We also have the 2nd Steps lessons that we participate in all year long.  This is another opportunity for them to act scenario's out and think about what they might say in that situation a long with how they would feel and the other person would feel. 

I see many opportunities for exploring theater in the classroom using these techniques. 

Last year, during the week before Christmas, my students and I rewrote The Gingerbread Man story. We had lots of fun and practiced the language. The students wanted to do it again and again even when no audiences were present. I feel we can do more story to play activities or start to write our own stories.

One thing I have done is to allow students to write and perform a reader's theater piece. Students come up with a conflict and then create characters who would be most impacted by this conflict; those who have the most to lose and the most to gain. They try to create two (or more) compelling sides and then push the conflict to the point of absurdity. Adding humor in this way--without going overboard--is sometimes a challenge, but the audience is very forgiving, and the students love to perform in one-another's productions.

Because I only have three students, I imagine that each of my students can write their own stories and cast their classmates. I want us to devote time to each of their stories and act them out as a class. OR, we can create a story together, each as our own imaged character/animal. 

Another idea I have is to create a different story based on each continent. With each continent as a setting, my students would select an animal and we could explore these continents from their animal's perspective. We could brainstorm conflicts together and improvise from there!

In regard to integrating writing standards, I would emphasize written dialogue and explicitly teach how to use quotation marks. 

Lastly, I plan to purchase a set of finger puppets for my students. This could be a morning center, writing center, play choice, social-emotional role play activity, etc. 

I'm so eager to get started!

This is just one example of using playwriting in a public library setting.  Other fun ideas could include writing holiday-themed scripts and turning them into a Readers' Theater that they could perform for their parents, taking the main characters from popular books and writing a script that uses all of those characters (scripts could then be displayed in the library for patrons to read when they visit), or even creating little scenarios (i.e. a meteorologist is outside delivering a live weather report for T.V., and the weather happens to change dramatically from one extreme to another) for them to write a play about (those scenarios could include nonfiction themes as well).

Students could think of a dialogues of what the objects in that ecosystem might say to each other if they actually could talk. They could describe ways how things help and  don't help that environment survive. 

In 4th grade science at the end of the quarter we talk about brightness of stars because of their distance. I think it would be fun for students to do an improvisation of different stars and talking about how close or far they actually are from each other. 

In social studies we cover Utah history. This would be very great to use especially when we discuss minority groups like the Native Americans or Chinese railroad workers. I think it would help them understand the perspectives and feelings of these groups that they may not have considered before. 

In science, we talk about different animals.  We discuss where they live, how their bodies help them move, and what they like to eat.  It would be fun to do playwriting with animals and discuss how they behave and what their habitat is like.  We could learn more about predators this way, as well.  

After doing a unit on character traits in existing plays and reading scripts to know how plays are written I could use the information from this PD to have my students create their own scripts. They could work on the scenario, the setting, the characters and their personalities, and the skill of writing a play using proper script writing etiquette. 

Students in my class are learning Second Steps and learning about empathy and how to have compassion. They can use this information to help create their characters and to develop well-rounded situations in their plays.

I also really like using this to solve classroom problems and make a better classroom community. We can act out how we should line up, what to do if we don't know what to do, or how we follow the rules. Put in in a book and we can do this play a lot during the year if we forget.  

This was such a fun coarse and I am excited to implement the tools in it!

I also always teach about holidays around the world in December. I would love to get students writing scripts and acting our plays about what these celebrating look like rather than simply presenting a bunch of facts about them as I have done in years past. 

I could also use playwriting in our Greek unit to have them make up a myth on their own.  That would be great fun! 

We could write plays about our SEL units such as empathy, skills for listening, resolving conflicts, and calming down. Characters could be dealing with different problems and we can explore ways to solve those problems using good social skills. 

We could write plays about the structures and functions of animals and plants. Characters could be different animals or plants that have unique characteristics that help them survive in their environment.