock Photo

Last school year, veteran teacher Jennifer Grau decided to introduce dance as part of her effort to build bonds between her special education students and the general ed second graders at her school on Chicago's West Side.

Using videos to help her students learn a few simple steps, Grau was able to get them working with both preferred and non-preferred partners. The energy of the music and the students' focus on the steps helped them forget about any differences they felt between themselves and their classmates.

Grau's new strategy worked like a charm. "It was the first time all the kids were engaged and collaborating without any fights or complaints," she said. The lessons helped students explore ideas of diversity and social engagement, and they finished by reflecting on how the activity helped them get along better.

The most successful social and emotional learning (SEL) programs use active forms of learning to teach students, and evidence suggests that dance outpaces other forms of physical activity and other forms of arts learning when it comes to improving SEL outcomes. Despite the evidence, dance is not included or prioritized in the curriculum of the vast majority of schools in the U.S. and around the world.

Two Left Feet? No Problem!

In many schools, the greatest barrier to bringing dance into classrooms is a lack of comfort with dance on the part of classroom teachers. For most students, permission to move-especially with music-offers considerable stress relief and an immediate boost to their sense of optimism and joy. Luckily, there are resources that can take the pressure off teachers to lead the activities.

Dance can be used to foster students' intrapersonal and interpersonal SEL skills, as well as skills like responsible decision-making. To see how, we'll consider three dance activities. To get started, you'll need to find a short dance video that your students will enjoy-look for something with just a few simple movements that they can easily follow and learn. Teachers looking for videos might start with the free Dance-of-the-Month lessons (registration required) from my own organization, EduMotion, and the H.Y.P.E. the Breaks videos on YouTube created by Hip-Hop Public Health.

Intrapersonal SEL Skills

Self-awareness and self-management are fundamentally rooted in the body, making dance an excellent tool for building such competencies as emotional awareness, accurate self-perception, and impulse control.

Using dance to identify emotions: Dance and movement can be a great way for students to explore how emotions are shown and felt in their bodies. Give your student this prompt: " Emotion is a word that describes the feelings you have. How does your face show emotion? How do other parts of your body show emotion?" Next, invite students to follow along to the dance or movement video you've selected. After the students perform the dance together, ask them to choose a favorite move from the dance and practice that move while showing an emotion they select. They can do this in pairs-each student should guess what emotion their partner is trying to convey.

Conclude the activity by prompting students to reflect on what their body feels like when they are showing the emotion they select. By thinking about what an emotion feels and looks like in their body, they become more self-aware and attuned to their emotions.

Interpersonal SEL Skills

Many dance and movement activities promote teamwork and cooperation and provide rich opportunities for developing relationship skills and social awareness.

Using dance for communication: In this activity, students consider how they communicate both verbally and nonverbally, and they practice listening and responding to input from others.

To start, give students this prompt: "When we communicate, we use words and body language to let other people know our thoughts and feelings. How can you communicate with words? How can you communicate with body language?" Next, as in the activity above, invite the whole class to follow along to the dance or movement video you've selected.

Finally, have students practice giving each other feedback with active listening skills. Have them try the dance or movement while facing a partner, and think about how they can be friendly with their partner as they work together. After trying some steps together, prompt them to talk to each other about how it went-was it easy? hard? fun? silly? While they're listening to their partner's feedback, they should make eye contact and smile in encouragement. Prompt them to end the activity by thanking each other and exchanging a handshake or high five.

Responsible Decision-Making

Dance and movement can be a wonderful way for students to work on problem-solving and to develop the ability to evaluate and reflect, which in turn can affect their thinking on things like their responsibility to help make the world a better place.

Using dance to promote good citizenship: In this activity, students explore ways to make healthy choices and then identify a personal "superpower" that can help make the world better. Give your students this prompt: "It's important to act in ways that are healthy and positive for ourselves and others. How can you be safe and speak up for others?"

Invite students to follow along to the dance or movement video you've selected. Once they've got the moves down, have them identify a superpower they could use to make the world better and embody the superpower by adding it to the movement activity. They should think of a pose that will show the superpower, and then discuss their ideas.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Considerations

When choosing resources for dance or movement-based activities, keep in mind that dance can be useful in fostering cross-cultural understanding and respect: By studying dance forms that originate in other parts of the world, students gain understanding of the history, identities, and values of others.

Dance can also help students overcome cultural and linguistic obstacles because of its focus on nonverbal communication. For English language learners, in particular, dance provides the opportunity to express themselves through the body and has been shown to bolster their self-esteem.

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Social & Emotional Learning (SEL) Bringing dance into the classroom with simple exercises can help elementary students develop social and emotional learning skills. Pegaz / Alamy Stock Photo Last school year, veteran teacher Jennifer Grau decided to introduce dance as part of her effort to build bonds between her special education students and the general ed second graders at her school on Chicago's West Side.

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Students will create original artwork and manipulate images to demonstrate understanding of line symmetry.

Task

You can study art mathematically by looking for different types of symmetry. An object that can be divided with one line, resulting in a mirror image on both sides of the line, has bilateral symmetry. Faces and butterflies are examples of objects with bilateral symmetry. An object made up of similar parts arranged around an axis, such as a starfish or a propeller, has radial symmetry. Symmetrical items can give a calming feeling to a piece of art.

Engage

Write the word "symmetry" on the board. Ask your students if they can tell you what it means. Share some examples of real-world objects that are symmetrical. See if you can get students to define what makes these images symmetrical.

To help students grasp the concept of symmetry, distribute square handheld mirrors and have them practice making symmetry by holding the mirrors up to various objects. Explain that this is called bilateral, or line, symmetry because the symmetry is along one axis.

Go back to the example images of symmetry and ask students to identify the line of symmetry in each image. Then, share examples of symmetry from the second-grade symmetry web site listed in the resources.

Read and share Loreen Leedy's great book, Seeing Symmetry, with your students.

Create

Activity 1: Symmetry in the World Around Us

To give students a chance to practice and apply their skills, divide them into teams of three or four. Have each student use a digital camera or mobile device to capture a picture of a symmetrical object.

Help each team transfer their images to the computer. Print them out or have students import the images into a digital paint program like Wixie and use a Line tool to draw the line, or lines, of symmetry on each image.

If students do not have access to a digital camera or mobile device with one, students can find and add photographs from sites like Pics4learning.com. Wixie includes both a Stickers library filled with clip art as well as internation access to the Pics4Learning library of photos.

Activity 2: Mirror Symmetry with Faces

Though our faces exhibit symmetry, they are not perfectly symmetrical. Have students capture an image of their face and use a paint or imaging program to show how one side of their face is slightly different from the other.

Have students pair up to take a front view photograph of each other's faces. Have them import the image to a digital paint program and add the image. If you are using Wixie, remember to go to the Edit menu and Glue to Paint layer.

Use the rectangle selection tool to select their entire face. Duplicate or copy and paste the selection so that there are three versions. An original, as well as two others students can use to mirror each side of their face.

Once students have three images, use a rectangle selection tool to select the right or left side of their face. Duplicate the selection, flip it on a vertical axis and move over the other half of their face.

When students repeat this process for the other side of their face, they will see how different each side of their face really is.

Activity 3: Painting Symmetrical Objects

Butterflies are common symmetrical objects. Share a couple of images of butterflies and have students talk about their symmetry. Make sure they can identify the line of symmetry that runs directly through the body of the butterfly.

If you have Wixie, challenge students to think symmetrically and draw a butterfly using include symmetry options for the paintbrush tool. Show students how to turn on mirror symmetry options for the paint brush. Then challenge students to paint a butterfly with a vertical body and one wing. Then, have them use the same technique they used for their faces to create a complete butterfly by selecting half the butterfly, copying and pasting the selection, flipping it and moving it into position.

Some paint programs, like Wixie, include symmetry options for the paintbrush tool. Show students how to turn on mirror symmetry options for the paint brush. Then challenge students to draw a butterfly using a paintbrush that mirrors what they draw to create a second wing as they draw the first.

Next, test students' ability to think symmetrically by having them use the mirroring feature of the Paintbrush tool to draw another butterfly. Have students choose the Paintbrush tool, check the Mirror box on the Editing panel, and choose 2 for line symmetry painting. Starting in the middle of the canvas, have them paint one wing; the other wing will paint at the same time. Remind them to click the Undo button if they need to try again.

Share

Print and post students artwork as a celebration of how symmetry can be used in art. After printing, have students work to sort the butterflies into groups, working to define attributes that make them similar or different.

Combine individual student pages together to create a slide show or digital book. (If you have Wixie use the Import Pages feature. Share the combined project URL on your web site or export as a PDF or ePub to share with family and community.

Assessment

As the students work on their line symmetry activities, assess each student's progress to ensure that they understand symmetry correctly prior to the final sharing process. The final set of activities will help you assess their ability to analyze symmetry and express it through the creative process.

Resources

Loreen Leedy. Seeing Symmetry. ISBN: 0823427625

Symmetry and Pattern https://mathforum.org/geometry/rugs

Standards

Common Core Standards for Math - Geometry

Draw and identfiy lines and angles, and classify shapes by properties of their lines and angles

4.G.3. Recognize a line of symmetry for a two-dimensional figure as a line across the figure such that the figure can be folded along the line into matching parts. Identify line-symmetric figures and draw lines of symmetry.

ISTE NETS for Students 2016:

6. Creative Communicator
Students communicate clearly and express themselves creatively for a variety of purposes using the platforms, tools, styles, formats and digital media appropriate to their goals. Students:

a. choose the appropriate platforms and tools for meeting the desired objectives of their creation or communication.

b. create original works or responsibly repurpose or remix digital resources into new creations.

c. communicate complex ideas clearly and effectively by creating or using a variety of digital objects such as visualizations, models or simulations.

d. publish or present content that customizes the message and medium for their intended audiences.

Lessons by Subject

Lessons by Grade

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You can study art mathematically by looking for different types of symmetry. An object that can be divided with one line, resulting in a mirror image on both sides of the line, has bilateral symmetry. Faces and butterflies are examples of objects with bilateral symmetry.

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In this lesson, students color a page in the style of Piet Mondrian and then count, describe, and compare the shapes and colors in each student’s piece.

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Students use symmetry to create bizarre creatures around a self-portrait and then write a poem about the surreal image they have created.

Task

Hieronymus Bosch was a Dutch artist who painted in the surrealist style in the 15th and 16th centuries, 400 years before the Surrealism movement began! Bosch explored both the good and bad extremes of human nature changing animals, people, and objects into fantastic new creatures, inspiring later surrealist painters like Ernst, Duchamp, and Dali.

After learning about surrealism, students develop their own surrealist work exploring good and bad, writing a rhyming verse that describes and expands on their artistic work.

Engage

Set the stage for the project by reading Nancy Willard's Pish, Posh, said Hieronymus Bosch to your students. Much of Bosch's artwork may be inappropriate for young viewers and this book provides a fun introduction to his work, while avoiding some of the darker themes.

In this story, Bosch's housekeeper becomes tired of encountering surreal objects and critters in the house, sharing:

"How can I cook for you? How can I bake?
When the oven keeps turning itself to a rake?
And a beehive in boots and a pear-headed priest
Call monkeys to order and lizards to feast."

After reading the story, work as a class to develop a definition for surreal. The American Heritage Dictionary defines surrealism as art that expresses "the workings of the subconscious and is characterized by fantastic imagery and incongruous juxtaposition of subject matter."

Let your students know that you will be challenging them to use one of their fears to help them create their own surrealist art.

Return to the images in the book or explore some of Bosch's other works. Note: Use caution with other Bosch images, since many of them are disturbing and may not be appropriate for your learners.

Ask students to name objects in the images that are creepy or make them feel afraid. Work with students to identify which of the object's attributes make them feel this way.

Use this opportunity to explore and discuss how visual artists use color (light and dark) and line (soft or sharp) to make us feel differently when we view their artwork.

Create

To help students get ideas for their surreal art, have students share a fear anonymously on scrap paper. Read them aloud to the class. Then, brainstorm attributes and adjectives for these fears to make it easier to create their own surrealist creature.

Ask each student to choose a fear they will use as inspiration for their surrealist illustration.

Have students use a cluster graphic organizer to name their fear in the center, and add adjectives and attributes in the surrounding boxes to describe it.

Students can use Wixie's symmetry options to paint an outline for their scary/nice juxtaposition by dragging the Pencil tool from the top middle of the page down toward the outside edges at the bottom.

After students turn the symmetry options off, they can use the rest of the Paint tools to add details that both transform the space on the outside of these lines into a creature representing their fear, as well as create a picture of themselves impervious to this fear in the middle of the two symmetrical creatures.

To extend the project, have students write a quatrain or other rhyming poem describing their fear. A quatrain is a four-line poem that includes rhyme on lines 2 and 4. If they need inspiration, have them look to the examples by Nancy Willard in the Pish, Posh, said Hieronymus Bosch book.

Share

Print the images to display them as an art exhibit in your classroom or school or reach out to a local coffee shop or even small business to see if they might be interested in showcasing student work in their office.

Combine individual student work into one document using Wixie's Import Pages feature to make it easy to run a slide show for a digital art installation. You can also export the class book as a PDF or an ePub, so students can read and enjoy on their devices at home.

If you want a more professional looking published product, export student work as JPG files and upload to a photo-sharing site. Then, use the site's features to publish a coffee table-style or paperback book.

Assessment

As you read the story, assess student reaction to the playful rhyme in the story. What is their reaction to the pictures in the book? How do they define surrealism? Interact with students as they brainstorm attributes for their fear, helping them visualize and verbalize what they are feeling.

Each student's artwork will help you assess their understanding of how to use symmetry to create balance, their ability to use line, shape, and color for artistic impact, and their ability to imagine and develop a world from their imagination. Their poem will help you assess their ability to work with rhyme and meter.

Resources

Nancy Willard Pish, Posh said Hieronymous Bosch

Standards

National Core Arts Standards:

Creating
1. Generate and conceptualize artistic ideas and work.
2. Organize and develop artistic ideas and work.
3. Refine and complete artistic work.

Connecting
10. Synthesize and relate knowledge and personal experiences to make art.

ISTE Standards for Students:

6. Creative Communicator
Students communicate clearly and express themselves creatively for a variety of purposes using the platforms, tools, styles, formats and digital media appropriate to their goals. Students:

d. publish or present content that customizes the message and medium for their intended audiences.

What can your students create?

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Hieronymus Bosch was a Dutch artist who painted in the surrealist style in the 15th and 16th centuries, 400 years before the Surrealism movement began! Bosch explored both the good and bad extremes of human nature changing animals, people, and objects into fantastic new creatures, inspiring later surrealist painters like Ernst, Duchamp, and Dali.

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Students explore the work of Andy Warhol and create their own pop art montage.

Task

Andy Warhol transformed contemporary art, challenging the differences between fine art and popular culture. In this project, students explore the ideas of pop art and mass appeal and design their own pop art montage in the spirit of Andy Warhol.

Engage

Begin by exploring Andy Warhol's ideas about Pop Art through his quote:

"Everything is beautiful. Pop is everything."

Ask your students what Warhol means by the word "pop." Students may be able to connect it with other terms like pop music, pop icon, pop artist.

Use books, websites like Artcyclopedia, and other media resources to familiarize students with the life and work of Andy Warhol.

Share examples of Andy Warhol's popular art, such as:

10 Marilyns, 1967

Mickey Mouse, 300 SL Coupe, 1954

Campbell's Soup Can, 1965

According to Miriam-Webster's Online Dictionary, Pop Art is "art in which commonplace objects (as road signs, hamburgers, comic strips, or soup cans) are used as subject matter and are often physically incorporated into the work."

Introduce students to words like "mass appeal," "mass produced," and "iconic" and ask if they know what these mean. You might want to show an object like a fidget spinner, or Chinese takeout box, to get them thinking.

Then, work together to create a list of familiar and iconic mass-produced items like specific models/brands of cars, cell phones, candy, or fast food.

Create

Share how Warhol elevated mass-produced, iconic objects into unique works of art by using repetition and dramatically changing their colors.

Let students know that they will be creating their own pop art using an image of a pop culture object and Warhol's technique of color and repetition.

Have student create a pop art template with several different colored boxes. If you are using Wixie, students can open the Pop Art file in their Templates library.

Have students locate an image of an object they think meets the definition of mass-produced and iconic (or even just popular, depending on the age of your students). Then, have them use imaging and paint tools to adjust the color of the boxes and objects.

If students are using Wixie, they can search the Stickers Library for simple images of popular food or objects. After they add them to the page, they can select the objects, go to the Edit menu and choose Glue to Paint layer to adjust colors using Wixie's Paint bucket fill tool.

Share

Print the images to display them as an art exhibit in your classroom or school or reach out to a local coffee shop or even small business to see if they might be interested in showcasing student work in their office.

Combine individual student work into one document using Wixie's Import Pages feature to make it easy to run a slide show for a digital art installation. You can also export the class book as a PDF or an ePub, so students can read and enjoy on their devices at home.

If you want a more professional looking published product, export student work as JPG files and upload to a photo-sharing site. Then, use the site's features to publish a coffee table-style or paperback book.

Assessment

As you ask students to define pop culture, mass production, iconic and other connected terms, you will gain an idea of their comprehension of their meaning. Their choice of a subject for their pop art image will also help you assess their understanding of popular culture and mass appeal.

As they build their pop art image, you can evaluate their artistic ability to use color for dramatic purpose and feeling.

Resources

Joyce Raimondo Make it Pop!: Activities and Adventures in Pop Art

Susan Goldman Rubin Andy Warhol: Pop Art Painter

Artcyclopedia Andy Warhol

Standards

National Core Arts Standards:

Creating
1. Generate and conceptualize artistic ideas and work.
2. Organize and develop artistic ideas and work.
3. Refine and complete artistic work.

Connecting
10. Synthesize and relate knowledge and personal experiences to make art.

ISTE Standards for Students:

6. Creative Communicator
Students communicate clearly and express themselves creatively for a variety of purposes using the platforms, tools, styles, formats and digital media appropriate to their goals. Students:

d. publish or present content that customizes the message and medium for their intended audiences.

What can your students create?

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Andy Warhol transformed contemporary art, challenging the differences between fine art and popular culture. In this project, students explore the ideas of pop art and mass appeal and design their own pop art montage in the spirit of Andy Warhol. Begin by exploring Andy Warhol's ideas about Pop Art through his quote: "Everything is beautiful.

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