LESSON 5-Designing
Educational Objective: Students will design a voice and a puppet for their character in the script they wrote previously.
Supplies:
- Clip “Miss Piggy Gets Fired” from The Muppet Show
- Each student needs a piece of paper
Hook: Show the clip “Miss Piggy Gets Fired” from the Muppet Show.
Step: Tell the class that they are going to create puppet shows in order to tell the stories they wrote last time.
Step: Have them get into their groups and on the backside of their scripts create a cast list. This should include the names of everyone in their group and what parts/characters they are playing.
Step: Once they have completed this short task tell them to each get out a separate, blank sheet of paper. On the paper they should draw the outline of a paper bag. On the top of the paper they need to write their name, the name of their story, and the name of their character. They should also include a brief description of their character (example: he is a dog; she is a cheerleader, etc)
Step: Give them a couple minutes to finish this.
Step: Once they have finished give them about 7 minutes to design the puppet. They should draw everything they want on their character on the outline of the paper bag.
Step: Tell them to show their puppet designs to their neighbor. What are some things you like about the other designs you see? What other characters are you excited to see in a show? Have a couple students share with the whole class.
Step: Tell them to flip their designs over and on the other side write the following:
- Pitch:
- Tone:
- Rate:
Tell them that they need to describe the voice of their character/puppet by filling out these elements. They need to tell you if their voices are high, low, fast, slow, and any other qualities or emotions (tone) that are used too. Make sure they know that they can draw scales like the handout from Lesson One if it makes it easier and that putting “medium” on both pitch and rate does not make it sound like the character’s voice is going to be different from the actor’s normal voice. It needs to be specific and needs to fit the kind of character they have designed.
Step: Allow them to work on this for about 5 minutes to give them time to experiment. When they are done, give them the rest of the time to finish their scripts.