Learning Goal: To apply our learning about rural areas to create characters in a drama and imagine their day to day lives.
Minds On
Imagining A Town > Role Play
Gather students around the rural region created last class, and remind them of Ben, whom they met in the book City Kid, Country Kid during Lesson 1. Teacher Script: ‘Today we will be imagining a journey to Ben’s hometown of Milford, Ontario, in the region of Prince Edward County. We will all become members of this community, and today you will create and take on the role of a person who lives in this town.’
You may wish to choose a real town such as Milford, or create a fictional town in the region and name it with the students. The features of this town could be pre-selected by the teacher and distributed in the next activity, or be co-created with students based on their research findings from Lesson 2.
Action!
Imagining a Town > Character Building
Divide students into pre-selected groups. You may wish to group by ability and differentiate tasks based on student need.
Each group will get an envelope that gives them some information about their roles in the town. Groups could be given open-ended prompts (e.g. you are farmers and need to decide what you farm, where your farms are located, and how well your business is doing) or detailed prompts (e.g. here is your name, your job, and a few lines of script for your character).
Provide students time in their groups to begin building their characters. Use the sample character building question sheet as a guide, or use it to make a character profile organizer that students can keep with them throughout the lessons.
Character Building Questions (CODE Resource) https://www.code.on.ca/sites/default/files/assets/resources/94-building-community/documents/5drama-buildingcommunity-blm4listofquestionscharacterbuilding.pdf
Circulate to check in and ask students questions about their characters as they develop them. Whenever possible, question students in role (e.g. Hello, what is your name? Well hello John, are you a farmer here in Milford? What kinds of things do you grow on your farm? Is your job difficult?)
Tableau > Speaking Photo App
Once students have answered their character-building questions, ask each group to create a frozen picture of their characters on a typical day in Milford. Their tableau should give us information about where they live and what they do. Consider providing simple props and costume pieces for groups to use. Review the success criteria of tableau (stillness, strong facial expressions, etc).
As students are working, introduce the Speaking Photo App on iPads. https://speakingphoto.com/
Tell them that you will be coming around to take a photo of each tableau, and the group should record audio to accompany the image. The audio should give us a few more details about the characters in the town (encourage students to speak in role, using ‘I’). Provide sentence starters for students to use in their recordings.
My name is . . . .and today I am . . .
One of my daily chores is . . .
Living in a small town like Milford is great because . . .
Consolidation
A Look Inside Our Small Town > Large Group Image-Making
Using a projector, show the whole class each tableau image and listen to the audio recorded for each.
Follow-up Discussion
Who lives in our town?
What have we learned about jobs in this town? The land? The resources?
What do people like about living in Milford?
What are some of the challenges of living in this town?
What do people here depend on for our survival and success?
Which tableaux stood out to you and why? How did this group address the success criteria of a good tableau?
How did their audio help you to understand the image you were seeing?
What words or phrases did they use to help us understand their characters?
Consider ending a with a large group image, inviting each group to recreate their tableau live, all at the same time. Take a photo of the entire town to use in the Minds On portion of the next lesson.