Voice and Body (Elementary Unit)

Unit Title: Voice and Body (Elementary Unit)

Author:  Samantha Daynes

Unit Objective: Students will demonstrate appropriate, creative use of their voices and bodies to create characters.

Grade Level:Kindergarten

Prior Experience:Students need no prior understanding of drama for this lesson and all topics should be explained as if the students have no previous knowledge of the subject.

National Standards Addressed:

TH.Cr2-K. With prompting and support, interact with peers and contribute to dramatic play or a guided drama experience (e.g., process drama, story drama, creative drama).

TH:Pr6.1.K.a. With prompting and support, use voice and sound in dramatic play or a guided drama experience

TH:Cn11.2.Kb. With prompting and support, tell a short story in dramatic play or a guided drama experience 

TH.Cr2-K. With prompting and support, express original ideas in dramatic play or a guided drama experience 

Big Ideas:

Getting out of your head and into your body.

Channeling energy to good use.

Get students moving

Get students comfortable with each other

Build a safe community.

Creating a character piece by piece.

Using your body to explore movement.

Discovering what you can do with your voice.

Putting everything together- voice, body, movement, imagination, communication.

Essential Questions:

How do voice and movement help us express our thoughts and feelings?

How does movement tell a story?

How can our voice and body help us be creative? 

Key Knowledge and Skills/Authentic Performance Tasks:

Class Rules

Respecting each other

Trying new things

Being creatively free

Use their bodies in new ways

Project their voices without hurting them

Vocal exercises

Stretching/movement warm-up

Building a character

Performing before an audience

Being a respectful audience

Telling a story through voice and body

Lessons:

Lesson #1  

Objective: Students will understand their expected behavior by demonstrating how they can use movement to have fun while also keeping the class rules.

Lesson #2

Objective: Students will be able to demonstrate how physicality can affect a character by using different parts of their body and at different speeds.

Lesson #3

Objective: Students will demonstrate the different capabilities of their voices (while using them safely) by experimenting with vowel sounds, noisemaking, and using voice to tell a story.

Lesson #4

Objective: Students will demonstrate the many types of character movements and sounds by experimenting with soft and hard movements as well as soft and loud sounds and using these to create characters.

Lesson #5

Objective: Students will demonstrate the use of voice and movement to create characters in a story.

Lesson #6

Objective:  Students will demonstrate use of voice, movement and imagination by creating their own characters to embody in a process drama.