Educational Objective:
Students will demonstrate their ability to memorize lengthy monologues by completing memorization exercises and a memorization quiz.
Materials:
Class candy stash
Square blank sheet of paper for each student
Cootie Catcher Template Lesson 2.Cootie Catcher Template
Quiz for each student Lesson 2.Memorization Quiz
Any type of tape for the game
Hook:
Welcome class. Ask, “Who can tell me what slating is?” Throw candy to the first person to answer correctly. Feed off of students’ answers to check for understanding. Continue tossing candy to each student who answers correctly and helps along the class discussion. “So, if it performed before a monologue, what is a monologue?” “Why are monologues important?”… etc.
Teaching Presentation:
• Invite students to get into pairs. Do not tell them what you are making, but follow the cootie catcher template and teach the students to make cootie catchers. Slowly teach each fold in the process step by step, making sure everyone is following along. Tell the students to write one of each of these four activities on each of the inside tabs: “perform the first three sentences in your monologue as fast as possible,” “perform the last three sentences in your monologue as slow as possible,” “recite your full monologue with a different accent,” and “pretend your monologue is a poem- recite it with a cadence or rhythm.” Invite the older partner to pick a random number and begin working on their monologues by following the cootie catcher promptings.
• Walk around and assist students with their monologue work. Provide individual assistance . You should know class well enough by this point to take the students’ needs into consideration and help them as best as you can.
• Have the students switch partners and begin working on straight memorization. One student will work on remembering and reciting their monologue while the other student checks it word for word. They will keep switching back and forth and improving their memorization. Go around to each pair and encourage the partner who is checking the wording to cheer for every correct word. Join along with them. Physically cheer (clap, whoop, exclaim, etc.) for your students and their improvement.
• Ask class to cheer at once for everyone’s progress today. Gather together again and tell them that you can memorize better when you divide the monologue into topics or create a rhythm when you speak. Ask for ideas on how the students memorize and rehearse things. Have the class put away their materials.
• Pass out the quiz. When students finish, have them work on memorization alone until everyone is finished and you can gather up all of the assessments.
• Game time! Have students assist you in making a pathway of tape on the carpeting or floor. Think gameboard around the perimeter of the room. Tape strips should be placed about a foot from each other around the room. Ask who thinks they know their monologue best from the beginning. Ask that student to recite his or her monologue from the beginning and take a step onto the tape with each correct word. Begin by checking that student’s progress yourself. Then get three to five players going at once, with student’s checking their reading. When a student gets one word wrong, they stay on that place on the board until someone passes them. Then they must start over and try to recite their monologue with more exactness. Give candy to the top three winners of the game.