Teach Reading and Writing Issue 19

www.teachwire.net | 61 Sam is a former drama teacher at schools and youth theatres. She is the author of 100 Acting Exercises for 8–18-Year-Olds (£16.99, Bloomsbury). the character’s objectives. This can be done on a per sentence, per scene, or whole-story basis. According to Stanislavski there are two types of objectives: the objective and the super objective. The objective is the want in the scene, or sentence. The super objective is the character’s main want – their life ambition perhaps – or the overarching desire that drives the story . Opinions may vary on what a character’s objective and super objective are, which is all part of the fun when investigating a text together. You can ask your class to share parts of the text that support their argument. You can also split students into pairs and ask them to create an improvisation from objectives. For example, if you’re studying Alice in Wonderland , you could ask them to create an improvisation with Alice and the White Rabbit. Give the actor playing Alice the objective of trying to get home. The actor playing the White Rabbit is running late, and their objective is to arrive for a job for the Duchess. You can give the pairs five minutes to come up with an improvisation, and then ask them to share with the rest of the class, if they feel comfortable doing so. Hot seating To help students get into the minds of the characters you’re studying, you can try hot seating. Place a chair (the hot seat) in front of the class. Ask for a volunteer to sit on the hot seat, and task them with thinking of a character from the book, or script, you are working on. Then ask them to try and think of all the character’s given circumstances, including their age, name, job (if they have one), place that they live, their friends, family, likes, dislikes, fears and wants. Explain to the child that they can make up some of this information if it has not been given in the text. Now, in character, the improviser answers questions from the audience. If they don’t know the answer to a question, they can make up an answer, or say, “I don’t know”. The audience can ask any questions they like; see the character sheet template for ideas. If you think some children might need a little more support before jumping into this, together as a class you can put together information about characters from the text you’re working on. You can write each character on the board and under their name list their given circumstances, wants, fears, habits, relationships, and so on. Explain to pupils that it’s okay for the same character to be played and hot seated more than once and that different interpretations are exciting! I hope these ideas help make your literacy lessons a bit more lively... Action! Name: Age: Where do you live? What’s your bedroom like if you have one? Have you had any life changing events? If yes, what happened and how did it change you? Who do you have significant relationships with? Who’s your favourite person? Who’s your least favourite person? If you had three wishes, what would you wish for? What do you most want from life? What scares you the most? What’s your life philosophy in a nutshell? CHARACTER SHEET T E ACH I NG T E CHN I QUE S