DRAMA LESSON PLAN - MOVEMENT

Instructor Name(s):
Colleen Trumble

Dr. Hamman Elementary School Classes:

Mrs. Garner’s class and Mrs. Kubik’s class. (Both grade three classes)
Lesson Title:
Making a Story with Movement

Tech Requirements: (list all materials you might need. Include special
materials like balloons and also basic classroom materials like chalkboards).
None

Administrative Notes: (if relevant, include any information needed to share

with the teacher or the class).
• Desks and chairs will have to be moved to the side of the classroom

General Learning Outcome:

Students will explore thoughts, ideas, feelings and experiences

Specific Learning Objectives:

1. Students will illustrate how a certain activity would affect their
movement from the neutral position.
2. Students will construct how a specific emotion or action looks, by
manipulating their classmates body and face via demonstration or
orally.
3. Students will judge how their statue looks compared to the rest of the
other class.
4. Students will create a unique, dramatic movement piece based upon a
story provided.
KSA’S
1) How contextual variables affect teaching and learning.
5) All students can learn, albeit at different rates in different ways
7) Student’s needs for physical, social, cultural and psychological
security
8) Importance of respecting student’s human dignity
9) There are many approaches to teaching and learning
14) The importance of contributing independently and collegially to the
quality of your school
15) The importance of career-long learning
16) The importance of guiding your actions with a personal, overall
vision of the purpose of teaching.
 ACTIVITIES
Name of Exercise: Expected Length: (in minutes)
Imagine if…. 8 minutes
Purpose: (why is this exercise included in the lesson)
To warm up the students and get them thinking about expressing themselves
in a dramatic way, this is a good lead in activity to drama because the
students are doing the activity all together, therefore they are not as self
conscious.
Detailed instructions: (how will this exercise be explained to the group)

The instructor (Colleen) will ask the class to walk around the room, in no
particular shape, just to walk anywhere they see a free space. Let their arms
swing loosely by their sides. Then the instructor will give a specific situation
and the students are to act out this situation until the instructor gives her
magic noise (whoooooop!) Then students return to walking around the room
with their arms swinging by their sides.
Situations:
1) Building a sandcastle on a nice warm beach
2) Trying to cross a creek by stepping on slippery rocks
3) Walking barefoot across a very hot desert. The sand is burning your feet
4) You just received a surprise package in the mail, what is it? What will
you do with the item in your surprise package?

Name of Exercise: Expected Length: (in minutes)

Activity Sculptures 10 minutes
Purpose: (why is this exercise included in the lesson)
To help students listen to each other and to become more aware of their
bodies and the messages they can convey with a simple pose.

Detailed instructions: (how will this exercise be explained to the group)

• The instructors will divide the class into pairs (numbering them off
randomly).
• Ask each person in the pair to choose either A or B. A’s will start off this
activity by being the sculptor and B’s will be the living statue.
• Instructors will then give students an activity (watching TV, playing
soccer, farming and homework) and the students must mold their
partner into this emotion by either demonstrating what they want their
statue partner to do, or telling their partner.
• They will have 30 seconds, and after this the instructors will yell
“Freeze” and the statues must freeze exactly where they are and hold
 their position.
• Instructors will then invite the sculptors to take a quick walk around the
room and look at the other statues.
• Then the students will switch, so the student who was the statue
becomes the sculptor and vice versa.
• Instructors will then give their students a new activity (swinging a
baseball bat, gardening, walking your dog, playing video games), and
the students must mold their partner into this emotion by either
demonstrating what they want their statue partner to do or telling their
partner.
• In 30 seconds the instructors will yell freeze and the statues must
freeze.
• Then the sculptors will be invited to take a quick walk around the room
to admire their classmates work.

Name of Exercise: Expected Length: (in minutes)

A Tree Grows 8 minutes
Purpose: (why is this exercise included in the lesson)
So students can learn how to use their bodies, and movement to tell a story,
encouraging the fact that not all stories need to be told with speaking.

Detailed instructions: (how will this exercise be explained to the group)

• First the instructor will tell students to find their own personal space in
the classroom
• Then the instructor will tell the class to listen very carefully to what she
is saying, and to act out what she is saying, but just using their bodies
and not their voices.
• The instructor will now tell the following story:
• Everyone find your own personal space on the floor and make yourself
as small as possible.
• You are an apple seed, crammed tightly into your hard seed pod, and
buried under the cold ground. It is winter, and you are barely awake.
Above you, snow covers the ground. It is totally dark under the ground.
• Now it is spring. The earth around you is growing a little warmer, and
you start to feel more awake. The snow above you melts and the water
soaks into the earth around you. It feels good. The earth feels warmer,
and you seem to be able to pull energy out of the soil.
• It is time to come out of your seed pod. You feel strong and energetic.
Using all your strength, you push up against your seed pod and break
through, like a bird breaks out of the egg. You reach upwards into the
warm earth with your tendrils. The earth around you is moist, and you
soak in the life-giving moisture. You don't know why, but you know you
want to push upwards.
• Finally, with one great push, you emerge from the soil and see, for the
 first time, the SUN!
• The sun's energy flows into you and you feel stronger and stronger. You
stretch upwards and outwards until you are a healthy seedling. The
gentle spring rains nourish and refresh you. Just take a moment to
enjoy it.
• (Take a longer pause here.)
• Now let's move ahead a few years. You have grown into a strong young
sapling--a tree about the size of a young person. You have beautiful
green leaves that soak up the sun and make you strong. But you want
to grow taller. You want to be a tree. So you summon all your energy
and you push out and up. As the years go by you become a strong,
handsome apple tree. You stand proud in the sun and enjoy your own
strength and beauty.
• Now it is fall. You have grown succulent, nourishing apples all over your
strong branches. The apples contain seeds which might someday
become new apple trees. The apples are heavy. Your branches are
strong, but there are so many apples. You feel weighed down. You feel
as if your branches might break.
• Here come some children. You can't talk to them, but you know they
are coming for the apples. They have bushel baskets. They are
laughing and singing. The children pick your apples, and your branches
feel light. You know they will take them away and eat them. You know
they will throw away the seeds, and that some of those seeds might
grow to be new apple trees.
• Almost all of your apples are gone. But you know you will grow more
next year. You feel grateful to those children. You hope they will enjoy
the apples.
• (Take a longer pause here.)

• Now it is winter. All of your leaves have fallen. But you know you will
grow more next spring. Now it is time to rest. You rest.
Name of Exercise: Expected Length: (in minutes)
Atom (SPONGE ACTIVITY) N/A
Purpose: (why is this exercise included in the lesson)
If there is time left over, this exercise will be a fun way to end the class. Since
this class is taking the place of a gym class, it is a game that is more physical
and movement based, however it does have dramatic elements because it
relies upon focus and listening to others.

Detailed instructions: (how will this exercise be explained to the group)

• Walk around the room randomly, arms width away from everyone else
• Walk in random patterns, no circles!
• Instructor (Colleen) will call out “Atom…..then add any number between
1 and 10”
 • You must get into groups of that number. Anyone without a group will sit
quietly to the side.
• Numbers will keep getting called out until there are two people left.
They will share the winners circle.

Comments/Observations/Reflect
ion