Curated OER
Make a Book Into a Movie
Turn your high schoolers into casting directors with this lesson, which focuses on turning a class novel into a movie. Choosing the cast for a movie based on a class reading, as well as designing a poster for the movie, helps young...
Curated OER
Teaching Acting Technique and Building a Character Through Cinema
Students review the style techniques related to the American Method Acting and practice using them in groups. Using various scenes from films, they try to recreate the scene using props. In groups, they discover the proper way to get...
Missouri Department of Elementary
The Clique
Mean girls and bully packs are favorite topic for films and TV shows that focus on the destructive power of cliques. High school freshmen are asked to reflect on both the positive and negative aspects of cliques by reading a short...
Curated OER
That's Moor Like It!
How do modern adaptations of Shakespearean plays relate to their original source material? Middle and high schoolers focus on Shakespeare's play Othello and its screen adaptation "O" to explore how modern film adaptations of Shakespeare...
Curated OER
Lesson: Urs Fischer: Your Choice: Reality or Illusion?
Young analysts write a comparative essay, but about what? They compose a paper based on several critical discussion about reality and illusion, and how both are blurred in art. They analyze several theatre pieces that exemplify Brechtian...
Curated OER
Minorities in Mainstream American Society
So many people fought for Civil Rights in the United States. Read about the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and discuss what the act guarantees. Then pass out a slew of magazines and encourage them to observe how often minorities appear in...
Curated OER
Lesson Plan 13: Character Interviews on NaNoTV
Kids love to pretend. Use this imaginative energy to develop their understanding of characterization. Class members dress up as a character from their novel-writing project and sit for a filmed interview. In responding to questions about...
VH1
Lesson 4: Behind the Movie Chicago
The elements of music and journalistic integrity in one lesson; What could be better? The class discusses journalistic approaches to better understand responsible reporting versus sensationalism. They watch the Act One from the film...
Curated OER
Bullying and Homophobia
Having difficulty in class broaching controversial issues? This lesson offers several linked online tools to get students engaged in discussion about bullying and homophobia. Coastkid.org offers an interactive scenario activity, which...
Curated OER
Creating and Using a Checklist of Performance Techniques to Critique and Find the "Message" in Mass Media Performances
Students analyze and critique theater events by evaluating and constructing meanings from improvised and scripted scenes and from theater, film, television, and electronic media productions.
Curated OER
Putting the Sitcom into Perspective
Students identify and compare similar characters and situations in stories and dramas from and about various cultures, illustrate with classroom dramatizations, and discuss how theater reflects life.
Curated OER
Portrait of a Place, Portrait of a Family
Learners act out stories based on lives of famous people from Harlem. In this memoirs activity, students compare the life of the people in Harlem in 1930 to the people of today. Learners explore how "home" is different for different...
Curated OER
Christmas Present Simple Present Continuous Mimes
In this performing acts worksheet, students, working with a partner, choose one of twenty-eight actions to mime for their partner and see if they can say the sentence of what their partner is doing.
Curated OER
Restaging Julius Ceasar
High schoolers engage in a lesson looking at a major scene of a Shakespeare play. They assume the role play of being the director and apply problem solving skills in order to conduct the scene. Others must switch roles and take on the...
Curated OER
Confronting Genocide
High schoolers discover what the term genocide means and are assigned to groups to reasearch an act of genocide in order to answer each question from their worksheet. They then compare their results making special notes of patterns they...
Curated OER
Final Performance of a Play
Second graders study theatre by designing a play, studying actors, and work in partners to create a story to perform. In this theatre study lesson, 2nd graders discuss theatre as live theatre, television, film, and radio. Students act...
Curated OER
Thunderbirds: Forces
Students investigate the concepts of thrust and how rockets are launched into the air. They watch a clip of the television show Thunderbirds, and draw a basic diagram of the Thunderbird ships, labeling it with arrows to identify the...
Curated OER
Fairy Tales
Class groups examine fairy tales from a feminist and a Marxist perspective, identifying how these tales present gender roles and class/power systems. The groups then script and perform their own tale that uses one of these lenses.
Curated OER
Fit To Fat Family
Students become a TV production team whose mission it is to turn the fittest family in the UK into the unhealthiness one. Students illustrate the importance of exercise. Students understand what bad habits such as smoking and drinking do...
Curated OER
Twelfth Night
In this Twelfth Night worksheet, students complete a love triangle from Act One, underline words that describe Sir Toby, answer four questions about characters, and look at the relationship between two characters. Students answer twelve...
Curated OER
Advertising Project
Students use word processing software to create slogans for products. They write their own jingles and create their own packaging for products they design. Then they write and act out their own television commercials for their products.
Curated OER
Antonio's Story
Eleventh graders put a human face on the refugee experience to help them empathize. They are given an "virtual" introduction to Antonio, which gives students insights into the life of refugees in Canada and around the world. Pupils...
Curated OER
Gender Roles: Exposing Stereotypes
A series of activities help middle- and high-schoolers identify and explore gender stereotypes and how they can lead to violence and abuse. Use think-pair-share to activate whole class brainstorming about what it means to "be a man" and...
Curated OER
Images, Empathy, and the Humanitarian Impulse
Students study humanitarian intervention and its role in society. In this politics instructional activity students view a video on Darfur and discuss what they learned.