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Theatre Fundamentals for Special Needs Students

Objective: Students will demonstrate their ability to perform theatre skills by participating in various exercises and activities.
Subject: Theatre History, Styles & Genres
Class Level: Beginning
Main Concepts: memorization, movement, getting up in front of people
National Standards: CONTENT STANDARD 2: Acting by developing, communicating, and sustaining characters in improvisations and informal or formal productions.
Description: This unit was developed originally for a Special Needs theatre class. This class had several special needs students along with peer tutors that also served as teacher aides in conducting activities. There are activities that are theatre-based as well as life skill games.

These lessons are designed for 80 minute-long classes.
Author: Hillary Carey

Lesson Plans

Lesson 1: Body Positions and Pantomime

Students will demonstrate their knowledge of body positions by performing pantomimes.

Lesson 2: Dr. Seuss Beginning

Students will demonstrate their knowledge of Inflection by reading Dr. Seuss to each other and to the class.

Lesson 3: Acting with Dr. Seuss

Students will demonstrate their knowledge of Dr. Seuss and performing by performing a pantomime about Horton Hears a Who, and working on a scene from Horton Hatches the Egg.

Lesson 4: Using our Imagination

Students will demonstrate their knowledge of imagination and performing by participating in numerous activities and one role-play.

Lesson 5: Communication. Buying and Selling

Students will learn how to communicate to each other by creating different role plays dealing with buying and selling.

Lesson 6: Communication- Dealing with Relationships/Friendships

Students will learn about how they communicate with their friends by creating a piece of drama about friendships.

Lesson 7: Communication, Feelings, Body language

Students will demonstrate their knowledge of feelings and emotion by creating numerous role plays dealing with emotion.

Lesson 8: Communication. Staying Safe.

Students will demonstrate their knowledge of staying safe by participating in class discussion and creating role plays with each other.

Lesson 9: Eye Contact

Students will demonstrate their ability to make eye contact through numerous exercises.

Lesson 10: Memorization

Students will demonstrate their ability to memorize by participating on numerous exercises and by working on their final performance piece.

Lesson 11: Improvisation and Memorization

Students will demonstrate their knowledge of improvisation, group work, and memorization to perform several improvisations and to memorize their poem.

Author's Notes:

There is a final group performance planned for this unit, however, there is no evaluation sheet prepared as it was graded on participation only.