Educational Benefits
What Are Some of the Educational Benefits for Participants?
- Increased empathy, understanding and appreciation of self and partnering group
Addressing of State and National Language Arts and Social Studies Standards
Creating / Developing / Writing / Revising
- Generate ideas before speaking (writing)
- Determine appropriate content for audience
- Group related ideas
- Identify the problem, solution, and main or central idea
- Develop a plan for speaking (or writing)
- Use knowledge of story structure and sequence
- Organize information and events for clarity and logic
- Organize ideas sequentially
- Use evidence to support opinions
- Clarify and explain words and ideas orally
- Create oral stories to share with others.
- Seek ideas and opinions of others
- Draw conclusions about character and plot
- Revise for clarity
Listening
- Set a purpose for listening (or reading)
- Demonstrate active listening behaviors
- Listen to and record information
- Ask and answer clarifying questions about what is heard (or read)
- Identify the problem, solution, and main idea
- Use pictures/visuals to demonstrate comprehension
- Make connections between previous experiences and reading selections
- Summarize what is said
- Determine a speaker's purpose
Speaking
- Share stories orally with an audience
- Speak clearly
- Use appropriate volume, pitch, and tone of voice
- Speak at a desirable rate
- Maintain eye contact with listeners
- Use gestures to support, accentuate, and dramatize verbal message
- Use facial expressions to support and dramatize verbal message
- Use posture appropriate for communication setting
- Read with fluency and expression
Adapted from Virginia, Maryland and DC Standards of Learning
National Theatre Achievement Standards Addressed
- Improvise dialogue to tell stories
- Use variations of movement and vocal pitch, tempo, and tone for different characters
- Assume roles that exhibit concentration
- Identify and describe the visual, aural, oral, and kinetic elements of classroom dramatizations (storytelling)
- Articulate emotional responses to and explain personal preferences about the whole as well as the parts of dramatic performances
- Analyze classroom dramatizations and, using appropriate terminology, constructively suggest alternative ideas
- Demonstrate acting skills (such as sensory recall, concentration, breath control, diction, body alignment) to develop characterizations that suggest artistic choices
Adapted from National Standards for Arts Education