5th GRADE DRAMA
Exploring Stories Through Puppetry
Exploring Stories Through Puppetry
Trimester Project Overview
In 5th grade, students make muppet style rod puppets, learn puppeteering basics, and produce a puppet variety show. Independently they develop their puppet's character and then work in small groups to imagine a talent performance for their puppets to perform which they then write and turn into a small act to perform at the final variety show.
Puppet Making
To make their puppets, students carefully followed a set pattern and then added small details to personalize like teeth, eyelashes, and more.
Puppeteering
To build their puppeteering skills, students took part in activities like teaching their puppets to count in English and Spanish, sing the ABCs, dance to music, and interview one another.
Variety Show Scriptwriting
After establishing puppeteering basics, students work with a small group to develop and write an act for their puppets to perform in a variety show. Below is an example of one of their variety show scripts.
Performance
Student Reflection Snapshots
I am most proud of our last few rehearsals, as they kept getting better, as we agreed on what we were going to do. Our last few changes and tweaked of the script made the show better and better. I loved doing the rehearsals.
I learned on how to focus a bit more on my work. I usually get distracted really easily, but when I was focusing on my script and performance, I blocked out other people’s voices, other than my partner’s and mine.
I am proud of my self-esteem. When I’m drawing and I make on tiny mistake I would say, “oh well I’m going to start over.” And when I finish I look at it and say, “ this doesn’t look too good. I’ll throw it out”. But making this magnificent puppet has really helped me have more self-esteem. When I look at my puppet I think, “wow this looks really good I have no regrets!"
Something I learned in drama this year is How to write a script. I want to be a writer when I grow up i could write for movie or play scripts!
I got really surprised when we got to make our own puppets and it was really fun. A challenge was that I had to puppeteer and I have never puppeteered before but it was so fun I did it.
I’m the most proud of being able to collaborate with people really easily. The reason I’m proud of this is because I was expecting it to be a pain for me but everyone made it easy for me to add on to their scripts. I felt like our teamwork was really smooth. I also like how clear we were to each other if we were gonna add lines. :]
Really, I am so proud of the way us as a class came together to have fun making puppets, not yelling, not fighting, just pure creating these wonderful fun- filled performances!