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Unit Plan
Learning to Give

Teaching Playwriting in Schools

For Teachers 1st - 12th Standards
The world is a stage, and so is your classroom! Hone the skills of the next generation of Tony® award winners with a set of exercises, reference pages, writing prompts, and excerpts from famous plays.
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Activity
Playbooks

Reader's Theater Exercise

For Teachers K - 6th
Here's a great idea for your Parent/Family Night—host a Reader's Theater! Everything you need to organize the night, as well as a K-3 and a 4-7 script, is provided in the packet. 
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Activity
Playbooks

Reader's Theater Exercise: The Night Before Christmas

For Teachers 2nd - 6th
Yes, Virginia, there really is a reader's theater script for "The Night Before Christmas." The exercise is a great way to productively channel pre-holiday energy.
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Lesson Plan
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Creative Competitions, Inc.

Odyssey of the Mind Curriculum Activity: Fantastic Fairy Tale

For Teachers 4th - 6th Standards
Learning about literature can be so much fun; it can also be made more accessible through projects and dramatic play. As they explore theme, character, and setting, the class gets creative and makes a dramatic recreation of a classic...
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Lesson Plan
Hawaiʻi State Department of Education

Dimension Dances

For Teachers 4th
Use dance to help learners conceptualize line segments, rays, lines, and planes. They choreograph dances that show dimensional space. Dancers start by pondering space, point, and lines as the teacher draws them in the air. Each movement...
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Lesson Plan
Hawaiʻi State Department of Education

When We Are A Story

For Teachers 4th
Drama and story elements go hand-in-hand. Have the class dive into a dramatic play to show character intention, conflict resolution, main events, and the dialogue in a Hawaiian folk tale. They read the story, then group-up to discuss and...
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Lesson Plan
Hawaiʻi State Department of Education

Machines

For Teachers 3rd
What do science and dance have in common? Simple machines, work, and force! First, children discuss machines, wheels, inclined planes, and wedges. They create inclined planes with their bodies and make up dances about wheels and wedges....
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Character Attributes in Writing

For Teachers 3rd
Third graders analyze the importance of characters in fiction writing and performances.  In this theatre lesson, 3rd graders identify the important characteristics of a fictional character and how to portray a character through many...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

The Hatfield and McCoy Feud

For Teachers 4th
Fourth graders investigate the Hatfield and McCoy feud. In this Hatfield and McCoy feud lesson, 4th graders examine factors that caused the feud. Students also locate on a map where the feud took place, make a timeline of the main events...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Grow a Musical Instrument

For Teachers K - 6th
Music, culture, social studies, and plant growth all in one! Kids explore the various type of traditional African instruments that are made out of gourds. They then grow their own gourds and use them to create a wide variety of African...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Lesson Plan: Becoming an Animal

For Teachers K - 5th
The Kwakwaka'wakw are indigenous people from Vancouver Island and British Columbia. The class analyzes a Kwakwak'wakw ceremonial mask, how it was used, and its cultural significance. They then create animal masks representing their...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Character Traits in Fables

For Teachers 2nd - 5th
Combining art, music, dance, and reading comprehension, this lesson is geared to reach all ability levels. After reading a variety of fables and discussing story elements and character traits, class members select a moral to use as the...
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Lesson Plan
The Kennedy Center

Fairy Tale Variations

For Teachers 4th - 6th
Here are two great lessons that work together and are inspired by the Stephen Sondheim musical Into the Woods. Young writers and actors will retell the story of "The Frog Prince" through games, improvisational script writing, and song....
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Grand Canyon Suite

For Teachers 5th - 7th
Take a trip to the Grand Canyon! Lesson one explores how Ferde Grofe painted a musical landscape of America when he wrote the Grand Canyon Suite. Learners then examine art that shows the Grand Canyon in lesson two. Finally, lesson three...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Hot, Hot, Hot, Cold

For Teachers 2nd
Learners dance the image of falling snow. They move, swing, fall, and rise to music working to depict snow falling, the sun, and high/low movements. This is a well-thought out lesson that aids them in seeing movement as a form of...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Early English Exploration and Settlement of the Colony of Virginia

For Teachers 5th - 6th
With resource links, a detailed procedure, embedded primary source documents, and a Readers Theater script, you're ready to teach! Re-enact historical events in order to boost historical perspective, discern main ideas, and draw...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

The Learning Network: Re-envisioning Classic Stories

For Teachers 5th - 8th
Readers reflect on enjoyable stories they know, brainstorm criteria that make a story "good," analyze a New York Times article about innovative children's performances, re-envision classics on their own, and peer edit drafts. Use this as...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Art and Sole

For Teachers 1st
A series of four lessons encourages learners to engage in all sorts of artistic activities. They participate in creative movement, serve food, sing songs, recite poems, and create a bust of themselves. What a fun and exciting series of...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Lights! Cameras! Action!: Creating a Drama About the Lyme Art Colony

For Teachers 4th - 7th
Discuss the lives of artists in the Lyme Art Colony in the 1900s with this resource. Young historians write and perform a short scene depicting individuals who lived in the Griswold boardinghouse, used by the colony artists. They use the...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Northwest Coast Indians: Winter Celebrations Potlatch

For Teachers 4th - 6th
Upper elementary learners engage in a study about the Potlatch as a Northwest Coast Indians social custom. Groups of pupils plan their own Potlatch ceremony; incorporating activities and creating gifts much like the ones that the Indians...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Weather or Not!

For Teachers 2nd - 3rd
Young pupils will be sure to love this series of four lessons which deal with the winter season. These cross-curricular lessons cover visual art, science, math, writing, literature, and movement. Absolutely fantastic! The images of...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

The Voice of the Individual

For Teachers 1st - 3rd
Young learners explore the role of the individual within society. They view art work, design calling cards, and display their work. Additionally, learners document an imaginary trip, create sculpted self-portraits, create a class play, a...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

The Ants Go Marching

For Teachers Pre-K - 1st
Integrate art, math, life science, music, and fun in this beginning addition and subtraction activity. Children kinesthetically represent adding and subtracting numbers to 10; they stand up one at a time as you count forward and sit down...
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Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Create a Music Carnival

For Teachers 2nd
This outstanding lesson will encourage your students to combine their knowledge of rhythm, pitch, tone and color with their imaginations to create original compositions about animals. They create a music carnival to "Peter and the Wolf"...