Educational Objective:
Students will be able to define and identify objectives and tactics by participating in a tactic relay race.
Facet of Understanding -
#1 - Explanation, # 2 -Interpretation, # 3 Application
Enduring Understanding 1:
Characters are driven by objectives which motivate action.
Enduring Understanding 2:
There must needs be strategy in place to get what we want.
Essential Question 1:
When do we use tactics to achieve objectives in real life?
Materials Needed:
White board markers (3)
Hook:
Honey if You Love Me: Students sit in a circle. One student in the middle approaches a student on the outside of the circle with the following exchange. The goal is to get the other student to laugh/smile. Person B must respond with that line without smiling or laughing. If Person B smiles or laughs before completing the line, student A wins and takes their seat and student B goes into the middle.
A: Honey if you love me, won’t you please, please smile?
B: Honey, I love you but I just can’t smile. Student in the center
Step 1 – Discussion:
What was the connection between the person in the middle and the one they approached? How did they connect to the rest of the group in the circle? What different things did people try to get people to laugh? Lead into: we call these Tactics. What was your goal when you were in the middle? On the outsides? This is your objective. Every actor needs to have one of these. Who did you care about making laugh? A: YOUR PARTNER and Only your partner.
Step 2 – Instruction:
On the board, with the class create a working definition for ‘objective’ and for ‘tactic’ Should resemble something like this:
Objective: What you want from your partner. Tactic: how you get what you want from your partner.
Introduce Tactics in the infinitive (“to be”) form. Introduce 2 questions you have to ask yourself in determining if an infinitive is a good tactic: 1. Does it go through the other person? 2. Is it playable?
Give some good and bad examples on the board and have students determine if they are good tactics or not.
Step 3 – Practice:
Invite students to get into 3 lines and come up with a team name.
Step 4 – Practice:
Give students 3 minutes on a timer. The game: each student writes a tactic on the board in the “to be” form. They then pass off the marker to the next student who does the same. They have 3 minutes to write as many “good” tactics on the board as possible. The team with the most good ones wins.
To discourage cheating off the other groups’ lists, the teacher may decide not to count good tactics that are on multiple groups’ boards.
Step 5- Evaluation:
Evaluate with the class all of the tactics. The first few may take a bit of time so they understand what constitutes the “good” tactics, and which ones are not strong tactics. They’ll get it pretty quick, and then you can just do a thumbs up, thumbs down for the rest. If there is a discrepancy go to the person who wrote the verb and see if they can justify it.
Step 6- Modeling:
(If time at end) Ask for 2 volunteers. Give them a setting, a relationship, and an objective.
An example of this could be a brother and sister in their home (or in the car, etc.) The brother wants his sister to set him up on a date with her best friend. The sister wants to borrow the brother’s car keys to go to a concert with her friend.
Step 7- Modeling:
Instruct the 2 volunteers to use 3 of the tactics written on the board to get what they want from their partner. If they need guidance as they go, side coach them to show the class how it can be done.
Step 8 – Modeling:
Have 2 more pairs get up and do the same scene. (Ex: Brother & sister in house. Brother wants a date with best friend, Sister wants to borrow some money for concert tickets.)
Step 9 - Discussion:
What did you see? Who was successful? Why were they successful? Who got their objective? Who didn’t? Which tactics did you see tactics used? How did the tactics help them get their objectives?
Final Assessment for Lesson 1:
Participation/group evaluation of relay race.
Homework:
n/a