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Goal

Middle schoolers and Books and Puppets… Oh My! Middle school theatre students (6-8) will collaborate with their peers to create puppets based on elementary school books. The Middle schoolers will then present their performance to our local elementary schools. The overall goal is to have students build their literacy skills, analyze children's stories, create a dialogue that encaptures the story, create puppets to support their dialogue, and bring their performance outside of the classroom to local primary grade students.
Both the middle school and elementary school students will have an opportunity to improve their literacy skills through these performances. Middle school students will need to analyze the original texts in detail for key literary elements to adapt their scripts for the puppet theater. They will need to have a thorough understanding of how character development, tone, conflict, word choice, etc. interact in the original text and apply those elements to a new script of their own creation. This level of complex analysis helps support students’ overall reading comprehension and literacy achievement.
This goal will also help the primary students get excited about books they are learning about in the classroom and see the stories come to life from different perspectives. This will help spark an interest and love for reading, creativity and theatre.
 

What will be done with my students

I chose two books per grade level (only one for 5th grade) based on Florida Best Standards. Students will study a primary grade level specific book, analyze the characters, create a script, build either a hand puppet or a stick puppet and bring their script to life.
As students develop their puppet scripts, they will complete a series of activities designed to guide their script development and specifically target key literary analysis skills. Students will begin with character analysis profiles that will help them build puppets that are consistent with the characterization in the original text, complete with textual support from the text to justify their designs. They will then create plot-analysis charts that ensure that their script adaptations incorporate the key components of the original text and include a complete story arch. Finally, they will analyze the tone of the overall text, including word choice and imagery, to ensure that their script maintains a tone consistent with the original text and that any props and “set” pieces maintain an appropriate overall tone. Analyzing these literary elements and applying them to their own scrip-writing is a sophisticated opportunity to apply literary analysis to an authentic writing experience. Practicing the delivery of their script also provides students with valuable, authentic fluency practice.
The middle school students will then travel to one of our feeder elementary schools and perform their scripts. Students will also utilize peer evaluation and critique their peers’ performances. Creating a script and puppet to perform for the elementary school will allow the theatre students to collaborate with their peers, participate in play writing, use their creative abilities to construct puppets, support each other to put on a performance for younger children and upcoming 6th graders, all while improving their literary skills. The elementary school kids will benefit by seeing a student created version of books they are studying in the classroom.

The following standards will be addressed within this project:

ELA.6.R.1.1: Analyze how the interaction between characters contributes to the development of a plot in a literary text.
ELA.6.R.1.2: Analyze the development of stated or implied theme(s) throughout a literary text.
ELA.6.R.1.3: Explain the influence of multiple narrators and/or shifts in point of view in a literary text.
ELA.6.R.2.2: Analyze the central idea(s), implied or explicit, and its development throughout a text
ELA.6.R.2.3: Analyze authors’ purpose(s) in multiple accounts of the same event or topic.
ELA.6.R.2.4: Track the development of an argument, identifying the types of reasoning used.
ELA.7.R.2.4: Track the development of an argument, analyzing the types of reasoning used and their effectiveness
TH.68.C.1.3 Students will determine the purpose, elements, meaning and value of theatrical work
TH.68.C.1.5 Students will ask questions to understand a peer’s artistic choices for a performance or design
TH.68.C.3.1 Students will discuss how visual and aural design elements communicate environment, mood, and theme in a theatrical presentation
TH.68.S.1.1 They will be able to describe the responsibilities of audience members, to the actors and each other, at live and recorded performances and demonstrate appropriate behavior.
TH.68.S.1.2 Students will be able to invent a character with distinct behaviors based on observations of people in the real work and interact with others in a cast as the invented characters.
TH.TH.68.S.2.4 Memorize and present a character’s lines from a monologue or scene
 

Benefits to my students

This project will benefit my middle school students by teaching them to collaborate, how to playwright, remembering lines, analyzing characters, analyzing books, presenting to a younger audience, utilizing their literary skills in a real life scenario, and evaluating their peers. This project goes beyond benefiting my students, it will also benefit our local elementary school students. Our local elementary school students will benefit from seeing the stories they are learning in the classroom come to life, as well as teaching them about a form of performing arts.  

Budget Narrative

Purchases will be made on Amazon to purchase the Florida Best Standards books for grade levels kindergarten-5th, the puppet show “stage” or display, and the kits and material to create the puppets. We will be able to store and use the puppets and books for many years to come. This provides a great opportunity to build out theatre library, and can add more stories in the future. and a great start to our theatre library.  

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