EXPLORE TIME WITH THEATRE

 

Georgia Standards

 

South Carolina Standards

 

Key Vocabulary

 

Materials

• Time of Day cards (3)
• Beginning, Middle, End cards (3) 
• Visual activity cards 
• Nursery rhyme visuals
• Handout with sections for morning/beginning, afternoon/middle, and night/end
• Crayons or markers
• Pencils

 

Instructional Design

Opening/Activating Strategy

Classroom Tips: This activity works best in an open space with room for students to move. Review audience etiquette and expectations before students perform for their classmates.

 

• Start with a general physical warm-up to get the students' bodies ready. Use exercises such as:
  • Stretching: Stretch all major muscle groups.
  • Shaking Out Limbs: Shake out arms, legs, and the whole body to release tension.
  • Energy Passes: Stand in a circle and pass a clap or a simple motion around to build group focus and energy.
• Explain that students will explore different characters using movement and sound Use simple prompts to get students thinking about different ways to move. Call out various types of characters and ask students to walk around the space embodying those characters. Examples include:
  • A bird searching for a worm to eat
  • A tree blowing in the wind
  • A hungry lion
  • A happy dog
• Next, ask students to add sound to their characters. Allow time for students to move around the room as the characters, using their bodies and voices.
• Have students return to the carpet; ask them to share what it was like to use their voices and bodies to become someone else.

 

Work Session

My Day Play 

• Ask students what comes to their minds when you say the following words: morning, afternoon and night. 
• Ask students what the beginning, middle and end of the day is called (morning, afternoon and night). 
• Display visuals with morning/afternoon/night written on them while discussing that particular time of day. 
• When finished, tape the visuals on the wall to designate that area for that time of day in the following exercise. 
• Ask students to tell you what activities are done at different times of the day.
  • Show visuals of some activities performed at different times of the day. [Note: Have visuals stacked in groups by the three times of the day.]
    • Morning (ex: brushing teeth, sun rising, rooster crowing, eating breakfast, getting on the school bus) 
    • Afternoon (ex: eating lunch in the cafeteria at school, playing outside with friends, getting off the school bus at home) 
    • Night (ex: eating dinner, putting on pajamas, going to bed, looking at the stars) 
• Say to students, “Now we are going to bring these activities to life using sound and movement. When I call out an activity, you will start acting like you are doing it. When I say freeze, you will stop all sound and movement. Ready. Set. Go!”.
  • Call out “eating breakfast” and let the students perform. Follow up with asking what time of day that activity happens. 
  • Repeat the process calling out at least three different activities, one from each of the three times of day. 
  • Ask three students to come to the front of the room. Have each student pick one activity from one of the times of day. All three times of the day should be represented. 
  • Ask each student, one at a time, to show you his/her activity using sound and movement. 
  • Now ask another student to come up and play the director. Ask the director to put the three students in order from beginning, middle and end of the day when the students bring their activity to life. 
  • Continue until every student gets to perform or direct.

 

Story Detectives 

• Tell the students, ”We just talked about our days having a beginning, middle and an end.” 
• Say, “What else in our lives has a beginning, middle and end?”.
  • Trains (front car, middle cars and caboose) 
  • Games (we set them up, play them and then put them away) 
  • School (arrive/bell rings, class/lunch/recess, bell rings/go home) 
• Ask the class, “Do stories that we read and tell have a beginning, middle and end?”.
• Ask the class, “What is a story?” A story usually tells about what happens to someone or something with a beginning, middle and an end. 
• Place the three cards (beginning, middle and end) on the wall. 
• Say, “We can always figure out what happens at the beginning, in the middle and at the end of a story. Are nursery rhymes stories?”. 
• Read “Humpty Dumpty” aloud while holding up a visual: Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty dumpty had a great fall. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again.
  • Read Humpty Dumpty one more time and tell the students to become Humpty by using their bodies and arms. 
• Tell students, “I need some help today. Do you think you could be detectives? What does a detective do? He/she investigates something. I need to find the beginning, middle and end of some nursery rhymes that you might know. We are going to be Beginning, Middle and End Detectives.” 
• Have the students pretend to take out their magnifying glasses and put on their detective hats. 
• Read “Humpty Dumpty” aloud again while holding up the visual of the story.
  • Ask, “What happened at the beginning of the story? Humpty sat on a wall.” 
  • “What happened in the middle of the story? Humpty fell off the wall.” 
  • “What happened at the end of the story? Humpty was broken and could be fixed by his horsemen.” 
• Repeat this process with “Itsy Bitsy Spider” and “Jack and Jill”.
  • Read “Itsy Bitsy Spider” aloud while holding up the visual and follow-up with questions. The Itsy Bitsy Spider went up the waterspout. Down came the rain and washed the spider out. Out came the sun and dried up all the rain, And the Itsy Bitsy Spider went up the spout again. 
  • Read “Jack and Jill” aloud while holding up the visual and follow-up with questions. Jack and Jill went up the hill To fetch a pail of water. Jack fell down and broke his crown And Jill came tumbling after. 
• Ask three students to come to the front of the room. Have each student pick one activity from one of the three parts of the nursery rhyme. All three parts of the story should be represented. 
• Ask each student, one at a time, to show you their activity using sound and movement. 
• Now ask for another student to come up and play the director. Ask the director to put the three students in the order from beginning, middle and end of the nursery rhyme when the students performing the activities come to life. 
• Continue until every student gets to perform or direct.

 

Closing Reflection

• Close the lesson with reflection questions. Ask students to connect the concept of beginning, middle and end to the different parts of the day–morning, afternoon and night. Ask students how our days are like stories. 
• Pass out paper with three sections–morning/beginning, afternoon/middle and night/end. Have students draw and label a picture showing one activity that occurs at each time of day. Have students write a “story” at the bottom of the paper saying what happens at the beginning of the day, what happens at the middle, and what happens at the end of the day.

 

Assessments

Formative

Teachers will assess students’ understanding of the content throughout the lesson by observing students’ participation in the activator, discussion of time of day and parts of a story, participation and contributions in My Day Play and Story Detectives, and conferencing during the writing process.

 

Summative

CHECKLIST

• Students can correctly identify and sequence the activities of the day based on the time that they occur. 
• Students can correctly identify and sequence the beginning, middle and end of simple stories. 
• Students can use their voices and bodies to act out events and characters.

 

DIFFERENTIATION 

Acceleration: Provide students with a story that is out of order. Students will determine the appropriate order and rearrange the story to make logical sense. The student will pick one activity from each section of the story (beginning, middle, and end) to represent and perform through movement.  Remediation: Begin with one nursery rhyme. Provide a sound and movement and encourage students to match it with the correct beginning, middle or end illustration of the nursery rhyme. Discuss student choices. Repeat with each section of the rhyme. Assess students by determining if they can accurately identify the beginning, middle and end of a nursery rhyme by providing the correct movement as the section is read.  ESOL Modifications and Adaptations: Introduce vocabulary and discuss what activities happen for each of the following words: morning, afternoon, night, beginning, middle and end. Have picture cards of different activities that happen during different times of the day. Students can perform the activity as the cards/pictures are shown. For the nursery rhymes, make should they have cards/pictures that illustrate the nursery rhyme for students to put in sequence order. WIDA English Language Proficiency Standards  Standard 1: English language learners communicate for Social and Instructional purposes within the school setting.  Standard 3: English language learners communicate information, ideas, and concepts necessary for academic success in the content area of Mathematics.  Standard 4: English language learners communicate information, ideas, and concepts necessary for academic success in the content area of Science.

 

*This integrated lesson provides differentiated ideas and activities for educators that are aligned to a sampling of standards. Standards referenced at the time of publishing may differ based on each state’s adoption of new standards.

Ideas contributed by: Susie Spear Purcell Modifications, Extensions, and Adaptations Contributed by: Peggy Barnes, Candy Bennett, Lindsey Elrod, Jennifer ​​Plummer, and Vilma Thomas. Updated by: Katy Betts.

Revised and copyright: July 2024 @ ArtsNOW