A Lesson Idea to Share

24 September 2004 12:02 pm

I yell at the kids more often during this period, but only to make them settle down and be a good audience.

It's that time of the year when the Secondary One students present A Midsummer Night's Dream for their Literature project.

I'm very proud of this project. It was my idea and I've been running it since 2001. It's one of those assignment ideas that's a 100% win-win situation. The kids enjoy doing it, and teachers will find grading the project quick and painless. You kill 12 or 13 birds with one stone.

Here's how the A Midsummer Night's Dream project works.

  1. There are 40 kids in every class (this is the norm in a Singapore public school). I split each class into 3 groups, so I get a 13-13-14 split.
  2. Each group becomes a theatre company and has to perform a scene (a different one for each group) from the play. I have the scripts already written for them, adapted from an excellent book by Fredi Olster and Rick Hamilton, which translates Shakespeare's English into the vernacular without taking away the essence of his language.
  3. Each group member is assigned a role. 6-7 actors (depending on the script), 1 director, 1 light & sound manager, 2-3 costume managers, 2-3 prop managers. I have found this to be the best distribution of roles. In drama projects before MND we made every kid act and the results were awful, not to mention torturous for painfully shy kids. Having non-acting roles allows these kids to contribute meaningfully in other areas, and the result will be as close a micro imitation of a theatre company production as 13-year-olds can present, complete with actors, sets/props, costumes, and sound and lighting effects.
  4. As the teacher, I oversee all the groups' rehearsals. I help the directors with blocking, suggest costume ideas, instruct prop managers to make/procure objects as props, and familiarise the light/sound managers with the lighting system in the AVA Theatre, the venue for their production. Meanwhile the actors start memorising their lines.
  5. In 2-3 weeks, the groups should be ready to perform. If I have 3 weeks to spare, the third week becomes the full-dress rehearsal and final performance week. Each performance lasts 10 minutes, so it is easy to fit in all the performances within a lesson (45 minutes).
  6. Within those 10 minutes, you assess everyone in that group simultaneously. You watch the actors, but take note of the lighting, check out the costumes and props, and see how the characters are arranged on stage. It's a task that's quite challenging, but if you've had 2-3 rounds of rehearsals, you would be familiar with all the performanaces and would know what to look out for when you're assessing them.
  7. If I have time, I hold an awards ceremony a la the Oscars to recognise students or groups who have excelled in their various roles. I have only managed to do this once. Usually it's a mad rush to prepare the kids for the upcoming exams immediately after the performances.

Managing students in a project like this can be stressful. The actors get all excited about working outside the classroom (we use the school hall for non-dress rehearsals) and they goof around, while the props and costumes people are always accusing one another of not doing work, and arguing that something is a costume rather than a prop and vice-versa. Meanwhile the director (if ill-selected by the group members) isn't always clear about his/her role and sometimes thinks that his/her job is just to get the rest to work. I have to breathe down the directors' necks to make sure they are blocking each scene, and I have to be alert and know if a scene is blocked differently the second and third time round (indicating a lack of system, and the director's head on a plate for my lunch, muahahahahaha). But all this is good stress because I see how enthusiastic the kids are in the end, even if they started out reluctant and uncertain. And when I think about the fact that they're doing Shakespeare, these kids who would otherwise not choose to speak English in their daily interactions with friends, I feel happy. For students of my school, getting them interested and motivated about Literature, and about Shakespeare at that, is an achievement.

Projects like this one, my pet project, make teaching fun for me.

<< | >>

Older entries
Ramadan - 08 October 2006
Where I Have Been - 03 October 2006
Baby Talk - 10 August 2006
6 Weeks of Separation - 16 July 2006
Unacceptable Rudeness - 21 June 2006