Final Visit!

Having had a great chance to interact with such a great class, I was able to help them put together a work of narrative pantomime that I hope to get the video for soon! I apologize for the delay!

The video will speak for itself, but each student was assigned to a civilization like the Mayans or Aztecs or to a specific explorer. We had Monday class (12/1/14) to rehearse, and Wednesday (12/3/15) the students put it up. I narrated the action starting with the first people in the Americas and passing on down to the Norse Explorers who temporarily invaded Greenland but were pushed out. Then time passed and Spain became a nation united under Isabella and Ferdinand. Due to this expansion and much fighting between Portugal and Spain, many explorers sailed the world looking for new passages and new lands. Eventually, England joined the fray along with France and Italy. The results were life changing for everyone within the sound of my blog.

The students did a great job and had a chance to reflect on their work and what social studies means to them. I am incredibly grateful to Lindsey Pettibone for her feedback and the chance to work with her students. They're a wonderful class!

Visit 7 11/25

Often, we don't have words to adequately describe the things that happen, or have happened. This is especially true when attempting to keep a historical record of the things that have happened. Many of the most important people who have lived historically didn't think of themselves as remarkable historical figures that people would be certain to remember for generations to come. So occasionally, we have to simply draw on other information to give us clues to what we're seeing!

In drama we call the work of storytelling without words Pantomime. I began class with a very sore throat and had to have a volunteer read for me what I needed to say from a power point because I didn't have a voice. They read through a series of instructions that enabled the students to understand that we were going to play a game involving a magic box. Inside this box, each student would reach in and pull out an object. The objects could be big, small, animate or not, but they had to interact silently with it until other students could guess what it was. We went around the circle with each student pulling out a variety of things from food, to animals, to books, games, more magic boxes, and so forth!

When the students finished, I finally spoke. My voice was weak, but I could talk a little. I indicated to the students that artifacts we find are often indicators of what the explorers may have done. I asked the students to think for a moment about the explorer that they had been assigned to be. Where had they come from? What were they famous for? What did they do? Then we played the magic box game again and enabled the students to pull things out pertaining to their specific historical figures. Some of these were really difficult, and others were a little more simple, but it caused the students to ask some great questions about what was happening with their explorers, and what they may have had.

There's no visit Thursday due to the Thanksgiving Holiday.

Visits 5 and 6 11/ 18 and 11/20

It's amazing sometimes the things we do or do not know about those closest to us. For example, do you know which of the people living near you have broken a bone? What about those who don't like chocolate? Does anyone share the same crazy fear of Chimpanzees that you do?

Part of the reason we don't know these things is because it's hard to ask! Theater has a lot to do with learning to interact with other people, and if not for the ability to interact, many of the great explorations would never have happened! Columbus had to tell SOMEONE what he found; and for that matter, he had to talk to someone in order to get ships to go, too!

This was one of those activities that I thought would fit into one day, and ended up stretching to two. The students in a previous lesson about trying to identify things about characters had tried to guess anything they could infer about me. They tried to guess my age (ranging from 19 to 72 with lots of in between), favorite color, and favorite school subject. They stated something which they knew about me from things that I'd said before like my adoration of the Sacramento Kings basketball team, the fact that I go to BYU, and my being married. Then they stated some things they could tell just from seeing me like the color of my shirt, the fact that I was indeed wearing pants, and the fact that I had glasses which they thought meant either I was really smart or that I couldn't see very well. Some of those things were true, and some were not, but we built off that idea to have the students get to know one another better. They went out into the Kiva and were instructed to have dialogues like this:

Chris: "Hi! I'm Chris, it's nice to meet you. What's your name?"
Megan: "Hi Chris, I'm Megan. Nice to meet you. Can I ask you a question?"
Chris: "Sure!"
Megan: "My greatest fear is spiders. Are you afraid of spiders?"
Chris: "No, I'm not, but I am afraid of big dogs."

Megan would then respond about her fear, or ask another question. If she couldn't find something to relate to with Chris, and vice versa they would simply part with a well wishing. If they could, they were to sign one another's signature sheets.

The students went to town on this, and by the end, each student had as full a sheet as they could obtain. I filled one out, too, and was able to keep modeling for the students what to look for. Sometimes students ran into problems. "What if no one wants to be the same thing as me when they grow up?" or "What if no one is shorter than me?" At that point, students were told that that's an important thing to understand relating to history, and so they simply did what they could.

All of this was to model the pattern they were to do for famous explorers, which was our Thursday class work. Each of them was given a sheet with facts, a picture and maps of famous explorers' explorations. They read through them, and I helped answer questions about any words they were unfamiliar with like "Conquistadors" "Adhered" "Tenochtitlan" and "Catholicism."

Then the students were off to the races to introduce and meet other famous explorers, or people crucial to the explorations in similar ways. We had royalty, explorers who succeeded, explorers with much less success, and speakers for the nations to help paint the picture of what each nation really wanted.

Overall, the students learned lots. I could have prepared better and given the students tangible things to help them connect better with their explorers, or encouraged the use of accents. Another suggestion from Doug Allen, BYU Arts Bridge coordinator, was the idea of using music from the period to help set the tempo for their conversations with one another.

All in all, these explorers were able to find and understand the role of financial backers, discover that the English were considered Pirates by many and that the Portuguese and Spanish had the idea that everyone who didn't worship the way they did was a Savage (ba-dum-tsh!) and that the not everyone involved in the explorations was an explorer. Smart kids asked smart questions and made great connections.

Going forward these fine young people are going to be doing some heavier drama work to help them create a short presentation about the explorations. Parents will be invited. Feel free to contact me or Lindsey Pettibone for more questions.

Until Next time!

P.S.

Below are the sheets that they filled out to learn!

Someone Born in My Same Month.	Someone who doesn’t like chocolate.	Someone who was born out of Utah.	Someone who is taller than me.
Someone who has read a book I haven’t read.	Someone who has broken a bone.	Someone who has the same favorite school subject as me.	Someone who is the youngest in their family.
Someone who is afraid of the same thing as me.	Someone who likes BYU more than U of U.	Someone who is shorter than me.	Someone who wants to be the same thing as me when they grow up.
Someone who wants to be the same thing as me when they grow up.	Someone who likes U of U more than BYU.	Someone who has been somewhere I’ve never been.	Someone who likes cats

Someone From the Same Country As Me	Someone From A country my country is fought with (in real history)	Someone who was a pirate.	Someone who never sailed across an ocean
Someone who is probably Catholic	Someone who died on a journey / sea voyage	Someone who sailed with a family member.	Someone who saw part of the world my person never saw
Someone who got to the new world before me	Someone who got to the new world after me	Someone who was a financial backer of someone else	Someone who was a “speaker” for a country I’m not from
Someone Uneducated	Someone who sailed farther than me	Someone who sailed for my country, but wasn’t from the same country.	Someone who attacked other people

Visit 4 11/13

“That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you're not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.” 
― F. Scott Fitzgerald

This quote represents the fundamental issue of both Drama and Social Studies. Everyone wants something. Wanting something is almost never inherently a good or a bad thing. What cost people are willing to pay, however, that's another story.

Our lesson today began with a prime example of someone chasing something that they are unlikely to ever obtain. There's a character with whom many within the sound of this blog will be familiar with, and that is Mr. Wile E. Coyote. His objective, or what he wants, has always been the same. He wants to catch and eat the Roadrunner. While his tactics, or the way he goes about seeking for his objective, may change, the goal always remains the same. I showed students the first couple minutes of the following video. 

After each failed attempt of the Coyote, I asked the students to identify his tactics, how they failed, and what might be a better way to go about it. We also discussed the roadrunner. The Roadrunner's objective was not only avoiding being eaten, but was to bother the coyote for doing so. His tactics then had to meet more than one objective at a time. The time when he ducks the rock to let the Coyote take the brunt of it is a good example of this. 

Then we got into a much trickier subject. With some better planning on my part this might not have been such a leap, but I trusted the students to put their thinking caps on and learn from the work they'd done so far.

I reminded the students that they'd represented five different nations the week before. Each nation had some kind of objective, and used some tactics. So I started out by asking what the different nations wanted in that period of history. The students weren't quite sure how to answer, so I asked more leading questions such as, "What did the famous exploerers do?" and "What were they looking for?" This led the students discuss some of the motives from the end of our lesson on 11/6.

Some of the students grasped it, but I wanted to help all the students really get a handle on it, so I asked the students to imagine that they had all come from the countries that they had been assigned to before, and they discovered a new land full of all the things they could want as a country. What things in this new land could there be to help them? Students offered up answers like "Gold" "Land for growing food" "Spices" and some other natural resources. In an effort to guide students towards other things that may be of interest to a nation, I asked the students what had caused the Native Americans to be defeated and they pointed out that  diseases and differences in technology had been a big problem for them. So I drew the picture on the right, and divided the land and resources amongst the different nations. Some had all the gold. Others had all the medicine, but little land, and so on. I asked each group to consider what their greatest need as a nation was, and what what they could do to obtain what they wanted. In other words, I helped them see that they as a group could have an objective, and as a nation they could use tactics to try to obtain what they wanted. At this point the students were very excited and came up with a wide variety of plans. They sent forth ambassadors to a great conference to share their plans with one another. 

The Native Americans had spices and a lot of land, but what they decided was most important to them as a group was Gold, which was held by the Portuguese. They figured that if they waited long enough the Portuguese would get tired of eating gross food, or may even starve from not eating, and so they could charge extreme prices for their spices and food. However if they refused to pay they would simply attack them when they were weak.

The Vikings had by far the most land, and the best quality of land. They determined they would trade with everyone but the Spanish and give up some land for some better resources, or do land swaps. 

The Portuguese proposed trades with everyone but wouldn't offer good prices to many people. 

The United Kingdom couldn't come to a conclusion and so they divided their Kingdom (fitting for who they represented) and came up with two plans. The Northern Kingdom decided to declare war on everyone since they had the best medicine, and had been notorious pirates in their home land, and figured they would beat anyone else. The Southern Kingdom was far less blood thirsty and simply wanted to be able to move into other Kingdoms and be doctors and nurses with their medicine. Then they could have more land by spreading out, but also help others. 

Finally, the Spanish who held the technology, wanted Gold and lots of it, so they offered peace to everyone but portugal and threatened to invade unless they were given most of their gold. 

Below is a chart of how the different nations responded to the proposals of the others.

Clearly, there were some differences of opinion. No one was approved of by more than 60% of the other nations, though most countries were ok with Spain invading Portugal. Tough crowd. This led to a short chat about how our choices are perceived by others. 

Until Next Time!

Visit 3 11/11

Hello!

This is going to be a bit of a shorter of a post. It's been a whirlwind november for me. That said, today's lessons were about students putting on their detective hats and understanding how historians learn the things they learn. Sometimes they look at people and  can tell what age their from based on what they are wearing in their pictures. They may even be able to tell what socio-economic status they are, what profession they had, or what part of the world they are from.

However pictures or paintings are not always available. Often historians have to read the first hand accounts or listen to the stories of people who were there. We have many documentaries based on first hand accounts of historical events like wars, movements, discoveries and inventions.

Other times, however, they simply have to try to look at the big picture and the story of what's already known, and then draw inferences from what they have learned from other historians.

The amazing thing about the world of theater is that it tries to do the very same things. Theatre today often tries to tell the stories in as realistic a way as they can come up with. They try to re-create what was done in the past, what they think it looked like, or if talking about another time, they must try and find ways to show that what is being shown on stage or in film is from another time.

As such, I gave the students the chance to do a little investigative work on a short part of the story "To Kill a Mocking Bird." There's a scene in which a "mad" dog is coming down the street and Atticus is called in to shoot the dog in order to protect the town.  In order to help the students try and understand the setting which "To Kill a Mockingbird" takes place, I showed them the following images from a film version of the story.

I asked the students to tell me what they thought about the people in the pictures. Were they wealthy or poor? What time period did they live? Were they all from the same place? Where was that place? Did they know each other? Were they family?  Some students had read the book or seen the movie and had an advantage -- something that also relates well to social studies. The students took their conclusions and  then took a 2 page cutting of the script to read in small groups. The students worked together to try and learn more about their own characters and the story on the whole through using a different medium of information.

Had time permitted I'd have read that chapter in the book as well, but as it did not, I asked students to think about how we could learn things in history this way. The insights the students shared, as usual were insightful and interesting. I think the students got a good grasp on seeing how characters and real people are both expressed in what they do and say, and what we see from them.

Until next time!

Visit 2 11/6

 Hello Again!

My first experience doing Drama was in fifth grade, and was actually with a social studies project about the discovery of the Americas. My teacher asked if any of us wanted to volunteer to go down to an assembly wherein we could be given a few lines about the discovery and exploration of America. Three of us were chosen; one as a viking who wore a big coat and a horned hat, another who wore a headdress and animal skins over his shoulders, and finally, me, a young Christopher columbus wearing purple pants, a 1400's hat, and a great big smile. I hoped to incorporate some of the ideas about how we can understand the order in which the explorers came to the Americas.

Interview with "Portugal"

We started our lesson on this day by playing the game "Red Light/Green Light" in teams. The students lined up and as I called out Green Light and faced away from them, the first person in line from their team got the chance to run and try to get to me. The team that made it first was dubbed the "Native Americans" and their captain was Moctezuma, the leader of the Aztec nation at the team of their conquer. The second team, representing the second group known to reach the new world, was the the Norse Vikings led by Erik the Red. Christopher Columbus led the way for the third team, Spain. Pedro Alvarez de Cabral and John Cabot finished up respectively finding what is modern day Brazil and Canada for Portugal and England. 

Vikings Banish Erik the Red

These captains then led their crews back into the class where we interviewed each crew about something they'd read about their nation and leading explorer. The interviews involved introducing important points in the history of their people, or plot points for their part of our story, and then seeing how the stories all fit together.

I led these brave explorers back into the Kiva (open area outside their classrooms) where each nation sat together to form an audience. I then narrated the earliest people (represented by the Native Americans) who researchers believe came across a land bridge from asia into the north American continent. These people walked down, and set up establishments, but spread out and ended up fighting somewhat with one another over time. The students spread through the "Western Hemisphere" and made angry gestures at one another to represent this part of history. 

English drinking their tea
before their voyage West

We then had the Norse Vikings Kick out Erik the Red for Killing someone, (seen right) where he then others from Scandinavia over to Greenland after his exile. We explained that the vikings looked to create settlements, but eventually were driven away by the Natives of those new colonies. Then we fast forwarded a few hundred years to where those Scandinavians are out of the exploration picture and the Natives of the "New World" were still doing their own thing. 

Queen Isabella (Right) and King Ferdinand (Left) are examples of people who wanted to expand their power and influence by exploration.

Queen Isabella (Right) and King Ferdinand
(Left) are examples of people who wanted
to expand their power and influence by
exploration.

Along came a man called Christopher Columbus who had a little bit of sailing experience and wanted to find better trade routes by sea. He petitioned to the King and Queen of Spain, who gave him three boats and they sailed off for what they thought was the East Indies. Ferdinand and Isabella stayed behind as the rest of the Spanish Fleet went in search of better trade routes, when they arrived the Spanish announced "India, we've found you at last!" The Natives didn't know what they were talking about, but they did trade with them, and this began several other Nations exploring the New World. Portugal sailed further south, and the English sailed further North, but each crew found new things, bullied the Natives a little, and then the narrative ended.

At this point, the students were full of excitement and questions. We had an excellent dialogue about what motivated the explorers and their backers to to what they did. Students asked questions like "Why did the explorers want more land?" And "Why did they fight when they got there?" Often I would turn these responses back to the students themselve and enable their peers to teach and share with them. It should be a shock to no reader of this blog that these are a very bright bunch of fifth graders. 

Until Next time!

Visit 1: Story Time

Fifth graders are some of the most interesting people on the planet. It's true. The examples in Miss Pettibone's class are no exception to this rule.

Before I dive right into what the great stories were that we created together, I want to take a minute to high light how impressive this class was to me. First, there was little to no hesitation that I saw from the students in our activities. That's huge. It shows an eagerness to learn and a willingness to jump right in. In life, in theater and in school we learn most often by doing and seeing if things worked out the way we hoped they would. This class of students wasn't afraid of anything. Secondly, they were exceptionally respectful and responsive to their teacher. She didn't have to be overbearing, or angry, and they worked hard through the end of class, stayed on task, worked kindly, and were overall very responsive. Good parents + Good teachers = Great kids, and that's just what I saw. It was excellent.


Ok! So, I walked in and gathered the students in a circle after introducing myself. I drew the image on the left hereon the white board and asked if they could fill it out. They did a great job identifying rising and falling action, the climax, the introduction and the end. I introduced the idea of an "inciting incident" which helps the story begin. Ask your student to explain more about  this. They're bright kids.

I had the students give me two adjectives and two nouns to fill in a mad lib of "The (adj) (noun) and it's trouble with a/the/an (adj) (noun)." One of our stories was "The Smiley Slug and it's trouble with the Disturbing Car."  I gave an opening sentence and the students were to follow with a sentence of their own starting with either "fortunately" or "unfortunately". The story started with, "One day, the smiley slug woke up and wanted breakfast." Next to me, a student said, "Unfortunately, the slug got eaten by a tiger!" Through a series of incidents the slug was taken from the jaws of death, literally sometimes, and then found itself in more trouble. By the end, it did get breakfast, but then it died. We did this activity once more to help the students really connect with the ideas of plot structure and Miss Pettibone did an excellent job side coaching to help students stay on course and find solutions to problems with the stories. Then the groups broke out and made their own stories which they performed for the class. These included "The Hoppy Turtle and it's trouble with the Silent Killers," "The Fluffy Dog and it's trouble with a ferocious donkey," "The three interesting brothers and their trouble with a troublesome sister," "The two dogs and their trouble with other magical creatures" and one more that is slipping my mind at the moment.

Finally, when the beautiful performances were completed, we took time to discuss if this kind of thing happened in real life, or if it was only in stories. We came to the conclusion that some details only happen in stories like witches turning dogs into hot dogs, or Captain America fighting with dinosaurs. However, a time line of events often looks much like a plot line of a story. We talked about how in World War II, Hitler rose to power and decided he wanted to take over the world (Intro) and started with the invasion of Poland in September of 1939 (Inciting Incident). Then many battles took place, countries were conquered and big events like Pearl Harbor changed the whole climate of the war until the climax of Hilter Surrendering and Japan Surrendering after bombs were dropped. The falling action was the results of the events of the war, and what has happened since become both their own "stories" and resolutions to that story.

Next time, we are planning to introduce the students to the major players or characters who are participating the colonization of America. That may end up taking two visits, but we'll see how it goes.

Until Next Time!