4/2/2021
Topic:
Tools And Strategies
Stacy Pape
|
After teaching Theatre for 15 years, I most recall 2 students who taught the rest of the class about empowerment, empathy, respect, and even... choreography. One student was quadriplegic (cerebral palsy) and asked to assistant choreograph. What she could not demonstrate through physicality, she could use her head and facial directions for students to correct their movements. As it turned out, she was the best dance captain we ever had and she had the capacity to memorize the choreography of 30+ performers throughout a 2 hour production, and differentiate the steps for each actor and dance (this is at the college level and she was in 7th grade). She went on to become Miss Wheelchair Florida! My student with autism was bullied by other students and as soon as he came in to our class, he felt loved and welcomed. We provided support by understanding his quirky and infectious humor, supporting him with character development, and improve his response time/ interpersonal skills with improvisation. By the end of his 8th grade year, he was a Drama Club officer, traveled to district and state thespian competitions, was in every production, and won awards for his achievement. |
4/2/2021
Topic:
Tools And Strategies
Stacy Pape
|
This answers two of the questions, as I hit "enter" before completing the previous question.
The two strategies are tiered lessons and learning centers. I use technical adaptive devices, tablets, and computers for students to "think through" a text and create improvisational scenes to indicate the intention, objective, and throughlines of a script. Learning centers provide students with the opportunities to grow collaboratively while attending to different aspects of a play. One for character biographies (students sit and discuss a character they chose - their imagined background, what we know of their background, their status, looks, students sit in a center discussing physicality: students demonstrate, describe, or pull images from assistive device to share how they would embody the character, students sit in a center with a technical theatre grid and using technology, pencils, paper, set models and figures to envision the sets). Students also love to create and play apps, such as Cahoot for critical terms, dates, names, and vocabulary.
In addition, I always use the POP strategy when designing my lesson plans. I taught an intensive unit in my Advanced Technical Theatre class on stage makeup, involving daily labs, modeling in teaching, sequencing, and very careful pacing. One student had difficulty with fine motor skills. Instead of applying makeup to their face or their partner's, the student built upon the activity with the addition of lighting and demonstrated how stage makeup dramatically changes depending upon the lighting. |