Welcome to your class portfolio!! The purpose of this site is to show CAPE the development of your arts integration partnership, as guided by your big idea and inquiry question. 

Make sure you have the following:

1. Planning Form: You must fill out the planning form by February 15th

2. Evaluation: Upload your pre/post/mid assessment findings

3. Reflection Questions: Make sure you have your reflection questions filled out for each semester

4. Class Documentation: Include your best documentation with captions. Note about videos: upload videos to your designated folder (click on link here), and then embed the video on this page by clicking "Drive" (under "Insert") on the right-hand side menu, then selecting your video from that folder under "Shared with me." 

IMPORTANT: 

• Please do not edit any other pages other than this, your class' page!

• Please make sure that all media that you upload only displays students whose parents have given consent to their documentation through the signed Media Release Form. Should you upload images of a student who has not given their consent to be documented, please make sure to blur their face.

What is the context of your students, families, school, school neighborhood, or classroom that informed your class focus? Please include a specific example of how you brought that context to a project/ activity!

We had the pleasure of working with a small class of 4th-6th graders.  Since the program started late and we had some students with inconsistent attendance we were wanting a focus that allowed for each day to be unique and not have extended projects.  We also wanted to support language learners and students with different learning needs by avoiding too much dependence on higher level linguistic skills.   Thus we chose to focus on Improvisation and using improvisation with short video projects made in the moment and completed in one day.  As these students were young and some had language or processing issues, so although the improv was not in the moment they used the skills of improv but with the scaffold of a short planning period and support of the adults. 

Describe your class focus: which art and non-art (academic, SEL, cultural, etc) content did you integrate into your project(s)?

The class was built on community building and improovisation.  We started each class with a doodling time and a community cirlcle.  This allowed for focus and a collaborative spirit.  This basis then led to game playing and challenges.  We had students use the improv skills through a variety of challenges.  Team work, story elements, and "yes. and" were some of the key content of the class. 

What did you learn about how you teach?

Each day, Dana and I would plan a bit before class time on the focus for the day. Sometimes we were working on longer projects, and sometimes the day would be filled with improvisation and game playing.  We worked in tandem to come up with our plans. And, yes, sometimes, we improvised our lesson plans. We were attempting to create a space of JOY where the students could explore their emotions, thoughts, and creativity via the theater.  Costumes, puppets, improvisational skits, theater games, sketching, and conversation were all fair game for getting our students to transition from the regular school day into the theater space of the after-school classroom. Students were encouraged to explore, but the teachers also helped focus their activities. Toward the end of our time together, Dana and I noticed that the students were teaching each other the skills of improv we had been working on: body, mind, imagination, storytelling, agreement on stage....

Look back at your planning form and the skills you listed out that students would learn– provide an example of a project you did with students and how it developed some of those skills

Students utilized basic improv skills to create theater boxes (small stages) where they made a short script, rehearsed, designed scenery, produced a brief play with puppets, and then edited their show. Here, they used all the tenets of the improv theater and went beyond creating fantastical 'locations' in front of which they presented their original works. This skill was transferred to using their bodies in front of a green screen to improvise short scenes with often hilarious results. By the time the students were using the green screen, Dana and I could see how they had wholeheartedly embraced the improvisational skills we had been teaching. 

ABOVE: A student works through a gesture game, and a teacher assists a student with the tenets of the Viola Spolin improv technique. See the bottom of this document for a quick overview of this theory. 

TOP: Students sketched and created clay figures for their theater puppet dioramas. 

“My vision is a world of accessible intuition.”

— Viola Spolin

Biography

Viola spolin 

November 7, 1906 to November 22, 1994

Viola Spolin was an actress, educator, director, author, and the creator of theater games, a system of actor training that uses games she devised to organically teach the formal rules of the theater. Her groundbreaking book Improvisation for the Theater transformed American theater and revolutionized the way acting is taught. Originally published in 1963 by Northwestern University Press, it remains an essential theater text. She developed her methods while working as a drama supervisor in Chicago for the WPA, at her Young Actors Company in Hollywood, and as Director of Workshops at The Second City. Her son, director Paul Sills, who is credited with popularizing her work, used her theater games when he co-founded Compass, Playwrights Theatre Club, The Second City, and created Story Theater. The modern improvisational theater movement is a direct outgrowth of Spolin’s methods, discoveries, and writings. Read more about her life and work below.

Learn more about Improvisation for the Theater, and Spolin’s other publications here.

Philosophy

Viola Spolin’s improvisational Theater Games are a complete system of actor training. Each game or exercise has a focus, a problem to be solved by the players as a group, so that lessons are learned through play (experience). She wrote: "Everyone can act. Everyone can improvise. Anyone who wishes to can play in the theater and learn to become stageworthy. We learn through experience and experiencing, and no one teaches anyone anything. . . . ‘Talent’ or ‘lack of talent’ has little to do with it.” Through focused attention, a player can be in the present time, their intuition activated and their whole body alert and ready to play—physical states that benefit theatrical communication and liberate the individual to explore their environment and make new discoveries. In moments of pure spontaneity, cultural and psychological conditioning fall away, allowing for the player to explore the unknown. In theater games, space objects replace props and sets, which opens the possibility for theatrical transformation. Spolin called transformation the heart of improvisation. She believed cultural and familial authorities often use approval and disapproval to control others, limiting the individual’s capacity for experience. Her evaluation methods instead involve the whole group in a non-judgmental process that lets students learn for themselves. Spolin called her teaching methods non-authoritarian, non-verbal, and non-psychological.