My Students are Such Actors

At the end of chapter 8 in the textbook that I use for my lessons has a roleplay/acting activity. I didn't include any pictures or videos because my students are minors and I do not have parental permission.

For 4th grade,   we had just finished a unit on "Let's play Soccer" and "It's on the desk." These two units influenced the textbook to write a script about The Three Little Pigs and The Big Bad Wolf., which was one of my favorite books from when I was a kid. This lesson took two classes to complete.

For the first class, we just read through the script and practiced. We played with voices, and the students rehearsed their roles. For the second class, the students were given a few minutes to practice, and then they took turns performing them in front of the class. Before they did this, we surprised them with a video we recorded of my Co-teacher, the other Fulbrighter at my school, and I performing the script. We even had a special guest performance by one of my 4th graders to play the big bad wolf. The kids loved it. It was a lot of fun watching my students come alive with this project. Especially the ones that never talk. And they are apparently much better actors than my 5th graders.

In 5th grade, we had a bit more fun.  For their storytime script, we played a variation on "The Giving Tree" We had previously covered the units "What did you do during summer vacation?" and "Can I take a picture?"

We had started the class by reading the four "mini-scripts" which was about two or three lines each. We borrowed from tablets from another teacher and had the students pick one of the mini-scripts and with their small groups and record it. It was actually the best day to watch the kids just really get into this project. Some groups made props out of paper, others grabbed things to be props in the classroom, and one group went all the way downstairs to the mural of the Giving Tree to film in front of them.

Also, let's just say that my 5th  graders really do not understand that the tree and the boy were friends. I had multiple groups finish out the final mini-script (the one where the old man was just talking to the tree and thanking it) by attacking each other. Afterward, each of the groups showed their videos to the class while the rest of the class commented on their performances.