"Chaparell High School, Scottsdale, AZ

High School School Lesson Plan

Standard: Students will improvise, write, and refine scripts based on personal experience and heritage, imagination, literature, and history

Achievement Standard: Students will construct imaginative scripts and collaborate with actors to refine scripts so that story and meaning are conveyed to an audience.

Materials: Student tapes or cds of music

Preparation: Have the students bring a recorded piece of music to class. Volunteers play their music and the class, with the help of the music teacher, determine and then notate the tempo and rhythm for selected pieces. One piece is chosen and the students discuss characters who would move with this kind of rhythm and tempo. The characters' likes, dislikes, dreams are discussed. Students are helped to imagine a character of their own--one who moves and sounds like their piece of music.

Activity: Read several monologues that reveal interesting things about the characters. Have the students record on an audio tape a monologue that reveals the characters they created based on the tempo and rhythm of the music they selected. The character should have some surprises. Have the students transcribe their tape. (For students with serious writing problems, have the tapes transcribed for them.)

If possible, invite actors from the local college to read the monologues and have the student authors respond to questions from the actors and the class about their character. (Of course, good student readers from school can also be used.) Students rewrite and the monologues are reread.

Have the students write a second monologue developing a voice for a different character. Read the scripts and have the playwrights make refinements.

Finally, have the students improvise scenes with two or three of the characters they have created. The ideas from these improvisations are then used to create short scripted scenes that now have a voice for each character.

Assessment: With a class developed criteria for analyzing, interpreting and evaluating scripts, have the students write a critique of their second monologue and final scene. Include the monologues, final scene, written critique along with goals for future improvement in the student portfolios.

Adapted from a lesson created by the National Theater Standards Writing Committee