The Playwright's Project
Teacher Reflection:
My wonderful Cooperating Teacher, Carol, is an expert Playwright. Her passion for the practice is wildly contagious and I really enjoyed observing her teach this project from her heart.
I got the opportunity to lead a few lessons during this project. I taught lessons about plot structure, dialogue and genre. I got to facilitate read-alouds of former students' plays followed by feedback sessions. Carol came up with a feedback protocol that worked really well that I would like to use in future years: Pops/Questions/What-ifs. After reading a play, students had some silent think time to respond to these prompts before engaging in a class discussion about them:
POPS: What works in this play? What is exciting? What is the writer doing well?
QUESTIONS: What questions do you have? Where might there be holes in the story? What would be useful for us to know as the audience?
WHAT IFS: What suggestions do you have? What wild and crazy ideas do you have? What could you see the writer changing?
This form of feedback celebrates the student Playwright, provides insight on what might be confusing, and gives creative ideas on how to go forward. I definitely want to use this structure for feedback in the future!
Our students wrote really incredible plays complete with complex characters, creative storylines, and well-written dialogue. Check out some of their scripts:
My wonderful Cooperating Teacher, Carol, is an expert Playwright. Her passion for the practice is wildly contagious and I really enjoyed observing her teach this project from her heart.
I got the opportunity to lead a few lessons during this project. I taught lessons about plot structure, dialogue and genre. I got to facilitate read-alouds of former students' plays followed by feedback sessions. Carol came up with a feedback protocol that worked really well that I would like to use in future years: Pops/Questions/What-ifs. After reading a play, students had some silent think time to respond to these prompts before engaging in a class discussion about them:
POPS: What works in this play? What is exciting? What is the writer doing well?
QUESTIONS: What questions do you have? Where might there be holes in the story? What would be useful for us to know as the audience?
WHAT IFS: What suggestions do you have? What wild and crazy ideas do you have? What could you see the writer changing?
This form of feedback celebrates the student Playwright, provides insight on what might be confusing, and gives creative ideas on how to go forward. I definitely want to use this structure for feedback in the future!
Our students wrote really incredible plays complete with complex characters, creative storylines, and well-written dialogue. Check out some of their scripts:
Student reflection: When I started this project, I was very excited to be able to write a play with the help of and feedback from my peers. However, I could not come up with an idea that spoke to me. I looked into myself and decided to write about my experiences in life and school. I really do enjoy how Working To Instill Some Hope turned out, and I really do resonate with the message I put into it. It started with a simple story of a school girl wanting a friend, but I added to it with the mysticism of wishing. It really let me showing my struggle and frustration through a medium that I enjoy.
Student Reflection: Before this project, I didn’t really know that I liked acting. Once we started reading A Raisin in the Sun, I got very interested in reading and acting. I became interested in other peoples’ plays and acting out their characters. When we were reading one of my friend’s plays, there was a character named Rose, she was a woman who was angry at her boyfriend, and people thought that I fit that character well. I thought so, too. I like to play as a character, but I didn’t think that I would fit so well with them. When I was reading for Beneatha in A Raisin in the Sun, I nailed it! Especially in the scene where she was yelling out of the window. Reading a Raisin in the Sun helped inspire me in my own playwriting. It made me want to write creatively, and with a lot of detailed. Normally, I’m not so detailed.
Student Reflection: For nearly all of my school life I never thought that I was a good writer, I didn’t enjoy it and I thought that I might never get good at it. But in 7th/8th grade my horizons were widened and I learned that there was so much more to writing than I thought, creative writing, play writing, spoken word, poems, all kinds of things! So in this project I explored a side of me that I had never looked at before. I created a beautiful 17 page play that is about a stranger and a ghost that go on an adventure to find themselves. I also got to explore the idea of tackling relatable ideas of days all feeling the same in a comedic way. I wanted people to be able to watch/read my play and see that there is more out there than just their daily routine and the comfort of their home.